A 1968 Draped Painting by Nina Yankowitz: "Oh Say Can you See?"

The Woodstock Festival of 1969 was officially named the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. According to Michael Lang in Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the inclusion of “art” in the festival name was a nod to Woodstock, NY’s status as an art colony—beginning in the early 1900s with Byrdcliffe and the Maverick Festivals, and later with organizations like Group 212.

Recently I spoke by phone with Nina Yankowitz of nyartprojects about her days at Group 212. A 1969 Fine Arts graduate of the School of Visual Arts, Yankowitz doesn’t recall where she first heard about the fusion collective, but she says that word about it was on the street in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Nina loved Group 212′s fearless collaborative spirit, and remembers that she first installed her draped paintings on the trees in the surrounding Group 212 landscape. She says that Group 212′s propulsive and adventurous style of mixing music, painting, sculpture, photography, electronic sounds, poetry, and performance art opened her up to embrace new technologies and emerging artistic disciplines. For example, she met Ken Werner, a musician, at 212 in the summer of 1968, and she recalls their collaboration. Werner made an audio rendition to realize Nina’s desire to include sound that would mimic the musical score, Oh Say Can You See, on her draped canvas. This embodied the concept of hearing and seeing sounds as they unfolded from her draped paintings. The installation was exhibited later that year at Kornblee Gallery in New York City.

Nina Yankowitz (in Foreground) Dancing at Group 212

Yankowitz remembers running to catch the bus to Greenwich Village from South Orange Junior High School in New Jersey. She would sneak out of school to attend performances by Dylan and Hugh Romney at the Cafe Wha in the Village, returning without her delinquency having been discovered. Her later Woodstock experience put her in touch with many new and exciting musicians and artistic collaborators. She met people like Sunny Murray, Dave Burrell, and Chuck Santon—an artist who spent most of his time at Robert Wilson‘s Byrdcliffe, devoted to experimental workshops/productions. She also met musician Juma Sultan, and it was he who encouraged Nina and a friend to dance while Juma, Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, and Dave Burrell were jamming. She remembers the music director wanting to “pull the cane around our necks!” Juma also took her to Byrdcliffe to meet Bob Dylan, and they, with others from the community, attended a Sound-Out at Pan Copeland’s farm. Yankowitz recalls people jumping through the fences, lying on the grass and watching acts like Tim Hardin and Ritchie Havens.

One detail eludes Nina about her time at Group 212. She remembers a friend there who created marvelous performances based upon the myth of Icarus. He also made beautiful photographs with his box camera, and she wonders what happened to the fellow who created and played this bird-man role. Can anyone help her out on that?

~Weston Blelock

Peter Blum circa 1969

Peter Blum is a long-time resident of the Woodstock area. His shamanic sound healing practice is widely recognized and supported by the community. In 2009 he was honored with an award from the National Guild of Hypnotists for “a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication and service.” I spoke to him recently by phone to learn about his connection to the Sound-Outs.

Peter started his journey as a folk singer in the Bronx. During the early 1960s he traveled down to Greenwich Village to see such fellow folkie acts as Happy and Artie Traum perform in Washington Square Park. From 1962 he took in performances of Bob Dylan, John Sebastian, Richie Havens and Jimi Hendrix around the Village at venues like the Night Owl Café and the Café Au Go-Go. But soon all his idols were hanging out and performing in Woodstock. In 1965 he became a counselor at the Boys Club of America’s Camp Harriman in East Jewett, NY. One day he heard that John Hammond, Jr. was performing at the Café Espresso. Blum decided to hitchhike to Woodstock to catch the show. Unfortunately he couldn’t get a lift from Mt. Tremper to Woodstock, and missed Hammond’s performance. By 1969 he met Jan Zeitz in Greenwich Village and learned about the Sound-Outs. Zeitz was living with her then boyfriend, Cyril Caster, in a school bus on Pan Copeland’s farm. Caster later booked Blum for a gig at the Sound-Outs.

Blum was fully intending to return to NYC in the fall. But one day as he was walking down Tinker Street he heard a voice in his head say, “This is where you’re supposed to be.” Peter rented a place along Sawkill Road near Woodstock and began to jam with Paul Album (of the band, Woodstock Trucking), Spider Barbour (Chrysalis) and Chris Zaloom (Fear Itself). His group consisted of Richard Ledbetter (bass), Alan Hand on keyboards and a yet-to-be-found drummer. He also hung around with Daoud Shaw (Chrysalis) and Mike Winfield (Colwell-Winfield Blues Band). He started to ingest lots of LSD to raise his consciousness and played in all-night sessions. Others in his circle of acquaintances included Gilles Malkine, Keith Johnson, Martha Velez, Paul Butterfield and Gene Dinwiddie.

One afternoon in late 1970 Fern Hand, Alan Hand’s wife, took Peter to meet Gail Varsi, who was manning a runaways’ hotline on Library Lane. This service eventually morphed into Family of Woodstock, where Blum still volunteers. Around the same time Blum helped to co-manage the Aurora Bookstore. This was an occult shop that was located upstairs from the Corner Cupboard, and was initially founded by Elliott Landy.  Eventually Landy turned it over to Blum and Les Crook—who later became known as Les Invisible. Blum read the contents of the store voraciously. Aurora also sold avant-garde Indian music and Macrobiotic titles. By 1973 he began taking lessons from Karl Berger at his Creative Music Studio. In 1978 he went to Holland to study the sitar, and in the 1990s he began working with magical Tibetan singing bowls. For more information on Peter Blum see www.soundsforhealing.com. 

~Weston Blelock

Pete Seeger at Camp Woodland—near Phoenicia, NY—in the 1940s (Photo reproduced courtesy of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany Libraries.)

Woodstock, NY—On Saturday, July 31, 2010, a retrospective exhibit on Camp Woodland opens with a reception from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Eames House, 20 Comeau Drive in Woodstock. The Camp Woodland story, its influence and legacy, is told through film, music, artifacts, images and archives culled from the collections of former campers, the Norman Studer Papers (University at Albany), and from the Historical Society of Woodstock.

 Camp Woodland (1939–1962) was founded near Phoenicia, NY, by Norman Studer, a former Ph.D. student of John Dewey’s and an educator at the Elizabeth Irwin School in New York City. Studer sought to bring America’s democratic roots alive to his students. His vision embraced cultural diversity and a multidisciplinary approach. He brought city kids up to the country and put them in touch with old-time Catskill Mountain folks—like Aaron Van De Bogart from Woodstock. Not only did Woodland Campers hear stories from the hill people, but they were put to work collecting and preserving hundreds of folk songs for posterity.

 The camp was an annual destination for Pete and Toshi Seeger and they proved to be an incalculable influence. Pete performed for each division of campers, for the camp as a whole, and—when the campers had gone to bed—for the counselors. In 1954, a 15-year-old camper named John Herald saw Seeger sing and decided to become a musician. The camp’s multi-cultural population was a fertile incubating ground for Seeger. One counselor, Hector Angulo, introduced him to a Cuban song, “Guantanamera,” which became hit for Pete in 1961. Another time Pete wrote three verses based on a Russian folk tune and left it with counselor Joe Hickerson. Joe worked with a group of campers on the rhythm and personally wrote two more verses. This song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” charted on Billboard for The Kingston Trio as a “B” side in 1961.

Perhaps the most important element of the Camp Woodland program was the annual end-of-summer folk festival. It was at these fêtes that hill people like George Edwards and George Van Kleeck came to perform. Equally important, the campers called and performed their own dances. This gave them the chance to learn and carry on the folk tradition of mixing work, community and music. When the camp closed in 1962, the area’s folk action migrated to Woodstock. That year the Café Espresso came under the ownership of the Paturels. The next year Bob Dylan moved to town and did some great song writing in a studio above the Café. In 1967 the Sound-Out folk rock concert series was launched at Pan Copeland’s farm. This series inspired Michael Lang to stage his Woodstock mega-concert in 1969.

 The show gratefully acknowledges the support of Ulster Savings and Heritage Folk Music. The Eames House museum is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. The show runs through September 12. For more info call 845.679.8111 or log onto www.campwoodland.org.

Ad in the Woodstock Aquarian for an August 8, 1970 Sound-Out

In 1970, due to the impact of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, smaller events like the Woodstock Sound-Outs were increasingly shut down by New York State municipalities. The Town of Saugerties, in whose jurisdiction the Sound-Outs fell, put on its books a law preventing mass gatherings of 200 persons or more without a permit.

After Cyril Caster left in 1969, Ian Hain stepped up to co-promote the Sound-Outs with Pan Copeland. Hain made a number of improvements to the site, including the construction of a band shell. He was able to pull off several festivals in 1970 without a permit, before the  local authorities caught up with him. But at the July 25, 1970 concert, a couple of sheriff’s deputies were stationed by the festival entrance gate, taking a careful count of those admitted. As soon as the tally went over 200, Hain—who still hadn’t managed to secure a permit—was arrested. The town lawyers kept his case in and out of the courts for the rest of the summer, and no other concerts were successfully staged. In September all charges against the promoter were finally dropped, but the season was over.

It was a great pity, for the headliners that summer would have included such icons as James Taylor and Larry Coryell. They are featured in the ad above, for an August 8, 1970 Sound-Out that had to be cancelled due to Hain’s legal difficulties.

Van Morrison's Moondance CD Cover

In 1964, while I was at school in Scotland, Van Morrison and Them exploded on the U.K. charts with “Baby Please don’t Go”—and most memorably with “Gloria.” It took everyone by surprise. Where the heck did these guys come from?   

Later on when I was back in the States, I attended a Sound-Out in Pan Copeland’s field. Much to my amazement there was Van, not more than twenty feet from me on a makeshift stage. Astral Weeks  had just been released, and according to Clinton Heylin’s bio, Van Morrison: Can You Feel The Silence, he was playing the gig with former members of the Colwell-Winfield Blues Band. Ex-bandmates Jack Schrorer and Collin Tillton were in attendance. It was late August 1969, there was a hint of autumn in the air, and Van was giving an all-out performance. In Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to Woodstock, there is a copy of the performance check. The band netted $50! In 1970 this core group of musicians, plus a few others, worked with Morrison on his classic Moondance album. International acclaim and fortune soon followed for Morrison.

 Recently Scott Parker, author of the Recordings of Frank Zappa series, introduced me to Janet Morrison, Van’s ex-wife. She emailed me and said of their time in Woodstock, “Van had just finished Astral Weeks and although we had high hopes, there was no telling how well the album would be received. Woodstock, for us, was a bewitching sylvan paradise after NYC. We loved everything about the place. The locals became our friends. We bought an old car to navigate, haphazardly, in the deepest snows. In the spring, when the snow finally melted, we drank pink bubbly wine by the flowing stream close to town and sang our hearts out for the pure romantic joy of it all. It was good. We acquired cats. I gave birth in due time to my endearingly adored daughter Shana Caledonia. Woodstock healed us and made us quite sure that magic was afoot. As it turned out, we were correct.”

~ Weston Blelock

Pan at Ann's Delicatessen in the '60s

In 1938 D.H. Lawrence wrote in The Phoenix, a Woodstock publication, “still in America, among the Indians, the oldest Pan is alive.” This is a fitting tribute to the bacchanalian energy that was present during the Maverick Festivals in the early 1900s. This spirit re-surfaced in the late sixties at the Woodstock Sound-Outs, where festival goers co-habituated with nature in weekend-long parties under the open skies.

What is not so well known is that the host of the Woodstock Sound-Outs was none other than Pansy “Pan” Drake Copeland (1910-1994). Pan was by turns a tough, feisty lady and a sweetheart. Bill West, a long-time politician, remembers taking Jay Rolison (who was running for the State Assembly) around to meet the shop keepers. He stopped in at Ann’s Delicatessen to meet Pan, the current owner. West had barely concluded the introductions when Copeland upbraided him about some totally unrelated town topic. Needless to say, the politicians beat a hasty retreat. On the other hand, according to Ellen McIlwaine, Pan was like a mother to her. In fact so much so that Copeland managed and guided Ellen’s career during the early seventies.

Ann’s Delicatessen was a town hangout. Musicians of all stripes and proclivities met and charged their purchases there. Bob Dylan was a regular, as were entertainers like Jim Black, Larry Packer and Garth Hudson. Larry Packer, the fiddle player for Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, recalls meeting Garth Hudson at the deli one day in the spring of 1968. Garth shyly offered Larry an acetate of a project the boys had been working on. This, of course, was Music from Big Pink, the project that turned out to be The Band’s ground-breaking first album.

Pan’s goodtime Southern cooking and generous portions drew starving musicians and artists to her enclave. In 1965 Copeland obtained title to a farm in West Saugerties. It was only a matter of time before she was hosting shindigs at the old farm site. In addition to the deli, Pan owned and operated the Copeland Gallery. Bob Liikala, the Group 212 coordinator, was an early manager there.

In 1967 Pan teamed up with Jocko Moffitt and Steve Bishop to host the first Woodstock Sound-Out over Labor Day weekend. It was an enormous success—it drew thousands and even rated a mention in the New York Times. In successive years the cream of rock royalty hung out and/or performed at the Sound-Outs. These acts included Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Jeff Walker, the Incredible String Band, Ellen McIlwaine with Fear Itself, New Lost City Ramblers, Bunky and Jake, Children of God, Tim Hardin and countless others. Among the notable attendees who came to be entertained were people like Michael Lang—who went on to model his 1969 mega festival after the Sound-Outs.

It is no accident that this website honors Pan as its patron deity.

A Photo of Cyril Caster from 1974

The Woodstock Sound-Outs were mini-festivals after which Michael Lang modeled his mega event in 1969. They were held on Pan Copeland’s farm on the outskirts of Woodstock, New York, from 1967 to 1970. The stage was inches from the ground and the amphitheater was a former cow pasture. Over the years different producers partnered with Pan, but by 1969 a musician from Seneca Falls, NY, named Cyril Caster was tapped to head up the festival production team. That group became known as Coyote Productions. Bob Fass, Pan Copeland, Cyril and a couple of others were in charge of the enterprise.

By 1969 the Sound-Outs were officially renamed the Woodstock-Saugerties Sound Festival, or simply The Woodstock Festival. (That was one reason Michael Lang and his partners called their event the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair.) That season the Coyote team planned eight concerts, signing headliners like Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, Cyril and his band, Tim Hardin, Chrysalis and Children of God. But due to inclement weather very few of the concerts were staged that year. When festival-goers heading to the Bethel event accidentally came to Woodstock, they were directed to Pan’s field. At least they could say they had attended The Woodstock Festival in Woodstock.

Remembering Woodstock

Dave Laing, the first essayist in Remembering Woodstock, writes that the “Woodstock festival was a part of a distinct history of (non-classical) outdoor music festivals stretching back to the early twentieth century. The earliest festivals were rural events, often celebrating local styles and skills in music and folk dance.” He goes on to suggest that the Georgia Fiddlers Convention held in Atlanta in 1913 was one of the first such events.

That may be, but as Michael Lang, co-creator of the Woodstock Festival of 1969, so succinctly says in Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to “Woodstock,” the festival was named the Woodstock Music and Art Fair because he intended to stage the festival in Woodstock, NY. Secondly, he wanted to reference the Maverick Festivals held from 1915 through 1931 in the Woodstock area. These weekend-long classical music and art events often drew thousands to the festival grounds. For more on the Maverick Festivals see Anita M. Smith’s Woodstock History and Hearsay.

George McKay, another essay writer for Remembering Woodstock, suggests that the Beaulieu Jazz Festivals in England were precursors or mini Woodstocks that helped to pave the way for festivals in the UK. Woodstock, NY’s own mini folk/rock festivals (Sound-Outs) were considered by many a suburban myth until 2009. But Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival was able to persuasively document the Sound-Outs through photos of contracts, players and playbills. It was these concerts that helped to launch the mega festival in 1969. For more on this click here. Also, check out Wikipedia for an article on the Woodstock Sound-Outs.

Tim Hardin's Woodstock Piano; Remembering Tim on 12/23

Tim Hardin (1941-1980) moved to the Woodstock area in 1968 with his wife Susan Morss and his young son Damion. Already the town was a thriving music destination— with The Band, Bob Dylan, the Mothers of Invention, Richie Havens and the Blues Magoos in residence. It is said that Hardin, of all the songwriters in early 1960s Greenwich Village, was the best. His first album, recorded for Verve in 1966, yielded such tunes as “Reason to Believe,” which was covered by Rod Stewart, and “Hang On To a Dream” which became a staple for The Nice. In the aftermath of this release Bob Dylan referred to Hardin as the best songwriter alive.

It was with Tim Hardin 2, his second album, that the songwriter released “If I Were a Carpenter,” his most memorable song. Also on the album were such tunes as “Black Sheep Boy“ and “Lady Came from Baltimore.” During an eight-month period from 1965 to 1966 some of his best-known songs were written on a piano in his room in Los Angeles. By the time Hardin moved to Woodstock his career was taking off. Although his album sales weren’t great, his talent garnered respect in the music world. Particularly after his song “If I Were A Carpenter” was covered by such established acts as Bobby Darin, Johnny Cash and June Carter, The Four Tops and many others. Hardin headlined at many of the Sound-Outs and at WOODSTOCK. In his book, The Road to Woodstock, Michael Lang writes, “Tim was a friend, and I was a big fan of his music and was hoping he’d be at his best onstage.” This could have been a big break for Tim. Hardin had a strong first set and then he invited his band to join him onstage. Gilles Malkine was playing rhythm guitar for Tim and said in Lang’s book that the set went so badly that Malkine quit the music business for many years.

Post-festival, Hardin continued to record for Columbia and other labels and enjoyed some commercial success with numbers like “Simple Song of Freedom,” but his early promise was never realized. On December 29, 1980 he passed away at the age of 39 from a heroin overdose.

Full Circle, Lamanna's debut CD, showcases her inventive singer/songwriting ability.

Pat Lamanna, a Camp Woodland alum, will be performing in the “Phil Ochs Fest” at the Colony Café, 22 Rock City Road, Woodstock on Dec. 5th. The gig begins at 8 p.m. Others on the bill include Graham and Barbara Dean, the Flames of Discontent and Greg Engleson.

FYI, Phil Ochs headlined at the 1967 Sound-Out. Camp Woodland nurtured folk music in the Woodstock area during the fifties and sixties—and together with the Sound-Outs was instrumental in creating the vital music scene that triggered the Woodstock Festival of 1969.