Van the Man in Woodstock
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Pan in Woodstock
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. Read the rest of this entry »
1969: The (Other) Woodstock Festival
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
Remembering Woodstock provides a fine assessment of the roots and cultural fallout of the Woodstock festival. This is accomplished via scholarly essays by a number of music and media academics from the UK and the Commonwealth. The one anomaly is the commentary from Country Joe McDonald, an American folk/rock performer who appeared at WOODSTOCK. The book is edited by Andy Bennett, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey. The book was published in the UK by Ashgate in 2004 and is available on Amazon.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Roots Pressroom
Fund-Raiser Concert
To raise money for Woodstock’s Zero-Carbon Initiative, Roots of Woodstock LLC held a "40th anniversary" concert on August 15, 2009, at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock.
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