Bob Dylan's BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home was written upstairs from Woodstock’s Café Espresso in a studio that Dylan dubbed “The White Room.” This building, at 59 Tinker Street, is now occupied by The Center for Photography. Dylan wrote the album at a feverish pace and appropriated bits of lore from the local scene to fill out his lyrics. For example, in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Dylan raps in the final lines, “The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.” This is said by locals to refer to the water pump at the Woodstock Library.

One of Dylan’s sideman on the project was Kenny Rankin, who performed at a Woodstock Sound-Out in 1967. ROOTS is in mourning for Kenny, who passed away on June 7, 2009. For more on this, click here.

Greg Stanton Organizing the Volunteers

The June 6th Spring Clean-Up Event in Woodstock, NY was a big success. Well over 100 volunteers turned out, and the bicycle teams picked up numerous bags of trash from roadside collectors distributed all over town. This was another event in support of Woodstock’s Zero-Carbon Initiative. Thank you, Greg Stanton, and all those who participated, including corporate sponsors!

Contact: David Salidor

Phone: 212-245-5909

Email: DSalidorCompany@aol.com

Roots of Woodstock Live Concert 

40th Anniversary Concert Brings Festival Home to Woodstock 

Woodstock, NY—May 19, 2009—Weston Blelock, author and editor of WoodstockArts’ forthcoming Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to “Woodstock,“ has confirmed a rumored 40^th anniversary concert to be held on August 15 at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock. Blelock will co-produce the show with his sister, Julia, in association with Steve Walter, formerly of The Cutting Room in New York City.

Walter, whose Cutting Room club hosted a series of top-notch music acts like Sheryl Crow, Stills and Nash, Paolo Nutini and Keane, notes, “I am booking bands that will evoke the original festival energy and bring it back home to Woodstock.” Blelock adds, “The town has long been at the epicenter of music festivals-from those on the Maverick beginning in the 1900s, to the Sound-Outs in the 1960s, and the mega-concert of 1969. Simply due to space constraints, some of these failed to happen in the town of Woodstock itself.”

Part of the proceeds of the concert will fund the town’s Zero-Carbon Initiative, passed in 2007. The concert team is also in discussion with a media partner to film and record the event. According to Walter, “We want to mix sixties acts with the up-and-coming to connect with the Woodstock legacy, but also to embrace the cutting-edge vibe of tomorrow.”

Concert developments can be tracked at www.RootsOfWoodstock.com.

About the Blelocks:

Weston and Julia Blelock have had a presence in the Woodstock area since 1956. During the sixties Weston was at school in the UK, but summered in Woodstock. He attended several Sound-Outs and the ’69 festival in Bethel. During the 1990s he was a radio journalist in Canada. More recently he co-founded WoodstockArts, a publishing and production company. He is currently Vice President of the Historical Society of Woodstock.

Julia Blelock also grew up in Woodstock. She left town to pursue a marketing career in information technology, based in New York City and Los Angeles. She recently returned to Woodstock and has become an ardent promoter of area artists through her work for the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce & Arts and the Woodstock Arts Consortium. She is a co-founder of WoodstockArts.

About Steve Walter:

Managing partner and booker for The Cutting Room from 1999 to 2009, Walter is a graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He began his career as a lighting director at the Sunshine Inn on the Jersey shore, for acts like Procol Harum, Johnny Winter, Seals & Croft and Richie Havens. In 1999 he launched The Cutting Room, and within ten years it became one of New York’s top showcases for talent as diverse as Sting, Donovan, Melanie, Alanis Morrisette and Mary Wilson of The Supremes.

About WoodstockArts:

WoodstockArts is a publishing and production company based in Woodstock, NY. As a publisher it specializes in quality regional art books. A recent title, Woodstock History and Hearsay, is an award-winning art history of the town. As producers the company’s principals have worked on a number of local projects. One such was staging a guitar sculpture auction in conjunction with Sotheby’s/eBay in 2002 for the town’s Byrdcliffe Art Colony centennial celebration. Last August WoodstockArts produced the Roots of ’69 Woodstock Festival panel discussion and Contemporary Sound-Out. The firm is planning a July release of Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to “Woodstock.”