Bethel scales back festival

One organizer pulls out, but more performers announced

After losing one of its producers, a planned festival at Bethel Woods in Sullivan County to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock festival appears to have been scaled back.

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on Tuesday announced what it called “A Season of Song & Celebration,” celebrating the golden anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair. That moniker apparently has replaced “Bethel Woods Music and Culture Festival,” which was announced in December as an event that would feature live music, TED-style talks and special

exhibits.

The festival anniversary period now is to include a director’s-cut screening of the documentary film “Woodstock” on Thursday, Aug. 15; a performance in the Bethel Woods main pavilion by Ringo Starr and his All Star Band, with Woodstock festival performers Arlo Guthrie and Edgar Winter, on Friday, Aug. 16; a pavilion performance by Carlos Santana, also a veteran of the

original festival, on Sunday, Aug. 17, along with the Doobie Brothers; and a to-be-announced event on Aug. 18.

Scott Cullather, chief executive of INVNT, the production company that pulled out, said in a press release that his firm “will not be involved ... and we wish Bethel Woods and Live Nation, as well as the organizers of the other 50th anniversary celebrations taking place around the world, the very best.”

Live Nation books musical acts for Bethel Woods and numerous other venues.

“We hope that past, present

and future fans are able to revel in the celebrations this year, and that the events empower them to advocate for positive social change just as the 1969 festival did,” Cullather’s press release stated.

A larger Woodstock 50th anniversary event, being put on by Ulster County resident Michael Lang, is planned for the weekend of Aug. 16 to 18 at the Watkins Glen International speedway in New York’s Finger Lakes region.

Lang, who staged the original festival as well as anniversary shows in 1994

and 1999, has not yet identified any of the Watkins Glen performers, though he told Rolling Stone magazine last month that he already had booked more than 40 acts that will perform across three stages. Lang said the Watkins Glen show, about a 200-mile drive from Kingston, will feature, in all, “more than 60 of the biggest names and emerging talent in rock, hip-hop, pop and country.”

Lang said he passed on having his show at Bethel Woods because the site is “much too small for what we’re envisioning.”

The generation-defining Woodstock Music & Art Fair was held from Aug. 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, where Bethel Woods now is located. That show featured such acts as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, The Who, The Band, Joe Cocker and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and it drew an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 people.

A 25th anniversary concert called Woodstock ‘94 was held on the Winston Farm in Saugerties and drew about 350,000 people — along with pouring rain reminiscent of the original festival. The last Woodstock anniversary concert was held in 1999 at a former Air Force base in Rome, N.Y. That show was marred by fires, rioting, looting and reports of sexual assaults.

Bethel Woods also is hosting the annual Mountain Jam festival this year, the first time the event will be at the Sullivan County site after 14 years at Hunter Mountain in Greene County.

The June 13-16 festival will feature such performers as Willie Nelson, Gov’t Mule, Michael Franti and the Allman-Betts Band.