The Woodstock Festival- By: DaRockCritics
Total Success say thousands If you were one of the 10,000+ music loving hippies that attended the WOODSTOCK TRIBUTE at Galt Airport August 14-15,2009 you enjoyed the party of the year! For all of you who were unable to attend this festival, we will try to take you through our psychedelic musical journey. What a trip we went on by experiencing 9 bands over the course of 2 days. Many stayed the 2 nights by either RV or camping there were an estimated 50 RV’s and over 100 tents. Our musical adventure began on Friday as we went trucking into Galt grounds and were greeted by lots of people dressed in tie-dyed clothing and throwing us the peace sign. We immediately felt the energy and new this was going to be a great event.
We wandered through the camping area (yes, how cool?) You could reserve campsites and stay the whole weekend!) to meet and greet before the music started.
The concert began with AXIS staring Kelven Dyson as Jimi Hendrix paying tribute to one of the greatest guitar players ever. The crowd went nuts!
Next up was Lauren Bernal and just like Janis Joplin, she shared a bottle of whiskey with her band mates and jumped off stage to mingle and sing with the crowd.
OHIO slowed the pace down performing early CSNY with the look and harmony done in excellence. The last performers of the night took the stage by storm and go by the name of ABRAXAS, said to be the world’s finest Santana tribute band. Abraxas continued to jam late into the night closing with a 25 minute version of “Soul Sacrifice”. It was truly out-of-sight.
When the music finished, we went back to visit the campsites only to find out that the party was just beginning and continued until the sun came up. It was very interesting talking to 60 year olds describing how it was” back then” and to see 20 year olds listening intently (maybe Woodstock will go on forever).
Saturday started out strong with The Grateful Dead music performed wonderfully by BONEY FINGERS. Yes we saw many “deadheads” walking and jumping around.
Rich Perez and his CREEDENCE AGAIN band continued the pace
by doing everyone’s favorite CCR tunes getting the crowd rocking.
THE WHOLIGANS paid tribute to The Who by covering them both in sight and sound. Next the excellent harmony of MARRAKESH EXPRESS paid tribute to CSNY in a big way.
The last and final band to take the stage was ALAN KAYE with MAD DOGS &
AMERICANS who filled the stage with brass instruments, guitars, keyboards, drums and backup singers. They proceeded to blow the roof off the house. Emcee Paul Leech of Wassup fame managed to coax them out for 2 encores and with help from some of the other performing band members gave us a rousing rendition of “ALittle Help From My Friends”. Both Peace and Love were in the air all groovy weekend long to be enjoyed by over 10,000 of our musical friends who will never forget.
We want to extend an extra special thank you to Michael and Joeleen Stanard for conceiving the idea of hosting an event of this magnitude at Galt Airport. With lots of energy and help form event coordinator Laura Witlox and two years of planning, promoting and organizing, this event ranks in the top of our coast to coast concert journeys, as we never once had to wait in a long line for food, drinks, merchandise or clean portapottys.