Talking Woodstock: Oral history project collecting musical festival stories in Santa Fe

Apr. 8—Were you at Woodstock?

If so, you are probably in your 70s now. Maybe you had long hair back then. Today, short or long, it's likely gray. If you have any at all.

"I have talked to people who attended Woodstock when they were 5, but the average age of people who were there was 18," said Neal V. Hitch, senior curator at the Museum at Bethel Woods.

The museum is on the 1,000-acre campus of the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York, site of the legendary music festival.

An estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people were at Woodstock, August 15-18, 1969, to see and hear acts such as Arlo Guthrie, the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Country Joe & the Fish, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, Santana, Sly & the Family Stone and many more.

On Thursday and Friday, Hitch and an associate will be in Santa Fe to collect oral histories from people who were at Woodstock. The goal of the ongoing project, which started in 2020, is to get a better understanding of the counterculture of the 1960s by documenting personal experiences.

"Woodstock, held right at the end of the '60s, is the cultural touchstone of everything that happened in the '60s," Hitch said Monday in a phone interview from Albany, New York, where he was attending a meeting of the Museum Association of New York. "As of today, we have collected 832 oral histories."

He said the stories that stand out for him are those told by people who had life-changing episodes, people who experienced something over that weekend at Woodstock that changed the course of their lives.

"There was this guy, just out of high school, who sees all these bands on the stage," Hitch said. "Since he was a child, he was being trained as a classical pianist. But at Woodstock, he decided he wanted to be in rock 'n' roll. He ended up traveling with punk bands in New York. He was on RCA records."

Those who have a Woodstock story they want to share in Santa Fe should sign up by going to OralHistory@BethelWoodsCenter.org. If you can't get to Santa Fe on Thursday or Friday, you may participate in the program virtually by e-mailing that address.

Hitch said the in-person sessions usually last about an hour, including 30 minutes on camera.

"But we can arrange Zoom interviews," Hitch said. "About a third of the interviews we do are done remotely."

Exploring Woodstock Nation

The Museum at Bethel Woods was founded in 2008, just prior to the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the event's official name. The museum uses multimedia exhibits and a movie theater to explore the 1960s and the Woodstock festival.

"We are the stewards of the authentic memory of the Woodstock nation," Hitch said.

Hitch, 59, is both a musician and a historian. A native of Columbus, Ohio, he was on the road in the '80s with a faith-based band, playing acoustic guitar and singing. And he has a doctorate in history from Ohio State.

He said that originally the museum collected its oral histories onsite in Bethel.

"But we heard from people who could not get to our location," he said. "So, we took it on the road to do what we call pop-ups. We take this little studio and record people at their location."

After the stop in Santa Fe the museum will be doing April pop-up sessions in Oneonta, New York; San Diego; and Los Angeles. They will move on to several other places in New York state in June and July.

Bethel Woods is a not-for-profit organization supported by individuals, corporations and foundations. This year's oral-history tour is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Hitch said the museum collected 300 stories in 2023 and hopes to add that many in 2024. Its goal is 4,500 oral histories, about 1% of the number believed to have attended Woodstock.

"Woodstock is not one story; it is 450,000 stories and everyone of them is unique," he said. "This has been pretty exciting. People will say my story is not important, or I don't remember much. But once they start talking about it, they remember more than they think they do.

"And every story is important."