May 9th Monticello, NY. “Thunder Bash” for Thunder 102.9 and trip to Woodstock!

Hi everyone, we’re just getting back and recovering from a really cool trip up to Monticello, NY. All I can say is that there was a lot of peace and love flowing up there and we felt every minute of it! Everyone at Thunder 102.9 was so sweet to us and made us feel so welcome.
We flew into Albany Friday eve and were picked up by a sweet man named “Lou.” He’s a police officer and he got us everywhere we needed to be rather quickly like a police officer would. : ) It took a couple of hours to get to our final destination for the evening, the “Villa Roma” hotel, but we were happy to be trekking! The Villa Roma was a very nice and comfy place and they really treated us well. I made an extra point to take a hot bath in the huge bathtub before turning in for the night.
The next day (Saturday May 9th) was our show day. The Thunder Bash was being held at the “Monticello Raceway.” Earlier in the day, we got to go hang out at Thunder 102.9 and do a really fun interview with Sakell, Ciliberto, and the Lord Of The Trout. The “Big Cheese” for their show “Kings Of The Kitchen” joined us as well and Debbie, being the wife of a chef, made a special point to talk with him about cheese making. We had a lot of fun on air with them and afterwards we took pictures with them and the staff. Thanks for the “Silpada” jewelry!
Afterwards, we got to go take a very special tour of a place that really rocked, literally! We got to go check out the location where Woodstock was held in Bethel, NY.
We were greeted by a cool guy named was “Duke.” He had literally attended Woodstock and never left! We got to go see and stand in the actual area where the stage had been! It was wild standing right where Jimi Hendrix had done his famous “Star Spangled Banner.” We saw the ponds and creeks where people had bathed in while at the festival, and we walked the entire field. It was absolutely beautiful!
Woodstock went down as one of the greatest music festivals of all time, with musical guests including Grateful Dead, The Who, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Jefferson Airplane. It was a 3 day music and arts festival held in Bethel, New York on August 15th, 16th and 17, 1969.
The festival was planned to have about 50,000 in attendance, but over 400,000 people actually showed up! Because so many showed up, most ended up not paying the admission fee to get in. The facilities were crowded, but there was no reported violence. The Woodstock festival is often most remembered as representing the height of the “Hippie era” and the counterculture of the 1960’s. Some who showed up for the festival were known for protesting the Vietnam War and supporting Civil Rights.
We were told stories about workers and people of the festival going to the nearby farmers and buying rows upon rows of fresh corn, lettuce and other veggies in order to feed the thousands of people there. They said that they actually mixed the veggies in trash cans! Roads were totally blocked, some for 20 miles and they had to fly the performers in on helicopters. They had to call in Army choppers as well to drop supplies and assist in medical needs. The festival was supposed to end on Sunday, but ended up running over into Monday mid morning. Jimi Hendrix famous performance was on Monday morning! Some of the performers would not get on stage until paid in cash, so that left the promoters and heads of the festival knocking down the doors of local banks on weekends to get the funds needed to keep the show rolling.
After walking the field where the festival had been held, we made our way up to the Bethel Woods Center For The Arts Museum. We had a really nice lunch and “Wade” took us on a tour of the museum, where we got to watch various films, check out the displays of some of the cool and colorful fashions worn by both attendees of the festival and the artists, vibrant artwork, even down to the notes that people of the festival would post on the bulletin boards to either meet their friends, or look for someone! We were stoked to see that they had the actual Gibson SG that Pete Townsend had smashed on stage! The museum captured the essence of Woodstock and we all could’ve spent the entire day there reading every single thing.
The museum gave us some cool tee shirts and we made a point to hit the gift store on our way out to pick up some more goodies.

Afterwards, we were off to our show at the race way . We had two opening acts prior to us, one group called “Somerville,” and another group called “Iron Cowboy.” It was nice hanging out with Iron Cowboy. They had been at the radio station earlier and with us during the interview. After a cool meet and greet, we went on. It was a great crowd and we really had a good time. They had fireworks afterwards and we signed afterwards and got to meet a lot of really cool people. Thank you so much for having us! Thank you Paul for making it all happen and thank you Thunder 102.9 for all of the coolness! Peace and Love!