Woodstock Spirit In Baraboo

Last September, while doing some research for the Woodstock unit of the rock music course, I discovered that the legendary Richie Havens was scheduled to play at the Al Ringling Theatre in Baraboo on January 26. So we set out to see the man most famous for his electrifying opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock concert. Richie said that many young people born way after Woodstock come to his concerts, but it was a mostly older crowd at the Ringling, including even some of those Buddha bellied baby boomer gents with ponytails. (the guys who swear they were at the original Woodstock.). Richie's an icon to these folks, and he certainly did not disappoint.

Baraboo, a charming small city of around 12,000 in population, does seem like a nice place for aging hippies. Though most known for its famed circus, the city council actually endorsed Natural Step development in 2005. The city website claims Baraboo also plays an important role in the history of journalism:

The circus wasn’t the only thing that put Baraboo on the map. Newspaper history was also made here. As the story goes: “When his partner quit to fight the Civil War, Editor Ansel H. Kellogg kept the Baraboo Republic in publication by ordering two pages of printed war news each week from a Madison newspaper & printing Baraboo news on the blank sides in his shop. Other newspapers joined in buying the ready prints & Kellogg developed his idea into the first syndicated newspaper. Today, every newspaper in the nation subscribes to articles from national & international news sources – they’re called boilerplates. Few small town newspapers could exist without this important source for reportable news & it all began here in Baraboo.”

I didn't catch the name of the baby boomer introducing Richie, but he made an Obama-ish statement to the effect that the country was ready for change. The networks had announced Barack's landslide primary victory in South Carolina shortly before the start of the 8 p.m. concert, so maybe there was some connection. Richie Havens actually performed at Bill Clinton's 1993 inaugural bash, though his spiritualism and sense of the sixties as a positive time of transformation seems pure Barack.

Richie opened the concert by telling a story about how folk singers learned songs in Greenwich Village in the early sixties. He said that after performing a song he attributed to a local folkie, a young man came up to him in tears and said that was the best performance of the song he had ever heard. The young man was Bob Dylan and the song was "All Along The Watchtower." That's the song Richie opened with in Baraboo.

Joined by an electric guitar player and violist for most of the evening, Richie played some old favorites but quite a few newer tunes that were well received. There was quite a bit of nostalgia for the boomers, including an engaging story about watching the Superman tv show as a kid and being amazed at how the intro mentioned truth, justice, AND the American way--as if the American way doesn't have anything to do with truth and justice. He closed with the Woodstock anthem "Freedom," in which he included some lines from the Who's "We Won't Get Fooled Again." For an encore he played Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" and closed with an a cappella version of Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful."

My only disappointment was that he did not play "Handsome Johnny," one of the greatest anti-war songs ever written. Oh well, we can still hear and see the Woodstock version on YouTube.

There's a positive energy about Richie Havens that represents the best of the Woodstock generation. He won't be back in Wisconsin during 2008, but you can find his concert schedule here.