Local band goes to 45th annual Woodstock festival
Personally invited to perform at the most iconic music festival the world has ever known, the area’s very own Yazgars Farm just completed its fifth performance at Woodstock – this year being the 45th annual celebration of all things music, peace, love and art.
“It is such a peaceful, happy place where everyone is having fun,” said Kirk Richards, lead singer of the groovy local group. “There’s never a problem; everyone is always smiling and having a good time – about 10,000 people all in the woods enjoying the music.”
Kirk said Woodstock isn’t Woodstock without a few fiascos – whether it’s the rain or some equipment malfunctions, “but that’s what makes it Woodstock, and that’s what makes it even more of an experience,” the frontman explained. “Every time we go up there it rains. This year, it was just a little rain – just enough to get the bottoms of your equipment muddy to show you were there. And I didn’t sweat one time. The weather was fabulously cool.”
Aside from playing Saturday morning, Kirk was asked a very special favor – to open the entire festival with a JimiHendrixstyle version of the “Star Spangled Banner.”
“I was absolutely honored and privileged,” he said. “It went just as I thought. A couple of girls held up an American flag behind me, and as soon as I hit that first note, I saw the hippies all rolling out of the woods, waking up and heading to the stage.”
Yazgars Farm certainly kept the music flowing while it was in the upstate New York region.
“After the opening show, our full band set went really well. We played some extra songs – played our normal set, then invited back to play another set at night that Saturday, as well as a couple of additional shows nearby. We basically had five gigs in three days,” Kirk eagerly stated.
So many things in this world change and reinvent themselves over the years – especially over a long period of time, but Woodstock is one of those experiences that stays the same every year – and in a good way.
“After 45 years, they still maintain that good, smiley feeling at Woodstock; they’re never crazy rowdy there. It’s one of the things that makes it really nice,” Kirk said. “The kind of music you hear and play there really has something to do with it – not one band at Woodstock riles up the crowd with hard, heavy music, or encouraging mosh pits. It’s a lot of classic rock, folk, reggae, ’60s-style music – happy music, music about positive things, about change, about love, about peace … So, therefore, the crowd was really cool. And a lot of people nowadays never experienced that. They don’t know what that’s about.”
Although the band always has such a wonderful and peaceful time when it performed up there, Kirk is even more eager about this year’s festival that he and Yazgars Farm are thinking they’ll make the journey to Yasgur’s Farm again next year.
“We are always so humbled to personally be invited back every year, and I really think we will be heading back up for the next festival,” he reprieved. “This is a part of our American cultural history. America invented rock and roll invented the outdoor concert scene. To be a part of that, to be a small slice of that, feels so good.”
Looking for your own slice of American cultural history? Be sure to check out Yazgars Farm locally throughout the month at a multitude of venues around town.
For a full list of shows, visit Yazgars-Farm.com or find the group on Facebook.