The Upstate Theater Coalition announced their proposal for a protection plan for aid from New York State on January 25, 2022. The protection plan would help performing arts centers who have been affected dramatically by COVID-19 to guarantee they can “keep the lights on.”
The State Theatre – photo by Casey Martin from NYS Music’s “This Darkness Has Got To Give” series
The Upstate Theater Coalition consists of ten different performing arts centers across New York from Buffalo to Poughkeepsie. The Coalition generates a remarkable annual economic impact of over $200 million per year serving millions of annual patrons and students. After being shut down for nearly 18 months, these theaters, like their peers in New York City, have had a challenging restart due to continuing COVID -19 concerns and audience hesitancy. New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s Executive Budget proposal included $350 million for a pandemic relief fund for “businesses and theater/musical arts”. The Upstate Theater Coalition is asking for a maximum appropriation of $25 million from the proposed pandemic relief fund to “keep the lights on.”
The Stanley Theatre photo provided by The Stanley Theatre from NYS Music’s “This Darkness Has Got To Give” series
The Shea’s Performing Arts Center by Zachary Todtenhagen from NYS Music’s “This Darkness Has Got To Give” series
Philip Morris who is the Coalition’s spokesperson, spoke on the proposal saying, “The Upstate Theater Coalition is grateful to Governor Hochul for her leadership and commitment to upstate theaters through her proposal to create a $350 million pandemic relief fund that would in part provide necessary financial assistance to cultural arts institutions. We are asking the Governor and the Legislature to set aside only 7 percent or $25 million of this fund in the adopted state budget for upstate theaters in the coalition. This commitment would ensure that these upstate performing arts centers will at least not suffer financial losses or be forced to layoff staff as New York moves past the COVID pandemic.”
The Palace Theatre by Zach Culver from NYS Music’s “This Darkness Has Got To Give” series
This proposal would make it so that the state could guarantee up to 80 percent of the theater’s budgeted revenue from ticket sales and concessions for the 2022 theater season, with total assistance not to exceed $25 million. Any theater that exceeds 80 percent of their potential 2022 revenue would not receive assistance, and the state would provide aid up to 80 percent of potential revenue for any theater that falls short. This plan will enable upstate theaters to continue to confidently program their stages and bring people back into Upstate’s downtowns, supporting each community’s restaurants, services, shops and lodging establishments as they recover.
The Bardavon by Mickey Deneher from NYS Music’s “This Darkness Has Got To Give” series
The Upstate Theater Coalition’s proposal protection plan could be exactly what these upstate New York venues need to guarantee they can “keep the lights on.”
Daryl Hall Announced his first-ever solo retrospective album titled BeforeAfter which will be released on April 1, 2022. The album is being released by Legacy Recordings which is a division of Sony Music Entertainment.
Daryl Hall is originally from Pottstown, PA but has become a staple name of NY with his award-winning web series-turned-TV, Live from Daryl’s House, as well as a successful venue owner with “Daryl’s House,” a restored live music space in Pawling, NY. He is an American rock, R&B and soul singer and musician, best known as the co-founder and principal lead vocalist of Hall & Oates. He is also a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with some of his most well known songs being “You Make My Dream,” “Dreamtime,” and “Stop Loving Me, Stop Loving You.”
https://youtu.be/Re805lUUfvU
The two disc solo retrospective album will feature 30 tracks. The album is compiled and sequenced by Hall and features tracks spanning all five of his solo albums. Additionally, the collection features six never-released performances from the pathbreaking web and television series Live From Daryl’s House, which Hall launched in 2007 with the then-novel idea of “playing with my friends and putting it up on the internet.” Special guests on the Live From Daryl’s House tracks include Rundgren, Dave Stewart, and Monte Montgomery. Taken as a whole, BeforeAfter draws unexpected and satisfying connections between the esoteric and accessible sides of Daryl Hall’s creativity.
On April 1, 2022, Hall will also embark on his first solo tour in a decade, performing on historic stages like NYC’s Carnegie Hall and Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, with special guest and fellow Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Todd Rundgren supporting. Pre-save or pre order Daryl Hall’s album BeforeAfterhere.
Daryl Hall BeforeAfter tour dates
April 1 – Auditorium Theatre – Chicago, IL ^
April 3 – Ryman Auditorium – Nashville, TN ^
April 5 – Atlanta Symphony Hall – Atlanta, GA ^
April 7 – MGM Northfield Park – Northfield, OH ^
April 9 – The Met Philadelphia – Philadelphia, PA ^
April 11 – Orpheum Theatre – Boston, MA ^
April 14 – Carnegie Hall – New York, NY ^
April 16 – The Theatre at MGM National Harbor – National Harbor, MD ^
May 12 – Paramount Theatre – Seattle, WA ^
May 14 – Golden Gate Theatre – San Francisco, CA ^
May 16 – The Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA ^
May 18 – Paramount Theatre – Denver, CO ^
May 20 – Tulsa Theater – Tulsa, OK ^
May 22 – ACL Live at the Moody Theater – Austin, TX ^
Daryl Hall West Coast Tour Dates
May 12 – Paramount Theatre – Seattle, WA ^
May 14 – Golden Gate Theatre – San Francisco, CA ^
May 16 – The Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA ^
May 18 – Paramount Theatre – Denver, CO ^
May 20 – Tulsa Theater – Tulsa, OK ^
May 22 – ACL Live at the Moody Theater – Austin, TX ^
Folk-rock veterans Midlake are back with their new single ‘Bethel Woods’ from their upcoming album For The Sake of Bethel Woods. The official music video stars actor Michael Pena and is directed by filmmaker Brantley Gutierrez, who has also worked with the likes of Paul McCartney and Diplo.
Inspiration for “Bethel Woods” came after the discovery of a documentary still of Midlake keyboardist Jesse Chandler’s father, Dave, at Woodstock 1969. Combining this photo with the idea of an eternal paradise, the song was written from Dave’s point of view with a hopeful message that we might all one day return to our special places to be with the ones we love.
Director Gutierrez plays with these ideas in the music video by incorporating a ghost story concept, allowing for Michael Pena to showcase the emotions people experience when running through old memories.
Midlake will also be embarking on an extensive world tour, including NA, UK and European tour dates. Tickets and more information are available here.
Midlake 2022 Tour Dates
5/8 – Nashville, TN – 3rd & Lindsley
5/10 – Washington, DC – Union Stage
5/11 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live (Downstairs)
The Warp/The Weft is a progressive folk/metamorphic rock band based in Hudson Valley, Poughkeepsie. They have been active since 2012 and have used poetry to influence their psychedelia-style music. Their third LP, Dead Reckoning, was released in August 2019 and a new album is forthcoming.
A Sun-Filled Room, The Warp/The Weft
Recently, they have presented a musicalization of “It May Not Always Be So,” an e. e. cummings sonnet that explores an intense love and, with it, the need to nurture the other’s future happiness. This song was recorded at the Artfarm (Accord, NY) in December of 2021 by Sean Boyd, this is the band’s first recording and release since pre-pandemic times.
It May Not Always Be So, The Warp/The Weft
The Warp/The Weft does an amazing job at captivating its audience’s emotions by evoking intense feelings of love, painful loss and imaginative awareness through e.e cummings,’ “It May Not Always Be So.” Shane Murphy and Trevor Larcheveque do incredible vocals to further express the deep feelings within the song’s poetical meaning. Christian Lark (Drums) and Chris Pellnat (Lead Guitar) help further captivate how powerful the melody of a song could be while using rhythmic beat and heart-felt guitar chords. The lyrics can be interpreted as an experience of a kind of love/relationship that it is possible to let go because you love someone so much you just want them to be happy, with or without you.
“It’s a fun challenge to add music to poetry without destroying the music of poetry.”
The Warp/The Weft
It May Not Always Be So; And I Say, by e.e cummings
it may not always be so; and i say that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch another’s, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away; if on another’s face your sweet hair lay in such a silence as i know, or such great writhing words as, uttering overmuch, stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be, i say if this should be — you of my heart, send me a little word; that i may go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
Michael Lang, Woodstock Music and Arts Festival co-founder, and promoter of the 1994 and 1999 editions, has died at age 77, at Sloan Kettering in New York City. The cause of death was a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta.
Michael Lang at Woodstock 1969. Photo by Henry Diltz
Michael Lang was raised in Brooklyn and attended college at New York University and University of Tampa before eventually moved to Coconut Grove, Florida where he opened a head shop, which was, as Lang noted in his autobiography, “the hub of the Miami underground.” Lang would shift into concert promotion in the late 1960s, producing the Miami Pop Festival in 1968, which featured a lineup that included Chuck Berry, The Mothers of Invention, and Jimi Hendrix, among others.
Speaking of Miami Pop Festival, Lang told Ellen Sanders’ for the 1973 book Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties, “The climate is perfect, people are into a stimulating variety of artistic things and there was no place for them to get together.” The seeds of next year’s Woodstock Festival in Bethel, NY can be found in Lang’s mindset.
Miami Pop Festival 1968 Poster
Lang partnered up with Artie Kornfeld, a Bensonhurst, Queens native, who was then East Coast Director of Contemporary Entertainment at Capitol Records. The two hit if off after their initial meeting, one that was set up by Lang playing to Kornfeld’s roots, saying he was ‘from the neighborhood’. Lang would move in with Kornfeld and his wife Linda in New York City, and their all-night conversations would be the genesis of the Woodstock Festival, both the event and the cultural impact still felt today.
Lang and Kornfeld would connect with business partners Joel Rosenman and John Roberts while working with the band Train, and ultimately form Woodstock Ventures Incorporated in March 1969, named for the town Bob Dylan was living in at the time. Lang wrote in The Road to Woodstock “I thought it was time to head to back to New York. Ninety miles north of the city, Woodstock had become a magnet for musicians. I remembered its small-town, artsy vibe from when we used to visit there in the fifties. The town had a history of attracting artists and bohemians. My girlfriend Sonya and I decided to check it out for ourselves.”
Roberts and Rosenman brought the money and financial experience, while Lang and Kornfeld brought their own knowledge of rock music culture and production skills to pull off the event. Lang and Kornfeld had proposed building a recording studio in Woodstock, as a means to encourage local residents Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and The Band to record at, but the idea was scrapped in favor of an outdoor music festival.
Meeting in February 1969, Lang recalled an early interactions with Roberts and Rosenman:
We met with them in their apartment on 83rd Street in a high-rise. They were kind of preppy. Today, I guess they’d be yuppies. They were wearing suits. Artie did most of the talking, because I think they seemed puzzled by me. They were curious about the counterculture, and they were somewhat interested in the project. They wanted a written proposal, which we had but we didn’t bring with us. We told them that we would meet again with a budget for the festival.
Michael Lang
By the second time they met, a budget of $500,000 was discussed, with a potential attendance of 100,000. Ultimately, Woodstock would have a pricetag of more than $2.4 million (nearly $18 million in 2022 dollars), and would be billed as “Three Days of Peace and Music.” But the location for the festival would prove to be a challenge for Lang and company.
When he was younger, Lang spent summers attending camps in Sullivan County, home to Bethel, where he would later produce Woodstock and cement his name in music history. Initially looking into the town of Woodstock, the partners would settle on Wallkill in Orange County, While at first, the town and location were hospitable to the event, soon the residents turned on Woodstock Ventures, essentially pulling the plug for the festival on July 2, 1969.
The news caught the attention of a young Elliot Tiber, who was working at his family’s El Monaco Hotel in White Lake, and he alerted Lang to the location, just outside of Bethel. Lang later told the New York Times, “Elliot was part of the magic of Woodstock. Without his phone call bringing me to Bethel, Woodstock might never have happened, and for that I am eternally grateful.”
While the El Monaco Hotel would not be able to host the event as Tiber envisioned (it did serve as Woodstock Ventures headquarters over the next month), he did offer a suggestion to check out his friend Max Yasgur’s farm, located on Happy Ave in Bethel. Upon meeting Yasgur and securing the property, as well as agreeing to return the farm to its original condition post-festival, Lang made the move with a month to go before Woodstock was set to kick off. Lang was later portrayed by Jonathan Groff in Ang Lee’s 2009 film Taking Woodstock, based on Tiber’s memoir.
Yasgur’s Farm – during Woodstock Music Festival 1969, and today
The Upstate New York festival would draw more than 400,000 people to Yasgur’s farm, becoming a signature moment for the counterculture movement, at the end of one of the most tumultuous decades in American history. Musicians including The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young all performed, among many other music legends.
Lang would later have a hand in the 25th anniversary Woodstock Festival, held in 1994 at Winston Farm in Saugerties, which would bring the Woodstock spirit and history to a new generation, catering to Generation X with artists including Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Blues Traveler, Sheryl Crow, The Roots, Salt-n-Pepa, as well as bringing back artists from the original Woodstock, among them Country Joe McDonald, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker and Santana.
photo by Steve Malinski
The ill-fated Woodstock 99 festival also saw Lang at the helm, this edition being held in Rome, NY on Griffiss Air Force and featuring a lineup that melded genres in a way that was both similar and dissimilar to previous Woodstock festivals. While the lineup provided a little something for everyone, subsequent price gouging, lack of basic infrastructure (water, bathrooms and shade among them) and intense heat culminated in an angst-filled riot that saw fires set as the Red Hot Chili Peppers closed out the festival. Lang would tell Syracuse.com in a 2019 interview:
In the end, it was partially my fault, partially the fault of the fans of Insane Clown Posse who were running amok all weekend. But at the end of the show, the Chili Peppers were on stage closing the festival. They had been given permission to hand out candles, and that was a mistake. [People] started to set things on fire, and it started to grow. It was a very different show, and a very different time musically. But overall, people had an amazing weekend.
Michael Lang on Woodstock 99
Lang made efforts to throw Woodstock 50 in 2019, but could not pull the event off due to local opposition as well as limited ticket sales, despite star-studded lineups and locations that included Watkins Glen International and Vernon Downs in Vernon, NY. The year-long effort to pull off a 50th anniversary event on par with the original was not in the cards, although there was a celebration at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts over the weekend of August 15-16, 2019.
When something pushes back as hard as this did, you have to get the sense that maybe there is a reason behind it.
Life is full of experiences, and not everything works out. But you keep trying or nothing works out… That’s always been my attitude.
Lang, speaking to Pollstar, reflecting on Woodstock 50
Michael Lang at the Long Island Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony 11/7/2018
I think if Mr. Ali were here with us today, he might rhyme that only together and with love, can we change this world for the better. But we have to earn it, we have to show up and fight for the issues we believe in, the way Ali would.
The fight against global warming as we near that point of no return… Sensible gun control, Immigration reform, Whatever your opinions, I know Muhammad Ali would tell you to make your voices heard and encourage everyone to get out and vote this year AND in 2020.
Michael Lang
Michael Lang is survived by his wife Tamara, their sons Harry and Laszlo, and daughters LariAnn, Shala and Molly.
