Roots, Rock, Reggae & Americana
Originally conceived as a map, the huge “Music Made in Woodstock” mural at the bottom of the stairs features more than 80 musicians who have made music in this small American town. Some, like John Sebastian, Happy Traum and Jack DeJohnette, still live here, and many other artists have spent significant periods of time here: The Rolling Stones played Woodstock’s Joyous Lake club while prepping for a tour, Muddy Waters recorded an album at Bearsville Studios with Levon Helm, and Van Morrison created his sublime album Moondance while residing on Spencer Road. We could not fit everyone onto a map, so we created this mural instead.
Bob Dylan first came to Woodstock in 1963 and began to hang out at the Café Espresso in town. Now the Center for Photography at Woodstock, in the ‘60s it had gingham tablecloths and live folk music every night. Bob made friends with the owners, the Paturel family, and Bernard let him use “the White Room” for his workshop upstairs. Bob installed a small table and a manual typewriter and wrote some of his most famous early songs here, including “My Back Pages” and “It Ain’t Me Babe,” which would later appear on the album Another Side of Bob Dylan. Dylan’s Woodstock writing room has been recreated and installed in a showcase at the bottom of the stairs.
In 1966, Bob was in a motorcycle accident near the Grossmans’ house and disappeared from public view for more than a year. There were rumors he had died, been disfigured or was simply in hiding. But the truth was he was recovering, during which time he would visit with The Band at Big Pink in West Saugerties, just eight miles away.
During this period, Bob and The Band created and recorded more than 100 songs, some of which turned up on a highly coveted bootleg before being released officially seven years later on The Basement Tapes LP.
That album changed music forever and created what we now think of as Americana. As journalist David Kirby writes in his review of Sandra B. Tooze’s biography of Levon Helm, Levon, the music was:
“Homemade and handmade… The blues flowed into it, as did gospel, country… and Americana, a musical mélange that not only borrows from artists as different as Howlin’ Wolf and Hank Williams but harkens back to the old, weird America of Walt Whitman and Johnny Appleseed. Over time the fabric of Americana unravelled some—into the blues, country, rockabilly, rock ’n’ roll—but the threads weave back together whenever a group of young musicians steps back a century or so and plays a music that may be hard to classify but sounds both hauntingly familiar and strangely new. The Band embodied every aspect of that music.”
“That was what I wanted us to sound like and here was somebody else doing it. It shook me to the core.” — Eric Clapton, who envisioned the rootsy authenticity of the Basement Tapes for his work with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce and disbanded Cream after he heard the bootleg.
During this period, Bob and The Band created and recorded more than 100 songs, some of which turned up on a highly coveted bootleg before being released officially seven years later on The Basement Tapes LP.
That album changed music forever and created what we now think of as Americana. As journalist David Kirby writes in his review of Sandra B. Tooze’s biography of Levon Helm, Levon, the music was:
“Homemade and handmade… The blues flowed into it, as did gospel, country… and Americana, a musical mélange that not only borrows from artists as different as Howlin’ Wolf and Hank Williams but harkens back to the old, weird America of Walt Whitman and Johnny Appleseed. Over time the fabric of Americana unravelled some—into the blues, country, rockabilly, rock ’n’ roll—but the threads weave back together whenever a group of young musicians steps back a century or so and plays a music that may be hard to classify but sounds both hauntingly familiar and strangely new. The Band embodied every aspect of that music.”
“That was what I wanted us to sound like and here was somebody else doing it. It shook me to the core.” — Eric Clapton, who envisioned the rootsy authenticity of the Basement Tapes for his work with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce and disbanded Cream after he heard the bootleg.