Small Town Talk

When musicians in the New York City folk scene of the 1960s tired of city life, they decided to “get it together in the country.” They headed for Woodstock – not to the site of the legendary music festival of 1969, but to Woodstock itself and to nearby Bearsville, where manager Albert Grossman established his personal fiefdom of studios and restaurants. Here, counterculture revolutionaries like Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren – along with such illustrious visitors as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix – got back to the land, turning the once-sleepy hollow into a funky Shangri-La.

Small Town Talk tells the town’s musical story from its earliest days as a bohemian arts colony to its ongoing life as a cultural satellite of New York. A bucolic artists’ enclave, Woodstock has earned its place in rock music history. Small Town Talk is a classic study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and a magical place.