So You Missed Woodstock — But Are Any of Those Bands Still Performing?
At a time when their country was at war, the young people came from across the land and around the world with the intention to make music and to make peace and love. They ended up making history … all while frolicking in the nude and tripping their brains out, as legend — and an acclaimed documentary film — has it. (Remember announcer Chip Monck’s caution about the brown acid? Boy, those were the days …)
There’s been a lot written about the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that took place Aug. 15-18 at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in upstate New York. Culturally, the ripple effect has never gone away. Like a field of dandelions casting its seeds upon the four winds, Woodstock attendees went forth and took the magic with them, spreading it far and wide. Arguably, no one rode those currents harder than The Grateful Dead, whose summer of ’69 never seemed to end until leader Jerry Garcia’s passing in August 1995. And even now, surviving members still tour under the name Dead & Company, sustaining that vibe as best they can well into the 21st century.
But who else from that festival is still out there, still taking the stage and bringing that magic to people’s lives? Many of the festival’s biggest names are no longer with us. Some of the bands have had many lineup changes but still continue to tour and to delight audiences. And a few are still out there, making and releasing vital new music and touring. They’re in their twilight years, for sure, and they’re not going to tour forever. If you want to see them live and take your kids and grandkids to witness a slice of history, don’t wait — now’s the time.
Who from the original 1969 Woodstock is still performing?
Joan Baez
Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
While Baez performed her last concert from her “Fare Thee Well” tour at the Teatro Real in Madrid as part of the Universal Music Festival in 2019, she has been known to emerge once in a while for poetry readings and at the odd special event, including a four-song acoustic set at The Fillmore in San Francisco last year for the 8th Annual Acoustic-4-a-Cure event hosted by Sammy Hagar and and the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. This year she performed a pair of dates on the East Coast, and has an evening of poetry and conversation slated for Oct. 19 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. For ticket availability, check here. For future performance info, check Baez’s website.
Santana
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It’s definitely not the same lineup that made a powerful impression on Woodstock festival-goers in ’69 — though the classic lineup did reconvene to record Santana IV (2016) — but Carlos Santana hasn’t exactly been coasting on his early fame in the interim. The 10-time Grammy winner still grabs the limelight with his electrifying performances, and is currently on tour with the latest incarnation of Santana, bringing hits like “Smooth,” “Maria Maria” and “Black Magic Woman” to audiences everywhere. He’s probably coming to your town or near enough. Check here to find out.
John B. Sebastian
Everett Collection
At 80, the voice of the “Welcome Back” (yes, as in “Kotter”) singer and founder of The Lovin’ Spoonful may show some signs of age, but he still tours and entices audiences with his charismatic performances and warm sound that’s distinctly his own. Later this month, he heads to Texas for a string of dates in Austin and Tomball. But if you want a real Woodstock experience, go see him Oct. 5 in Bethel, N.Y., near to where he delivered that fateful impromptu performance. Seeing him perform “Nobody Cares Like a Bear” from The Care Bears Movie near the site of Woodstock would be a trip, indeed. For available tour date info, click here.
Watch John B. Sebastian tell the story of how he came to work with the Care Bears and the Sweathogs in this 2018 performance.
Arlo Guthrie
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Officially, the legendary Arlo Guthrie put his touring days behind him in 2020 due to a pair of strokes that, he announced, had started to adversely affect his performing — well, and that COVID business that shut everything down, anyway. But he returned to the stage in 2023 for a handful of shows that saw him go back to the absolute fundamentals of folk music in the tradition of Pete Seeger and his father, Woody Guthrie: Just a man, a guitar, the stories he had to tell, and the songs he had to sing. For the moment there are no future dates scheduled, but we’re hopeful that Arlo will emerge again to bring us back to “Alice’s Restaurant” at least a few more times. If any activity is going to happen in the future, his website should be the place to learn about it.
Canned Heat
Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
Founded by rabid blues enthusiasts Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson and Bob “The Bear” Hite in 1966, Canned Heat would provide the Woodstock generation with one of its most enduring anthems linked to the festival in “Goin’ Up the Country.” (The younger people reading this may know it from commercials for GEICO insurance, Pepsi and McDonald’s.) The band itself has been through an incredibly rough road, surviving the deaths of both founders and more, yet still continuing on now for nearly 60 years. Along the way, they’ve hit incredible heights, like recording their landmark Hooker ’n Heat album with John Lee Hooker at Carnegie Hall, and helping to put the spotlight on other great blues musicians, like Skip James, Memphis Slim and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. They’ve been on the road much of this year, but still have an upcoming date on Sept. 5 at this year’s Big Blues Bender in Las Vegas. Check for updated tour information here.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
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Oh, Creedence … Creedence … it’s such a long and sordid tale full of lawsuits, resentment and sadness — the Fogerty brothers Tom and John famously were still at odds at the time of Tom’s passing in 1990 — that it’s hard to know where to begin or end. What I can tell you is this: According to Rolling Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival is having a moment, as its greatest hits album, Chronicle, has been hovering in the charts for some 700+ weeks. I would argue that CCR is just a classic band with great songs that have endured incredibly well. So well that there are two different factions are out there performing them. If you’re all about the backbeat, original CCR bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford have their own touring unit, Creedence Clearwater Revisited. (They announced their intention to retire around the time COVID hit, but they’re still plugging away, if a bit more sporadically.) Of course, the songsmith himself, John Fogerty, continues to tour and perform his hits, giving you your best chance to see his corner of the American songbook, featuring unforgettable cuts like “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Green River,” “Fortunate Son” and more, played live. For John Fogerty tour dates, click here. Check back for Creedence Clearwater Revisited tickets here.
The Who
Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Who is a bit of a different breed from the rest of the bands on this list. Part of the initial British Invasion, the band’s raucous energy may have fit in well enough with the Zeitgeist of the era to perform at Woodstock, where they unleashed its ambitious masterpiece Tommy on the massive crowd. But I think most fans of the Who would agree that these boys from England were not hippies … far from it. Watch the extant footage of the alleged Abbie Hoffman incident, in which violence and the threat of violence meet with approving applause — an interesting moment at a festival ostensibly dedicated to peace and love. Today’s version of the Who, in the wake of the deaths of Keith Moon and John Entwistle, features Pete Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey with a solid crew of backing musicians, in particular Zak Starkey — Ringo Starr’s son — on drums. As of this writing, Daltrey had wrapped up his short Electric-Acoustic summer tour, and no future dates for the Who are looming … but seriously, the Who had its first “farewell tour” in 1982 — they can’t possibly be finished yet. Check back here for tour dates.
Jefferson Airplane
Warner Bros./MovieStillsDB.com
Another band that changed quite a bit through the years: Jefferson Airplane — and its various incarnations as both Jefferson Starship and simply Starship — is one of the few bands on this list that elicits feelings of nostalgia for separate eras. The Surrealistic Pillow lineup featuring Grace Slick gave the hits “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” and others to the Woodstock generation in the ’60s, but in the ’80s, they became a force to be reckoned with in the MTV generation as Jefferson Starship, with hard-rocking pop songs like “Find Your Way Back,” and later, after guitarist Paul Kantner’s departure, as Starship, with songs like “We Built This City” and and the Diane Warren/Albert Hammond-penned power ballad, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” Grace Slick retired from music in 1990, and Kantner sadly passed away in 2016, but the current iteration of Jefferson Starship is still out there, playing the hits from every iteration of the band’s career. Find out if they’re playing in your area here.
Ten Years After
Everett Collection
The original group ran its course by 1974, breaking up after the release of its Positive Vibrations LP, but reunited in 1983 to play the prestigious Reading Festival. The real magic struck in 1988, though, when they reunited for a few shows and ended up with them recording a new album, About Time. Although it was their only new album from this period, this would be the longest-running continuous era in the band’s history, as they continued to work together through 2003, when Joe Gooch replaced lead singer and guitarist Alvin Lee. (Lee would go on to record under his own name until his death in 2013.) Gooch stayed with the band until 2014, when he and original bassist Leo Lyons announced their departure. But the band soldiered on, and continues to perform to this day with a lineup that includes Chick Churchill on keyboards, Ric Lee on drums, Colin Hodgkinson on bass, and Marcus Bonfanti on guitar and vocals. Ten Years After is currently doing a string of dates in Europe, but is slated to perform in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, in late October. Check back here to see if additional dates develop soon.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Now here’s a post-Woodstock story you can really sink your teeth into. For a while, Blood, Sweat & Tears were on top of it all as one of the biggest bands in the land, with unforgettable songs like “You Made Me So Very Happy,” “And When I Die” and “Spinning Wheel,” all of which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in their day. But in 1970, at the height of anti-Vietnam War fervor, the band embarked on a tour of the then-Iron Curtain nations, sponsored by the U.S. State Department — a move that would sour many of their fans, all but killing the momentum they had been enjoying up to that time. A documentary film, What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? was released last year that articulates a much more nuanced story of political intrigue than even the most ardent fans would know. The band has endured more lineup changes than I could possibly list here, including many prestigious and accomplished musicians, such as “Blue” Lou Marini and monster jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, but still tours today. Visit the touring page of their site here to check for dates.
Neil Young
Everett Collection
Although to watch the documentary film of the Woodstock festival, it looks like Crosby, Stills & Nash appear by themselves, Neil Young was there, performing his second-ever show with the newly formed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — Young just refused to be filmed for the event, for reasons that have been talked about ever since. The relationship of Young to the rest of the group was never completely harmonious, especially with Stephen Stills, but Young has always gone his own way, opting to work solo or tour with his band, Crazy Horse. It may be an everlasting disappointment to passionate fans who would have liked to have seen a bit more from CSNY, but it’s paid off for Young, who remains one of the most vital and interesting artists to have trod the boards at Woodstock who’s still working today. Neil Young and Crazy Horse were on tour now but canceled due to a mysterious illness. However, Neil is slated to play Farm-Aid, keep an eye out here for tickets in your area. As for the rest of CSNY? David Crosby died in 2023, Graham Nash is still touring and Stephen Stills has been a little more on the quiet side.
Did we miss anyone? Let us know in the comments. Or who knows, maybe by the next anniversary you’ll be able to see Jimi Hendrix brought back in some form.
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