Woodstock got all the press. It was credited with inspiring everything from the Age of Aquarius to cannibalism. Iconic, perhaps. Soggy, definitely. I’m not sure anyone enjoyed being there nearly as much as they later enjoyed telling people they were there. Still, Woodstock is probably responsible for the wealth of local and regional music festivals we have today. Locally, that’s Live Oak.
My own first festival was pre-Woodstock. (Yes, I’m that old. And yes, it was shortly after the invention of music.) My friend Tim and I arrived at the Newport Folk Festival just in time for a small afternoon workshop where Woody Guthrie’s 19-year-old son introduced something called “Alice’s Restaurant.” Clever, I thought, but if his showcase was a 30-minute, spoken-word song, he better learn a trade.
The evening lineup was sold out. But Tim had hustled up tickets from a scalper. Unfortunately, they weren’t actually tickets for the folk festival. Fortunately, we didn’t notice. And with the sublime confidence of the blissfully ignorant, we presented them at the gate and marched right in. We saw Dave Dudley, The Chambers Brothers, Maybelle and Sarah Carter, Bill Monroe, Joan Baez, and Muddy Waters. Two years after Dylan electrified the place, the smell of pot was in the air, and the festival was evolving from standard folk music — whatever that was — into something more. A year later, we watched Janis Joplin seal the deal.
Nowadays, at the smaller, local festivals, the biggest name performers are usually on the downside of their fame. Arlo Guthrie, for example. Contrary to my brilliant assessment, Alice’s Restaurant had been a career maker. (If later, maybe a millstone.) But the real attraction is the quality of the unknowns and the not-yet-widely knowns. Most of the performers I listen to most, I first heard at Live Oak.
And Live Oak was where, in 2004, I heard The Persuasions, an elderly five-man a cappella group. To me, a cappella might as well have been Italian for “why bother?” Does removing the cream from ice cream improve the result? But that afternoon The Persuasions gave the single greatest performance I’ve ever experienced. People were looking at each other in astonishment. No one could believe how good they were. I wasn’t sure The Persuasions could believe it themselves. It was like they’d suddenly broken through to some undiscovered musical dimension. That performance remains one of the highpoints of my life. Without drugs and with my pants on.
The Live Oak slogan “Peace, Love, Dirt” is a nod to the ’60s. (And, perhaps, to the cramped showers a contortionist couldn’t undress in.) Every year we’d see many of the same faces — a year older. Recently though, we’ve been seeing fewer and fewer of them. Then, last year, the opening night headliner was a funk band so loud and muddy you couldn’t make out what they were playing. From a hundred yards away, I could physically feel the bass and drums assaulting my body. The twenty-somethings seemed to love it. The few familiar faces were picking up their chairs and escaping. Eventually, we joined them. Was this how the folkies at Newport felt when Dylan brought out his electric guitar? Was something dying here?
But Saturday, things were normal again, topped by the extraordinary California Honeydrops. A concerning name, but not — thank God — a Johnny Mathis cover band. They delivered an innovative blend of blues, R&B, jazz, funk and more. Then Sunday morning it was Murphy Wylde — Liam Murphy and Ross Wylde — charismatic, funny. Intricate guitars, strong lyrics, stronger music, even stronger harmonies, and once more we were wondering, “How can they be this good?”
Liam was actually a product of Live Oak, first attending when he was nine months old. And he and Wylde were like an embodiment of the best of the festival. Authentic. Original. Rooted in what came before, but in no way an imitation. Murphy Wylde hadn’t found whatever it was The Persuasions discovered that unforgettable afternoon. But they might be headed there.
And this year, who knows?
Check out Barry Maher’s dark humor supernatural thriller The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon at amzn.to/4lPqn8V. Sign up for his newsletter at http://www.barrymaher.com. © copyright 2026 Creators Syndicate
