The Black Swan

I loved to play, and we had a gig that Woodstock festival weekend. It was at the “Black Swan” in Kingston, New York. The Black Swan was a black club (or to be more politically correct an African-American club) and I was looking forward to ‘getting down’ there. We had never played a ‘black’ club. And here I would be validated and verified… ‘as a black man in a white man’s body.’

We did cool versions of Otis Redding’s “Too Hard to Handle” (many years before the Black Crows), James Brown’s “I Feel Allright,” and the Isley Brother’s “It’s Your Thing.” I couldn’t wait to test the waters!

I don’t know….looking back….17 yo white boys doing this music in ‘69?…I think was pretty daring, but we simply loved the music.

The Black Swan turned out to be pretty dark and dismal, we did two nights and I think the biggest crowd we had were two old black guys with their wives in front of some smoky snacks at the end of the bar.

Sunday morning our ears were turned tightly to the radio; what was happening at The Festival!? We had to know, a lot of our friends had gone, we began to hear some gloomy signs, at the very moment the radio and newspapers were calling it a disaster, like; people were awash in mud and chaos…several were killed while sleeping under heavy equipment. The Thruway was CLOSED… It was rain, rain, and rain. Glad we didn’t go.

But as the months rolled on, it became clearer that Woodstock the Festival had made its mark on history.

All I knew was that the bandanna guitar man…whom I thought was a verifiable jerk…was now famous.

I kind of resented that for a while. I admire him much more these days.

It was closing towards the end of the summer and we moved back to Ellenville…the little brown house in Wittenberg and Corrina The Oppressive Toad Witch (that’s what I called her) was slowly sucking the life out of us and especially me. Being back in Ellenville felt good, The Sugar Blues would get back on track.

Now that Woodstock the Festival was making it’s mark on history, the Saugerties Sound Festival was gearing up for a second go. But with more sophistication and better bands with radio advertisements. We hadn’t been scheduled to play and wished we had been when one evening we heard our name listed as one of the acts. This was very cool and a complete surprise. But the coolest thing about it was that “Zacherly, The Cool Ghoul” from late night New York City TV (Shock Theatre?) was the announcer, on a NYC radio station (WNEW). Wow! Man, now I knew we were gonna make it!! “Zacherley” was one of my favorites and was famous to boot…. he uttered our names on WNEW!…. “The Sugar Blues Band!” We were excited and went to bed planning our show. The next morning a strange thing happened, Toby told us that he was quitting the band. “What!, your quitting the band, What! Now!? What’s gottin’ into you…Toby? WHY!?” We were dumbfounded, Toby had no explanation except for the mutterings that Big Brother and the Holding Company ‘might’ want him to be their drummer and that he had been jaming with the Paul Butterfield Band. There was no talking to him, simply no sense at all. I was stunned and crushed, simply crushed.

The band fell apart as if it were built on a house of cards (it was...LSD pinochle), strangely, astonishingly within minutes. I shut down and within a day or two I hitched a ride in a tractor trailer back to NYC with Corinna (oddly enough) and Danny Stedman. I was shell-shocked. One of countless deep disappointments that would set a pattern of hope and dispair and denial for years to come.