Woodstock, New York, is best known for the music festival that bore its name in August 1969, it was a cultural, social, and political game changer if there ever was one. For many, the highlight was Michael Shrieve’s profound and precocious drum solo on Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice”— a performance that resonates to this day. I was about to begin my sophomore year of high school, so I was too young to attend “Woodstock” (which actually took place in Bethel, New York.) Had I gone, I might have been overwhelmed by the rain and mud that attendees and musicians alike had to endure. Those conditions inspired me to quip in later years that the introduction of plastic drumheads probably hastened the end of the Vietnam War: the sound and fury of America’s youth could no longer be dampened by humidity. But I digress. Woodstock has been home to some of my […]

November 2026 Issue