Steve Knight lived a lot of Woodstock. He spent most of his early life living in the Ulster County, NY town with his parents. Then family moved to New York City when he was 15 because his father got a teaching position in Columbia University.
Columbia and the Village
Knight attended Columbia University. And we can add his name to the long list of young people in the early 1960s who were attracted by New York’s burgeoning music scene. According to Wikipedia, “Knight recorded with or was a member of various bands including the Feenjon Group, the Peacemakers, Devil’s Anvil and Wings” (not Paul McCartney’s group).
Mountain
He played in several bands and along the way met producer Felix Pappalardi who was forming the band Mountain fronted by Leslie West.
With Mountain, Steve played keyboards. And from growing up in the town of Woodstock, Steve obliquely returned by playing with Mountain at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
Though successful, the band quit (for the first time) in 1972 and Knight left the band permanently. Though he never left music, it became secondary to his life.
Back to Woodstock
Knight moved back to Woodstock, NY where in 1999 he won election to the Town Board. Voters re-elected him in 2003. According to the Woodstock Times obituary, “His tenure was characterized by temperance and evenhanded attempts to reconcile the passionate rifts that characterize local politics.”
The article continued, “For a 2002 community play to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts community Steve wrote “Valley Finale,” which went on to become the Town’s official song. The words…explain why so many Woodstockers loved Steve as much as he loved them.”
Steve Knight died 19 January 2013 in New York of complications from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 77. [NYT obituary]
Steve Katz was born in Brooklyn on May 9, 1945. His music career began in the late 50s when he appeared on a local Schenectady, New York television program called Teenage Barn. Accompanied by piano, Steve sang hits of the day such as “Tammy” and “April Love.”
Rock Star Steve Katz
Greenwich Village
Like so many young musicians of the early 60s, Steve Katz gravitated to Greenwich Village. There he listened to and played with others such as Dave Van Ronk (“The Mayor of MacDougal Street“), Stefan Grossman, Maria D’Amato (to be Maria Muldaur), David Grisman, and John Sebastian. With a number of those and others, he would become part of the Even Dozen Jug Band [Wirz article] which released an album. A guitarist among many guitarists, Katz played washboard.
Rock Star Steve Katz
Danny Kalb Quartet
Next came the Danny Kalb Quartet. Still not confident enough as a guitar player, Steve Katz kept his amp turned down low for the audition and passed. Soon Al Kooper joined the band and it became Blues Project.
Rock Star Steve Katz
Blues Project
It was the music of Blues Project that I first heard Katz. I had never heard music like that or an album like Projections. It was so different than anything I’d heard, it sometimes confused me. Yes rock and roll. No, not rock and roll. It was also likely the first time I’d heard electric blues, albeit, white electric blues.
“Caress me baby…you can make love to me like the soft summer breeze.”
More than just hair-raising music. (“There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear” spoke to much more than just some Sunset Blvd event.)
All Music’s Richie Unterberger stated in his review that the band, “offered an electric brew of rock, blues, folk, pop, and even some jazz, classical, and psychedelia during their brief heyday in the mid-’60s.”
Rock Star Steve Katz
Blood, Sweat and Tears
The next thing I knew, Blue Project had become Blood, Sweat and Tears and Child is Father to the Man became another album that I couldn’t stop listening to and often wondering what the hell I was listening to.
Even without Al Kooper for BST’s second album, Katz was there and all was fine. Not so much blues, but all that jazzy brass opened up new doors for my ears.
Rock Star Steve Katz
Steve Katz
Rock Star Steve Katz
Quietude
And then things faded. Certainly Steve was still around, but I could’t seem to find his oasis.
His path occasionally crossed with Kooper’s, but Katz found himself as an engineer and producer. One of the most famous albums he produded was Lou Reed’s Rock N’ Roll Animal. A secret Katz recently revealed in his autobiography, Blood, Sweat, and My Rock ‘n’ Roll Years: Is Steve Katz a Rock Star?, was that the great audience sound on that album was not from the Reed show. Technical issues resulted in a poor quality sound for the audience, so Katz “borrowed” an audience sound from another RCA record artist: John Denver. Apparently Reed died never knowing.
You will see Steve Katz’s name all over rock and roll:
Lynyrd Skynyrd
McKendree Spring
Dion
Joni Mitchell
Elliot Murphy
Horselips
David Sanborn
Quincy Jones
Carol King
Stephen Bishop
Jon Anderson
Jaco Pastorius
Donovan
The Who
Danny Kalb
George Harrison
Rock Star Steve Katz
Still active
Steve Katz continues to play music and promote his wife Alison Palmer’s ceramic art. According to his site, “As time passed, Alison’s craft achieved popularity and recognition. Alison and Steve soon found that they had a thriving small business. Steve still performs [and]…is a professional photographer….”
Keep the Dream Flowing
Keep the Dream Flowing is a Woodstock-inspired podcast begun by three “young” (i.e., non-Boomers) Woodstock-enthusiasts. They have interviewed scores of people, all of whom have some kind of connection to the festival.
William Bill Kreutzmann was born on May 7, 1946 in Palo Alto, California. Despite early criticism, Bill loved playing the drums. Before he was legal, he, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan formed a band.
Of course that band evolved into the Grateful Dead. Later Mickey Hart joined the Dead and he and Bill (“the rhythm devils”) drove the Dead’s beat.
Dead Drummer Bill Kreutzmann
All for one, one for all
Though there were sometimes solos during a show, it was never about an individual. Jerry Garcia may have been the axle of the band’s wheel, the band was greater than the sum of its parts.
Robert Hunter knew of what he spoke when he said in “Truckin'” What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been. That, of course, is a shibboleth for the Grateful Dead and many of the bands that the 1960s produced.
Dead Drummer Bill Kreutzmann
Always there
Bill Kreutzmann was there for all the Dead’s shows. The good and the bad. The ethereal. The cosmic. The highs and the lows.
In 2015, he and Benjy Eisen wrote about it in Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead [NPR article].
The book begins with a story about Jerry Garcia and Bill going scuba diving in the late 80s. Touch of Grey, the Dead’s only big commercial hit. Like anything that brings public attention, Touch of Grey brought the good and the bad. Scuba diving in Hawaii seemed like a good place to get away from it all. No drugs. No attention. Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream.
Then a scuba instructor swam up to Garcia with a waterproof notepad and asked for his autograph.
Dead Drummer Bill Kreutzmann
Dead End
When Garcia died in 1995 [NYT obituary] the Grateful Dead did, too. Without Jerry, the axle gone, the band could light a spark, could start a fire, but never burn as brightly as those previous 30 years.
Of course Bill Kreutzman has continued to play music. It is, it was, and always will be what his life is about.
Dead Drummer Bill Kreutzmann
Lifer drummer
He had helped form bands (The Other Ones, The Dead, The Rhythm Devlis, 7 Walkers, and most recently, Billy & the Kids) and has sat in at concerts (with Journey, Warren Haynes, Phish, David Nelson Band among others).
In 2015, a Grateful Dead formed to perform a series of concerts commemorating its 50th anniversary. Bill Kreutzmann, of course, was there and wanted more.
Also in 2015, he with Benjy Eisen so published a book: Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Deals and Drugs With the Grateful Dead.
Glide magazine wrote: During the course of the first person narrative of Deal, founding member/drummer of the Grateful Dead Bill Kreutzmann shows he’s (almost) as skilled a storyteller as he is a drummer. Particularly in the early going of My Three Decades, his informal style lends itself well to the increasingly fast pace of his life as he discovers the pleasure of music, his passion for playing and his abiding devotion to the Dead as they coalesced in the mid-Sixties.
PBS NewsHour interview by Jeffrey Brown
But in 2023…
Though Dead & Company embarked on their final tour, it was withoutKreutzmann.
Dead & Company announced: “After many long discussions and some good old-fashioned soul searching, we are letting you know that our brother Bill Kreutzmann will not be joining us on our final summer tour. Bill wants you to know that he is in good spirits, good health and he is not retiring.”
The band added, “This is the culmination of a shift in creative direction as we keep these songs alive and breathing in ways that we each feel is best to continue to honor the legacy of the Grateful Dead. The final tour will go on as planned with Bill’s full endorsement and support.”
Dead & Company’s farewell tour began in May and included a benefit show at Cornell University’s Barton Hall, set for 46 years to the day since the Grateful Dead played a legendary set at the venue.
Dead Drummer Bill Kreutzmann
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
