Terry Clements in center playing sax with Janis in Germany
Terry Clements has a relatively small internet footprint. There is another Terry Clements, a guitarist who played with Gordon Lightfoot for four decades.
This Terry Clements played saxophone with Janis Joplin’s briefly formed Kozmic Blues Band at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and that’s why I’ve put together this small piece as I’ve tried to do for all the Woodstock performers.
Electric Flag
Terry Clements also played with the Electric Flag, Leonard Schaeffer, Buddy Miles, Stoneground, and Michael Bloomfield.
The Electric Flag 1968 album is a live one featuring vocals by Erma Franklin, Aretha’s older sister. The album, as you can imagine, is loud and proud.
Saxophonist Terry Clements
Leonard Schaeffer/Buddy Miles
Leonard Schaeffer is not a common name and his music leans far away from the Electric Flag’s sound. Terry plays sax on Schaeffer’s album, A Boy and His Dog (but not on this cut).
Saxophonist Terry Clements
Jimi & Janis
He joined the Janis’s Kozmic Blues Band in December 1968 and toured with the band for its brief time, but he sat in with Jimi Hendrix on June 22, 1969 at the Newport festival in Devonshire Downs, CA. By the way, Jimi played the Star Spangled Banner that day, too.
Saxophonist Terry Clements
Stoneground
AllMusic lists Terry as a member of Stoneground for their 1972 Stoneground 3 album. Wikipedia states that, “Stoneground was a rock band formed in 1970 in Concord, California. Originally a trio, Stoneground expanded to a 10-piece band by the time of their eponymous 1971 debut album. The group appeared in two films, Medicine Ball Caravan (1971) and Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), and released three albums before singer Sal Valentino quit in 1973. “
Other than several albums that are reissues of Janis Joplin material, the internet suggests that Terry has been professionally quiet or at least under the radar.
If anyone can assist, please comment. Thanks.
Saxophonist Terry Clements
And in February 2023 the following comment was added to this post by a Steve Becker:
Terry played in my band, Stormy Weather in the mid 80’s in Asheville, NC. He had moved to Cullowee, NC and bought a farm. We were the House band at the Radisson Hotel for 10 years. This tall, blonde BRIT walked in one night & asked if we could use a sax player. He grabbed it from his car & tore it up with us that night. I hired him on the spot. We loved playing with him till he retired to farming and being a carpenter as well. When i saw him on the Ed Sullivan show & the Woodstock movie with Janice….I knew how lucky we had been. Assuming he still lives in the mtns of NC.
Wallkill had evicted the Woodstock Music and Art Fair from Howard Mill’s site. It was three weeks before the festival was to start.
Stories vary of who found Max Yasgur’s field one county away in Bethel.
The one I’m buying is the one Ticia Bernuth Agri, simply Ticia Agri at the time, tells.
Ticia Bernuth Agri
Happy Avenue
She and Michael Lang, lead organizer and font of good vibes, drove northwest on NY Rt 17 from Orange County, NY into Sullivan County, NY. They got off at the Monticello exit and headed west on Rt 17B.
Ticia’s story is that about 9 miles later, she was the one who spotted Happy Avenue in Bethel.
But Happy Avenue is not where Max Yasgur’s field was. Happy Avenue was not where Max Yasgur lived, but the name was certainly enticing.
Michael and Ticia had to drive a mile north on Happy Avenue before coming to the West Shore Road intersection and then, fortuitously, making a left and even then having to drive another mile before arriving at the Hurd Road/West Shore Road intersection and seeing Max’s field from the bottom. It caught their eye.
Max’s home and dairy farm were about 3 miles from there.
Ticia Bernuth Agri
Who’s Ticia Agri
According to a 2009 Sea Coast online article, Agri was born in New York City and grew up in the Hudson Valley. At age 16 her parents divorced and both moved to Europe.
She lived with her father in Rome, but traveled to 72 countries, including India, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
These travels — and her stories about living on a dollar a day, coming across Arabs with bejeweled sabers, visiting a guest palace — got her the job with Woodstock Ventures in the spring of 1969.
Keep the Dream Flowing
There is a Keep the Dream Flowing podcast and in 2019 Ticia was interviewed for it. By the way, the podcast is an excellent one for those interested in hearing stories about Woodstock from people who are or were involved in the famous event. It’s available via the usual platforms, but the early episodes seem to be only available via Spotify.
Woodstock Appears
From her Facebook page w the caption: My favorite photo of Michael and I working. Ticia is on the phone. Michael Lang is speaking with Joyce Mitchell.. I’ve colorized the Baron Wolman picture.
In the podcast (Episodes #3 and #4from July 22 and 30, 2019 respectively) she describes herself as an adventurer and open to new people, places, and things.
In 1969, her then boyfriend who knew Stan Goldstein (one of the festivals key organizers) told her that Goldstein was looking for an assistant to Michael Lang. She describes her reaction to the remark as a karmic one: she simply knew the job would be hers despite no experience in such matters.
The boyfriend initially ignored her requests for an interview, but Ticia’s persistence paid off. She got the interview, impressed Goldstein with her extensive travel experiences, and became Lang’s assistant.
Her main job, an impossible one, was to keep Lang on time and on task. She tried.
Wes Pomeroy
One of the first decisions she helped with had to do with security. In one interview, the applicant described having dogs and hoses to insure tranquility. Both Agri and Lang knew he was not the one.
The next person was Wes Pomeroy who wanted security to simply help attendees. They knew he was their person. He “got it.”
Agri speaks about the festival’s intent being a blueprint for how things could be and how they tried to execute that blueprint. And doing that without commercializing the event. It was just “being together in Oneness.”
She describes Michael Lang as a “Manifester,” someone who wants and seeks the best for everyone. The opposite of a con-artist who always connives for their own best interests.
How Max Yasgur?
There are versions of how Woodstock Ventures and Max Yasgur. What Ticia related was that shortly after Wallkill evicted the festival, Elliot Tiber contacted Ventures offering permits and a site. When Lang and Agri arrived, the permits looked OK, but the site was a swamp.
Lang and Agri drove west on 17B and Agri saw the Happy Road street sign and yelled to Michael, “Turn!” They eventually saw the field, went back to Tiber and asked him whose land it was: Max Yasgur.
She also describes that despite the intensity of having to build their venue in three weeks, many of the hundreds of attendees who showed up days early became part of the process to create, to manifest, the event.
And how the locals offered assistance to the thousands of young people walking miles and miles toward the site.
“All toward the greater good.” “It was a moment of oneness and freedom.”
Afterwards
She later moved to Woodstock and got involved in renovating a house. She became a road manager for a couple of bands, worked on other festivals, e.g. Atlanta Pop Festival,
In the 1990’s, she led a meditation group at The Light and Healing Center in Exeter, NH, Where she created The Ribbon Breath Meditation. She studied over 4000 hours of Neuro Linguistic Programming, Ticia received a three year training certificate from Center IMT, for Integrative Manual Therapy, trained with the carrier of the medicine for the Aztec nation, Tzenwaxolokuatli, studied Plant Spirit Medicine with Eliot Cowen, studied shamanism for 7 years, And received her teaching certificate in 2007.
She has taught shamanic classes, and worked as a karmic healer in Italy, France, the UK and in the United States. She is currently doing long distance healings as well as working as a meditation guide to teach students to journey with their spiritual teachers to the upper, middle, and lower worlds in a safe and ethical way with the proper protocols to clean karma and Heal oneself and others.
Organizing any large event is like putting together a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. And we could say that Woodstock was a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to go by.
Woodstock made famous the names Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, Chip Monck, John Morris, Wes Pomeroy, and Hugh Romney/Wavy Gravy, but some people were just as important and aren’t nearly as well known.
