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Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

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Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

March 20, 1950 – August 2, 1981

Remembering Alan Malarowitz, the drummer for Sweetwater at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. 

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

Jay Walker and the Pedestrians

As with nearly every band, Sweetwater grew out of another group: Jay Walker and the Pedestrians.  That is a bit of information that I had never seen or read about until serendipitously I surfed onto Bruno Ceriotti’s site. At that site Ceriotti has links to many of his projects, one of which is his ( and Mike Stax’s) research into Sweetwater.

Since today’s piece is aimed at Alan Malarowitz, I will only use the tip of the wonderful iceberg of information Ceriotti and Stax have accumulated and I encourage you to use the link above to check out the complete article as well as his research into many other bands and themes.

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

Nancy Nevins appears

Robert ‘Bob’ Barboza had formed Jay Walker and the Pedestrians  while in high school in Rhode Island. He moved to Los Angeles where he re-created the band with a core group of players as well as many others who came and went. Sometimes there were four or five playing a gig, sometimes a couple dozen.  But never a vocalist!

The story goes that one April 1967 night on her way home, a too-high-to-drive Nancy Nevins ambled into the Scarab coffeehouse  in Hollywood. Some of the various Pedestrians were hanging out there and jamming. She stared at them awhile. They invited her up. She sang along to a loose version of “Motherless Child.” They loved it. She left. Unlike Cinderella, the nameless Nevins left no glass slipper.

Between that hazy evening and re-discovering Nevins, the band played at the Freedom of Expression Concert on Sunday, April 30, 1967

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

Sweetwater’s source

Alex Del Zoppo finally located Nevins, she joined the band, and sang with it in sometime in late spring 1967.

Alex Del Zoppo suggested to a few of the band members that with Nevins and a few other more rock-oriented players, they could go in a different direction. That was fine with founder Barboza, he suggested a couple of players, and the as yet unnamed band was on its way with:

1) Alex Del Zoppo: keyboards, vocals
2) Albert B. Moore: flute, vocals
3) Pete Cobian: congas, other percussions
4) Nansi Nevins: lead vocals
5) Fred Herrera: bass, vocals
6) Andy Friend guitar, vocals
7) Alan Malarowitz, drums
8) Wesley Lloyd Radlein, cello

What’s in a name? Apparently the group went to attend the Monterey Pop Festival and while there Albert Moore drank water from a nearby stream. Nancy said he shouldn’t. He disagreed and said it was sweetwater. And so their name arrived

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz

Alan Malarowitz

At its inception, Alan Malarowitz was only 17, but, he had good feel and instinct for his instrument. He had a sympathetic easygoing temperament, but was often the first to let his hair down when it came time to party. He became a touring and studio drummer in his later career (band site)

Malarowtiz died when he fell asleep at the wheel in San Bernardino, CA (source) and crashed.  He was 31.

Sweetwater Alan Malarowitz
Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian

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Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian

Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian

Elpidio Pete Cobain

Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian

Continuing with my mini bios for those Woodstock Music and Art Fair performers for whom I have not found a birth date (the day I typically post the bio).

Elpidio “Pete” Cobian had been in the California version of Jay Walker and the Pedestrians, the band Robert ‘Bob’ Barboza had originally formed in Rhode Island and re-formed with different members when he re-located to Los Angeles. Cobian played congas.

Pete was with the band that April 1967 night when Nanci Nevins walked in to watch Jay and the Pedestrians play. The band, by choice, had no vocalist, but saw her standing and singing along. They invited her up to perform, not usual since the actual members in the band varied with the date. Sometimes there were 7 members, sometimes more than 2 dozen.

Pete and the others liked what they heard, but Nevins left without giving them her name or contact information. Life went on.

They eventually did find her and she briefly became a Pedestrian. Briefly because  band member Alex Del Zoppo suggested to other members Albert Moore,  Andy Friend, and Pete that with Nevins as vocalist they could expand their possibilities the four as a new band.

Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian

Sweetwater

And so they sowed the seed of Sweetwater.

Their Woodstock Music and Art Fair appearance is one of the many typical side stories that that disheveled weekend tells. Stuck in Liberty because of an historic traffic jam, organizers drafted a hesitant Richie Havens to open the festival.

Finally on site, Sweetwater followed. Ironically, their opening song, one they had played dozens of times, was an echo of the now-famous rendition that Havens had closed with: Motherless Child (with Havens extemporaneous “Freedom” tagged on).

Sweetwater did not make the 1970 Woodstock album. Sweetwater did not make the 1970 Woodstock movie. And before all that, in December 1969, a drunk driver’s crashing into Nancy Nevins’s car nearly killed her and kept her out of music for nearly a quarter century.

In the meantime, the band released two more albums, but gradually broke up and members went their own way. Some continued in music.

Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian

Reunion

According the the Sweetwater band site, “In 1994, Sweetwater conducted a reunion to commemorate Woodstock’s 25th anniversary. Attempts were made, but no one was able to find out what had happened to Elpidio, our former conga player. A few years later, we learned Elpidio still plays occasionally with groups, but has had a really successful career working for the film studios on their set crews. He worked on underwater sets, principally as a welder, for such hit movies as “Jaws” and “The Abyss”, among others. He has a wife, Evelyn, and two adult sons, Orlando and Mario.”

Band site

Sweetwater Elpidio Pete Cobian
Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

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Sweetwater Fred Herrera

Sweetwater Fred Herrera
Sweetwater Fred Herrera second from right

Woodstock’s opening band

Sweetwater is often described as the opening band at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. That is true as long as we exclude Richie Havens, Daniel Ben Zebulon, and Paul “Deano” Williams preceding performance.

Sweetwater deserves the title considering the path their lead singer Nancy Nevins and then the rest of band endured shortly after the famed Woodstock.

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

Jay Walker and the Pedestrians

Sweetwater evolved out of a band called Jay Walker and the Pedestrians, a band that bassist Robert ‘Bob’ Barboza  had formed in Rhode Island. Barboza relocated to Los Angeles and reformed his band there.

In June 1967, Pedestrians Alex Del Zoppo (keyboards) , Albert Moore (flute), Pete Cobian (percussion), and Andy Friend (guitar) along with newcomer Nevins (vocals) left Jay Walker and started a new band. It remained unnamed for a bit, but after Moore told Nevins that some stream water he’d just quenched his thirst with wasn’t bad at all, it was sweetwater, they realized they’d found a name.

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

Fred Herrera

Sweetwater Fred Herrera
Fred Herrera to the right of Nancy Nevins

Fred Herrera had not been in Jay Walker and the Pedestrians.  Del Zoppo knew him from playing other gigs and knew him to be a good rock bassist. Rock was the direction that Sweetwater wanted to head in.

Keep in mind that by 1967 the definition of rock had expanded to include the influences from all areas of music. They included idea of jazz jamming along with the feel of free wheeling rock. The odd thing about the band was that it had no guitarist. 

The band became one of the main opening groups for many other suddenly famous bands like the Doors, the Grateful Dead, and Johnny Winter. They joined those bands and many more on the festival circuit.

TV had realized that this “new music” sold well–that is, advertisers would buy time on shows if they featured such bands.  On June 10, 1969, Sweetwater played on the Los Angeles TV show, “New Sound.” Unusual for these new shows, Sweetwater played live. Herrera recalls, “They actually recorded us video and audio live at the same time, which was never done at that time. All of the other TV shows we did in those day either took the feed directly from the album which we then lip-synched to, or recorded the band offstage beforehand. Then they would come in and ‘stage’ us according to the music to allow for correct camera angles. It was refreshing that they didn’t care what we did. They just turned on the camera and said, ‘Go!’ It was a lot different than just about everything else on TV that was going down then.“

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Bruce Blatman was Sweetwater’s manager. He suggested the band add another festival to their 1969 summer itinerary: “an intimate, no-pressure music and art fair itn ehcountryside of upstate New York called Woodstock.”  (see Horror stories).

Keyboardist Alex Del Zoppo was in the Air Force Reserves at the time. When facing the reality of fighting in Viet Nam, many young men of the time joined a reserved branch of the US military. Though the length of service was longer, the chance of deployment was far less. Del Zoppo told Blatman that his 2-week summer training started Sunday that weekend. Blatman said they’d be the opening act on Saturday afternoon, Del Zoppo could get to JFK Airport in plenty of time to fly to California and his base on time for Sunday.

We know that didn’t quite work out as planned. The word plan that Woodstock weekend had a very loose meaning.

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

Aftermath

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

Del Zoppo got in trouble but also eventually got out of the reserves without having to serve. The point was moot since on December 8, 1969 a drunk driver t-boned the car that lead singer Nancy Nevins sat in. She was in a coma for two weeks and awoke with damaged vocal cords.

Sweetwater did not make the 1970 movie’s soundtrack or the movie itself. It became a footnote, a bar bet: what Woodstock band had no guitarist?

The appetite for Woodstock has never gone away. Surprisingly to many, there are many gen-Xers who arrive in Bethel, NY at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts seeking inspiration. Some of Sweetwater’s Woodstock music is now available . Though three of the original members have died, the others, including a recovered Nevins, continue to play music.

Herrera’s credits include playing or producing Grupo Fuego (1993), The Exies (2000 and 2003), and Father John Misty (2015).

Sweetwater Fred Herrera

2019 Bethel Woods opening

Alex Del Zoppo (right), Fred Herrera (top left) speaking w Joyce Mitchel (in charge of administration of the Woodstock Ventures offices) at the opening.

When Bethel Woods Center for the Arts had its 2019 season’s grand opening, Fred Herrera was there to speak and feel the love so many expressed to him for his and the band’s presence 50 years earlier. Those at the opening found him to be a thankful and gracious speaker.

Thank you.

Sweetwater Fred Herrera