The Road Trips I Remember Every August

While America stops to remember the Woodstock Festival 40 years ago and the impact it has had on our ongoing pop and generational culture, what I stop to remember every August are the two longest road trips Sing-Out South ever made.

Those journeys were to attend the World Sing-Out Festivals held at Ft. Slocum, an abandoned military base on David's Island just outside New Rochelle, NY (and not far from New York City). The photo above from THE NASHVILLE BANNER (you can click on any of these photos to enlarge them) shows us performing on the steps of the War Memorial Auditorium near the State Capitol downtown, just before we boarded our bus (with parents and chaperones)to leave on August 11, 1967 for the first World Sing-Out Festival.

From that day until we returned on August 23, 1967, it all one great adventure. Most of us had never been this far from home for such a long period of time. That was sure true for me. Passing through New York City on the way to New Rochelle and the Island was a new, very wide-eyed experience for me.

Being wide-eyed wasn't easy, by the way. Many of us stayed up all night on the bus, singing, talking, just being excited. This was a trip we had worked and raised money for all summer. And we had worked on the show we would perform for the entire festival one night while we were at the Festival.

Of course, we took some breaks. The picture above I believe was taken on the New Jersey Turnpike where we stopped for breakfast very early in the morning after the all-night journey north. I remember we stopped for dinner the night before at a cafeteria in Ronoake, VA.

To get to David Island's, of course, you had to take a ferry boat. It was called "The Berkley" and riding over on it, is one of the clearest memories I have of going to the Festival.It literally brought Sing-Out groups and Up With People casts from all over the nation and the world to the Island.

Every night while we were there, local and national Sing-Out groups from across the country and from overseas performed in the Ft. Slocum theatre, along with three national casts of Up With People. It was quite an impressive array of talent, especially the foreign casts which included Harabee Africa!, Sing-Out Deutschland from Germany and Sing-Out Finland.

Watching all the other casts made it a little intimadating I think for our Sing-Out South when it was our turn. But I recall we got a tremendous reception, especially performing some of our own songs such as VOLUNTEERS OF TENNESSEE and WE VOLUNTEER.

The theme of the entire festival was "Freedom Is On The Move" and Mike Padgett, Steve Hinton and I wrote a special song with that as the name, which SOS cast performed on stage.

I recall it got a pretty good round of applause at the end, but no on asked us to add it to the the list of songs performed for the UWP national cast, so I guess it wasn't all that great. :)

We did however see and hear lots of new songs performed by the national casts that we wanted to add(and did our to our SOS show list), including NEW YORK CITY, GEE, I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE and THE WORLD IS YOUR HOMETOWN among others...

The World Sing-Out Festival wasn't all about performing or going to shows. In many cases (but not all) we got a chance to meet and get to know the members of other Sing Outs and UWP groups from all over the country and the world. You can see a little of that in the photo above which includes Laurie Jones (Rutter) playing her guitar with some other Festival attendees.

We have lots more memories to share about SOS and its first trip to the Island. More on that in our next posting. In the meantime, if you have memories or stories you'd like to share about this or other experiences you had with Sing-Out South or Up With People, please post them below or send them to me at pat.nolan@dvl.com and I will share them here.