Country Joe McDonald is one of a handful of original Woodstock performers on the "Heroes of Woodstock" tour. (Courtesy of Country Joe McDonald)
BAUMHOLDER, Germany — If you missed the original Woodstock Music Festival — say if you weren’t born yet — your chance to relive the peace and love of that summer 36 years ago is coming to a German town near you.
The “Heroes of Woodstock” will play 30 concerts around Germany, with the lineup including four or five of the two dozen bands that played Woodstock in August 1969, said Merzig-based “Heroes” promoter Wolf Porcsz.
The only concert near an American base is a June 22 concert in Baumholder, home to H.D. Smith Barracks and the 2nd Brigade and Division Artillery for the 1st Armored Division.
Canned Heat, whose music was featured prominently in the 1970 hit movie about the festival, is scheduled to top the bill.
Also scheduled to play is Iron Butterfly, whose 17-minute anthem “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” inspired a generation of garage-band drummers — and irritated a generation of parents.
The most famous — or notorious — act scheduled for Baumholder is Country Joe McDonald, the anti-Vietnam War activist whose four-letter “Fish Cheer” was a major Woodstock crowd pleaser.
Jefferson Starship — then Jefferson Airplane — is playing the tour, but will be in Paris the day of the Baumholder event, Porcsz said.
Though the band names are the same, many only have one or two members of the original group, Porcsz said.
Bernd Mai, a Baumholder civic leader who also works for the 222nd Base Support Battalion, said that Porcsz contacted him about the tour.
“I said, ‘Yes, Baumholder would definitely be a good place because a lot of Americans are here.’”
The concert will be staged in the town’s indoor tennis center.
The Baumholder concert won’t be the first intersection of Woodstock and the military.
Jimi Hendrix was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division.
Original Iron Butterfly bassist Phillip Taylor Kramer, a physicist, became a missile systems researcher working on several super-secret Department of Defense projects including the MX Missile before he died under mysterious circumstances in 1995.
That’s a slightly different setting than the original. In 1969, Woodstock organizers expected a few thousand people to come to a three-day concert at Max Yasgur’s farm in rural upstate New York. But the show drew more than 500,000 people.
“We will definitely not have 500,000,” Mai said, adding that the tennis club holds about 3,000.
Country Joe McDonald is one of a handful of original Woodstock performers on the "Heroes of Woodstock" tour. (Courtesy of Country Joe McDonald)
Members of the rock band Iron Butterfly, known for its 17-minute anthem “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” will be in Baumholder, Germany, in June for the “Heroes of Woodstock” concert tour. (Courtesy of Country Joe McDonald)
