For Wavy Gravy, Vibes is His Groove

[3 articles]

For Wavy Gravy, Vibes is His Groove

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/133373133

July 25, 2009
By Sean Spillane, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

Jul. 25--BRIDGEPORT -- In this, the 40th anniversary season of
Woodstock, this weekend's Gathering of the Vibes has many connections
to the famed festival.

Bob Weir of Ratdog was there with The Grateful Dead. Crosby, Stills
and Nash were there with sometime partner Neil Young. And there are a
few other artists who played the "three days of peace and music."

Then there's Wavy Gravy, a Hall High School of West Hartford grad who
came to national prominence with his "cosmic clown" antics at
Woodstock. He is a frequent visitor to the Vibes, always sitting to
the right of the stage, when he's not on the stage introducing bands
and making announcements.

"I'm beyond happy to be here," Wavy Gravy said before walking over --
with a fish

on a leash -- to take his usual perch.

"This is the one festival of the year that I do. Music festival, that is."

He had to add that last sentence because he has spent a lot of time
recently going to film festivals that screen the documentary about
his life, "Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie."

"After this, I go to Cape Cod [Mass.] and then to Traverse City,
Mich., to do [director] Michael Moore's festival," Wavy Gravy said of
his film's agenda. "We premiered it at South By Southwest, down in
Austin, Texas, and it was also at the Rochester [N.Y.] Film Festival.

"We won the audience award at Maui, which was cool because I also got
to see Ram Dass while I was there."

Ram Dass was a spiritual leader of

the 1960s and '70s, who now lives on the Hawaiian island.

"He's never coming back to the mainland, " Wavy Gravy said of his
longtime friend. "But he's had a couple of strokes, so he doesn't
travel at all."

As for his own health, Wavy Gravy said he's OK, except for the
cellulitis in his legs that recently had him in the hospital for four days.

"Hey, I'm 73, you know," he said. "What can you do?"

And with that he turned to greet another fan, who offered up a new
copy of "The Woodstock Story Book" for him to autograph.

"Hey, I wrote the forward to that," he said with pride, as he flipped
through the pages and relived that storied festival with a big grin
on his lips to go with his red clown nose.

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Soaking up the sun and the scene at the Vibes

http://www.connpost.com/ci_12916250

By Ken Dixon
07/26/2009

BRIDGEPORT -- Amid screaming guitars, thumping basses and cascading
drums, the Vibes Gatherers finally enjoyed a rain-free day of the
festival Saturday.

Gone were the sudden showers of Thursday and Friday, as thousands
swam in Long Island Sound, sunned or shaded themselves and communed
like the tribe they call themselves.

10:30 a.m. Tom Crowley of Bridgeport's Black Rock section is waiting
for friends at the VIP check-in. He and his band, the Speakers, will
be on the smaller Green Vibes stage at 12:45. He's planning a couple
of cover tunes, including a tune by Jerry Garcia, the late, great
force behind the Grateful Dead, whose image is everywhere, from
T-shirts to photographs in the merchandise tents.

11:21 and Moonalice is on the Main Stage, playing for about 400
dancers in the mud created during Friday's late-night thunderstorm.

They launch into a ska version of the '60s classic "A Whiter Shade of
Pale," by Procol Harum. Barn swallows swoop around the mostly empty
field, joining the Vibes' recycling effort by feeding on insects.

11:30 and the portable toilets near the concession appear used but
clean, a crucial factor in a family festival.

And it is a multi-generational party, with age ranges from babes in
arms to septuagenarians.

Everywhere there's a garbage can there's another to recycle cans and
plastic. In some spots there are three cans labeled "compost,"
"recycling," and "landfill." There are also teams of young people
wearing "Clean Vibes" T-shirts, picking up last night's solid-waste vestiges.

Unfortunately, the single-most funky spot is the entrance to the main
stage, where there's not quite enough hay to soak up the storm water.

Noon and the solar panels at the Solar Smoothies Cafe and Juice Joint
are gathering energy for the lunch crowd.

At the mid-field mixing board, where the digital screening is showing
the stage activities, sit the traditional tapers, preserving the
sounds for posterity.

Moonalice then starts a 20-minute rendition of the classic Grateful
Dead tune about art and mortality: "Stella Blue." The crowd is all
singing along, "In the end it's just a song, come crying like the
wind, through all the broken dreams and vanished years..."

As Moonalice finishes its set, a stage crew is setting up on an
adjacent platform for the Ryan Montbleau Band.

Along the seawall, it's a promenade of tie-dye and bare feet.
"One-dollar grilled garlic cheese, guys," a young woman offers to the
hundreds who walk by each minute.

12:20 and the large statue of a seated P.T. Barnum now sports a
baby-blue flag and a festive red clown nose.

There are dozens of boats anchored off the seawall offering a free
taste of the Vibes.

1:20 and Tom Crowley and the Speakers are blowing the roof off the
Green Vibes tent. A Police cover has dozens dancing among the 100 or so there.

It's 1:55 and Crowley, playing a white Fender Stratocaster, slips
into a memorable version of the Beatles "Dear Prudence," with the
lyric "The sun is up, the sky is blue. It's beautiful and so are you..."

Along the seawall, a 20-something woman in a cowboy hat scoots by on
a skateboard, drinking a beer.

"Thank you very much," Crowley, 31, tells the crowd before the organ
riff that kicks off his original "Crown of Gold." He's giving away
the band's CD up by the stage.

2:20 As the Ryan Montbleau band finishes on the Main Stage, word in
the VIP tent indicates that psylocibin mushrooms are being sold for
$90 a half ounce.

3 p.m. and A Royal Flush, the portable toilet cleaners, makes a
needed visit behind the main concessions. Campers say the toilets are
in better shape in the music areas than the tenting grounds.

3:30 and a slice of cheese pizza at the Two Boots outpost is $4.

Inside the VIP tent, Wavy Gravy, cultural icon, veteran of Woodstock,
is napping on a couch before his stage appearance as a guest MC.

5 p.m. and the band Assembly of Dust, is finishing its set with a
cover from "Tommy," by The Who.

6 p.m. As Max Creek is playing the Dead's "Bertha," and hundreds
dance in front of the stage, Ron Celella, 45, a Bantam veterinarian,
compared this year's festival to last's.

"There's less rain, more lightning and more bare-breasted women," he says.

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Wavy Gravy to appear at Woods Hole Film Festival

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090725/LIFE/907250302/-1/NEWSMAP

By CAITLIN RUSSELL
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
July 25, 2009

Have you ever wondered what Albert Einstein smelled like?

Wavy Gravy hasn't.

At least, not since age 5, when he and Einstein were neighbors in
Princeton, N.J., and took walks together.

"He had a peculiar smell," Gravy says over the phone. "I can't wait
for the day when I can tell someone, 'Hey, you smell like Albert Einstein.' "

Gravy, perhaps best known for his appearance at Woodstock in 1969, is
the subject of the documentary "Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy
Movie," which will be shown twice next week at the Woods Hole Film
Festival. He is scheduled to appear at the Monday screening at 7 p.m.
at Redfield Auditorium.

The documentary was directed by Michelle Esrick, who says she's put
10 years into its making.

Esrick met Wavy in 1992 when a friend of hers was interviewing him
for a book. "I thought he was pretty amazing," says Esrick. The film
has already won the Audience Award for Spirit in Cinema for a
documentary feature at the Maui Film Festival.

If you've seen the Woodstock documentary (or you were there), you
might know Wavy Gravy as the gap-toothed clown with the raspy voice.
Gravy, who has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after him, is
now in his early 70s, but far from being a relic of a bygone era of
free love, cataclysmic social change and boundless idealism, Gravy
continues to be an active participant in a number of charitable and
activist organizations.

"These ideals were with him before the '60s," says Esrick.

Still, Gravy freely admits he is no saint. He is a clown. He is the
fool, the jester. He never breaks character. Part of that character
is a façade of silliness behind which is a lifetime of incredible
experiences, and a voice full of love, sadness and hard-won wisdom.

He's not interested in promoting himself; he's interested in
promoting causes such as Seva (Sanskrit for "service to humankind"),
an organization that performs cataract surgeries in Nepal. If people
learn anything from the film, Gravy hopes it will be "that they can
make a difference. And hopefully they'll go to the Seva Web site and
become donors."

Hustler or humanitarian? If he's a hustler, he's a hustler for a good cause.

"There's something about him that really affects people to want to
help the world," says Esrick.

Being hilarious doesn't hurt either. "For many, many years I used
humor in politics," says Gravy.

In addition to the original festival, Gravy also participated in the
'94 and '99 Woodstock revivals. "The first one made me famous, the
last two got me paid," he says. Gravy was in charge of security at
Woodstock, which came as a surprise to him. "I was the chief of,
'Please "¦ we thought we were doing a free kitchen.' " He was less
than impressed with the presence of so many famous musicians ­ "I
knew most of them and I was too busy doing what I was doing."

One of the first times he realized the joy of aiding others was at
Woodstock when he would help to calm people who weren't quite ready
to trip as hard as LSD made them trip. Gravy says that "John
Sebastian (one-time lead singer of the Lovin' Spoonful) came over and
sang to the kids who were having a bad time with the psychedelics," as well.

Known as Hugh Romney until B.B. King gave him the nickname Wavy
Gravy, he would read poetry under his own name at the Gaslight in New
York City. Above the Gaslight was a room he shared with Bob Dylan.
"He was a lot of fun back then," says Gravy. "He was a great guy to
hang out with." It was in that room on Gravy's typewriter that Dylan
wrote the first draft of his melancholy classic "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

Gravy has been active in Camp Winnarainbow, a circus and performing
arts camp that's a three-hour drive north of San Francisco. Kids can
learn circus skills such as juggling, walking on stilts and trapeze.
"In school, kids learn numbers and letters. We teach timing and
balance. ... What we're creating are universal human beings who can
handle anything," says Gravy. He hopes that people will remember the
camp as his greatest legacy. Thanks to the Grace and Joy Scholarship
fund, kids who are economically disadvantaged can attend the camp.
There's even an adult session of camp where, according to Gravy, "the
only difference is we get to stay up later."

Gravy lives in a commune called the Hog Farm with his wife and many others.

"We have been together for over 45 years," he says. "We have a little
hippie Hyannisport."

.