Woodstock 50 logo

Woodstock 50 considering move to Baltimore area

UPDATE: According to New York Times, the move is officially happening.

Original Woodstock performer David Crosby blasted the troubled 50th anniversary festival, Woodstock 50, as “dead” and “not happening,” but organizers appear unwilling, or unable, to give up completely, even after losing their original venue, being denied a permit in their proposed replacement venue four times, and losing multiple producers and a financial backer. Their latest scheme, Bloomberg and Variety report, is to move the festival even further from its original location, to Columbia, MD’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Bloomberg reports that a note from Howard County MD executive Calvin Ball to festival organizer Greg Peck reads, “Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia is a jewel of Howard County and one of the top music venues in the nation. It felt like such a natural fit to host a historic festival on our storied stage.”

According to Bloomberg, the move to Maryland would come with a number of changes to the festival, including its name: it would change to “Woodstock 50 Washington.” Single day tickets would be sold for $129 to $595, with some of the proceeds going to climate change and voter turnout charities. These charities were set to have a presence at Woodstock 50 since day one, but maybe now they are more directly set to benefit from ticket sales MPP has a capacity of 20,000, a far cry from the 120k capacity the festival originally intended on. And questions remain over whether artists’ contracts would hold in the event of the over 250 mile change in location. According to Variety, the parking lot of Citi Field in Queens was previously considered as an alternate venue, but agents pushed back, saying their artists weren’t contracted to play an NYC-area show.