The legendary Woodstock festival was held on Max Yasgur’s private dairy farm in the small town of Bethel, New York in 1969. During the three-day event, which featured a plethora of legendary bands and musical artists, over four hundred thousand people were in attendance from all over the country. Not among this substantial number of people, however, was a 22 year-old girl named Tonda Barker. Barker’s father Andy would not let his daughter make the trek to New York for the festival because he felt Tonda was simply too young for the inevitable insanity that would ensue. Despite his reservations, he promised his daughter he was willing to host a similar music festival in Love Valley, North Carolina, where she was more than welcome to attend.

If you’re from the Charlotte-region of North Carolina, you may be aware of Love Valley, the small cowboy town founded and incorporated by Andy Barker in 1954. Growing up as a kid, Barker always claimed he would one day build his own old Western-like town where he could live as he pleased, and that’s exactly what he did. To this day, if you visit Love Valley (15 miles north of Statesville in the northern section of Iredell County) you would still think you walked onto a movie set of an old Western town, where residents still ride horses on the streets.

So it was, Love Valley was to play host to a music festival, inspired by Woodstock, in the summer 1970. But to plan an event of this scale and actually making it happen are two different things. Tonda, who wasn’t allowed to go to Woodstock less than a year earlier, was now tasked with finding the bands to play at the festival. Her 16-year old brother, Jet, was in charge of the construction and set-up of the infrastructure to support the bands and thousands of expected spectators. With the help of a Belmont-based booking agent Tonda knew from her days of working as an entertainment coordinator while attending William Peace University in Raleigh, she began booking a few bands and the setlist started taking shape.

One of these bands was the little-known Allman Brothers Band. The band had just formed a year earlier and only had one album to their name at that point, so they weren’t anywhere close to the legend-status they would later garner. Tonda and Jet decided they would travel to Atlanta to check out the band’s music at the Atlanta International Pop Festival during the first week of July 1970. Satisfied with what they saw, they traveled back to North Carolina with the un-paralleled excitement of two kids planning a Woodstock festival of their own. They knew, however, there was a lot of work and preparation still to be done.

In the preceding weeks of the festival, word slowly crept out around the countryside of northern Iredell County about the event to take place. Many of the local farmers were none too happy about the thousands of hippies that were preparing to encroach on their surrounding land. They were just as equally confused as to why Barker would invite such people to his town when they would inevitably bring with them drugs and a lifestyle that was seen as “weird” and “wrong.” There were even local pastors that sent Andy Barker bible verses speaking out against the counterculture movement of the time.

But Barker would not be persuaded otherwise. What all those people failed to realize, in his opinion, was the amount of good that could come from such an event. Barker had always been considered a “people person”, with nothing but love for everyone. He did, after all, name his town Love Valley. And while there were dissenters, there were also plenty of supporters. A letter to the editor from R.E. Ladd in the local newspaper, The Statesville Record & Landmark, accused people of failing to realize the potential for a “unity and brotherhood” that could transcend racial barriers and make the problems of the day seem far away, while generating “honesty, harmony, and love.”

After countless hours of hard work and preparation for the music festival, the day (July 16th, 1970) had finally arrived for the events to unfold. The festival, named “The Love Valley Thing,” was planned for 50,000 spectators. The Barkers would soon find out though, that many, many more people would show up. It’s estimated that around 200,000 people ended up attending the Love Valley festival throughout its three days. To put things in perspective, that number was roughly half the amount that attended Woodstock almost a year earlier. “We had no idea so many people would arrive,” said Tonda Barker, who suspected a lot of the people made the trip from the Atlanta festival a few weeks prior.

What ensued over the next three days was exactly what Tonda and the Barkers envisioned. Just as with Woodstock and other music festivals of the late 60s, the hippie counterculture was ever so present, with music, free spirits, drugs, and plenty of nudity. “It was perfect,” claimed Tonda. “It was like a dream. We had worked so hard and we could finally just sit down and enjoy it.”

Aside from The Allman Brothers Band (based in Macon, Georgia), other acts included singer/guitarist Terry Reid (from the U.K.), The Hampton Grease Band (Atlanta), The Flood (Atlanta), Wet Willie (Alabama), Big Brother featuring Ernie Joseph (West Coast), Sacred Irony (Winston-Salem), and Kallabash (Greensboro). All in all, a total of 43 bands performed throughout the festival.

Since The Allman Brothers were the headliner, they played a set on the opening day, as well as on the last day, and put on a very memorable show, according to festival foreman and Andy Barker’s right-hand man at the festival, Chuck Eldridge. “They were awesome. I saw them dozens of times afterwards, and the music I heard at Love Valley was some of the best I ever heard them do.”

Eldridge also reflected on the vast amount of people present for the festival. “People were camping on the hillsides. There were random camps all through the woods.” Other folks have recollected their memories from attending the event as well. Marilyn Wolfe, who is now a psychotherapist in Greensboro, remembers, “It was peaceful. People were camping and sleeping in vans. People were sharing food. Little communities formed, like ten tents would form a little village. We had a truckload of watermelons and they were a big hit. They called us the Watermelon Gang. My overall memory of Love Valley is that I felt very safe there. People were smoking pot and drinking without any fear of getting in trouble. I was a 16-year old hippie girl attending my first rock festival and I remember that feeling of, ‘We can do what we want to do and we’re not going to get in trouble.’”

Monty Campbell, now a musician in Greensboro, recollected, “I was 18 years old and I thumbed up to Love Valley by myself. I ran into a guy I’d met a few times before and I hung out with him and a couple of his friends all weekend. On Saturday afternoon, a bunch of us piled into this car, and they drove us down to this lake, which was the thing to do that day. The musical stage was set in this giant circle where they had rodeos and horse shows. I remember the Allman Brothers and Kallabash, who were from Greensboro. At the end of their show, Kallabash set off smoke bombs and when the air cleared, they were all standing naked onstage.”

Though the weekend is generally considered to have went very smoothly, it’s impossible to get that many people together in one space and there not be any problems whatsoever. Andy Barker played the role of peacekeeper in his town and had to put that role to use for an instance between two rival biker gangs. A member of the Hells Angels was preparing to face off against a member of The Outlaws, backed by their respective groups. When things easily could’ve gotten out of hand and changed the entire festival for the worse, it was Andy who stepped in the middle of the bikers and calmed things down. “He told them he didn’t want there to be any trouble, and they were respectful,” Tonda said. “He was like that. People listened to him.” Barker collected the chosen weapons from the two bikers (a chain and an axe) and the peace was quickly restored. Members of the Hells Angels and the Outlaws then either mixed in with the rest of the crowd or left the festival altogether.

After the last musical note had been played, the Love Valley Thing was considered a big success, especially by its attendees. The music had been beautiful and the experience had been just what the thousands of hippies were searching for. But it was the cowboy town of Love Valley that made the final, lasting impression on so many people. They simply fell in love with it, including the members of The Allman Brothers Band.

Some of the festival’s attendees decided to rent cabins afterward and stay awhile longer because they just weren’t quite ready to leave. “Some are still here,” claimed Tonda. Rory Knapton, a band-member of The Flood, quoted, “We fell in love with Love Valley. We all rented cabins and stayed there after the festival. We hung out for a year and a half during the old hippie-culture time and had the best times of our lives. Just a bunch of hippies doing hippie things—jamming and having a big old time.”

Butch Trucks, the drummer for The Allman Brothers Band, recalled, “Love Valley became kind of a focal point for The Allman Brothers Band. We all just started hanging out there. Love Valley was where we lived and hung out when we weren’t working. Dickey [Betts] (band-mate) built a house there. That’s where he was living when he wrote Blue Sky. It was such a cool place. You had to ride horses. It was just like this Wild West town, and I can remember nights we were full of moonshine and LSD, having fake fights and falling out of the second floor of the hotel, with one of the guys in the middle of the street cracking a whip. It was nuts.” Along with band-mate Dickey Betts, Butch Trucks also bought property in Love Valley. “Butch spoke the most about Love Valley,” said band manager Bert Holman. “It was one of their biggest headline gigs at the time. It was like their own little Woodstock.”

Pam Simon, who is now a lawyer with the family law firm in Statesville, remembers her experience of the festival and fondness of Love Valley. “After the festival, I lived in a teepee in Love Valley. Some of the Allman Brothers were hanging out there, too. Dickey, Butch, and Red Dog (an Allman Brothers Band roadie) were around a lot. A handful of us hitchhiked to one of their concerts at the Fillmore East in New York City in 1971, and we stayed with them in their suite on Park Avenue.”

Simon continued, “I hitchhiked back to Love Valley afterward and was in my teepee making breakfast when Dickey showed up. The band had played another gig the night before somewhere on Long Island. But the first thing he did after that was come back to Love Valley. So we had breakfast in my teepee on the Monday morning following the recording of ‘Live at Fillmore East.’ I was talking to Dickey backstage in Charlotte many years later and he said, ‘You’re a lawyer…you must live in a three-story teepee now!’”

So fond of Love Valley are the Allman Brothers Band that they even offered to play there for free on the 25th anniversary of the festival, as well as on the 40th anniversary. Andy Barker respectfully declined, however. “I told ‘em I like ‘em and they can always come visit, but I don’t want no damn concert in here…I’ve had all that I want,” he said with a chuckle. The Barkers and remaining living members of The Allman Brothers Band remain very close friends to this day.

This coming July will mark 52 years since the event that played such a key role in the history of Love Valley, as well as in the memories of over 200,000 people, took place. The fact that members of one of the most successful American bands of all-time not only played in Love Valley, but called it “home” is something that should make local residents proud to call Iredell County home. And as for Tonda Barker, she may not have gotten to travel to Woodstock as so many of her peers did for a great one-time experience, but she received something far more valuable. She gained lifelong relationships with members of one of America’s finest bands, as well as stamped her name in the legacy of the biggest and most influential music festival the county has ever seen.

Credits:

https://statesville.com/news/47-years-ago-this-weekend-love-valley-hosted-its-version-of-woodstock-this-is-what/article_5fa95a36-695f-11e7-8de2-ab37751ac63f.html

https://greensboro.com/life/go_triad/remembering-n-c-s-woodstock/article_0122c2ff-5977-5b07-b3b5-a3c6b350c8a0.html

Garett

Looking Back at Iredell County’s “Woodstock”