The Fox Hollow Festival, in Petersburg, New York, ran for fifteen years from 1965-1979 (or 1966-1980). It was held on the Beers family property. They put up a few choice performers and family members in their home, but for the most part, everyone camped out, setting up tents in the fields and woods of their large back yard. There was a natural amphitheatre in the woods a few hundred feet behind the house that served as the mainstage, and some of the outbuildings on their property (notably the lodge and a gazebo or two) served as alternate concert venues. They built a pavilion for dancing off to the right, and the field to the right of the house served as the parking lot, except that it often became a muddy mire in the process. Outhouses were also set up in a couple of places on the property--though the were more like outhouse hotels, with many compartments each. But they still smelled like outhouses. The Saturday evening dance was held in the town hall at the bottom of the hill (a half-mile away, with an elevation loss of some 200-300 feet--I used to walk up and down the hill!)

Petersburg sits astride Route 22, which runs North-South just inside the Eastern border of New York State, and the Beers family place was actually on the state highway that runs East-West from Albany to Williamstown, Massachusetts. Petersburg is some 20-25 miles East of Albany. It's a very hilly area, and the road from Petersburg to Williamstown crosses some very high steep hills that are considered locally to be mountains (a couple of thousand feet high). Bob Beers lost his life one winter in a car crash coming home from Williamstown and crossing those mountains in a winter storm.

His wife Evelyne Beers later married Don Burnstine, and the two of them continued the Fox Hollow Festival until 1979 or 1980. When they discontinued it, Andy Spence, an Albany local, began the Old Songs Festival to take its place, evenutally moving it to the Altamont Fairgrounds, in ALtamont, New York, where it continues to this day (last weekend in June--quite possibly the perfect small festival!) I last saw Evelyne when I sang with my chorus at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (a perfectly restored acoustic gem over a century old in the city of Troy, New York); Evelyne was on the Board that restored the music hall.

--Charlie Baum