Sweetwater was a talented band with a lot of potential. They put out their debut album in 1968, simply called "Sweetwater." Their big break came when they performed at the Woodstock festival in August 1969. I've posted their performance there. Here's the link:
https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/sweetwater-woodstock-festival-max.html
Unfortunately, a couple of months after this concert, the band's lead singer, Nancy Nevins, was in a car crash. She was in a coma for ten days. She survived, but just barely. Her vocal chords were damaged, and her voice never fully recovered. That pretty much killed off the band's momentum. You can read more about it in the write-up I did for their Woodstock set.
Live recordings from this band are extremely rare. As far as I can tell, there's just this and the Woodstock one. Unfortunately, this one is quite short. But on the positive side, at least it's from a soundboard source. The last song was cut off, so I used a bit from the Woodstock performance to finish it off. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.
On a different note, since I don't have a lot to say about this set, I want to mention something that happened at some point during this last day of the festival.
The festival was so relatively problem-free that near the end of this day, both the Lewisville mayor and the police chief, Ralph Adams, went onstage and congratulated the audience on its good behavior. Adams gave a short speech which included this quote: "You are really teaching the older people here a lesson. Today, I can tell you that we have not made one arrest of anyone attending this festival simply because none of you has given us any reason to. Instead, our only trouble has come from the sightseers outside the festival grounds. People have asked me how I can manage to keep the peace at an event like this. I have told them the same thing that I told our police force - these people are human beings too and all you have to do is treat them that way." He even held up a peace sign, and added, "You are welcome back here anytime you want to. The town is yours."
After a standing ovation, one of the festival organizers took the microphone, and said, "There are a few bad cops in Dallas, like there are in every city. And some places like Chicago have pigs. But the Dallas police here are peace officers."
Given the culture clash between the festival crowd, largely made up of hippies, and the conservative opposition from rural Texas, it's nice to see that some people were able to rise above those differences.
This album is 18 minutes long.
01 What's Wrong (Sweetwater)
02 talk (Sweetwater)
03 Why Oh Why [Edit] (Sweetwater)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/yaQr3JM8
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/n3f2l624OaR6z9y/file
The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Nancy Nevins, the band's lead singer. For once for this festival, the original photo was actually in color. However, it was very blurry and low-res. I used the Krea AI program several times to sharpen it up and add detail.
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