Lone Star Harmony: Revisiting Texas’ Answer to Woodstock Festival

From August 15-18 in 1969, the world was introduced to what would become the biggest music festival to date: Woodstock. 2 weeks later, on Labor Day weekend in Lewisville, Texas, another huge festival would take place: Texas's answer to the Woodstock festival.

What was the Texas "Woodstock" festival?

Well first off it wasn't actually CALLED Texas Woodstock, that's just a nickname given by the city of Lewisville after the festival had ended. The show was ACTUALLY called the Texas International Pop Festival. Over 100,000 music fans fled to the Dallas International Motor Speedway to watch 3 days of amazing music on August 30, 31 & September 1st, 1969.

Despite being called a "pop" festival, a lot of the acts were NOT pop artists. And they weren't small unknown names neither. Despite having a budget of only $120,000, the 26 promoters were able to score BIG names: Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, B.B. King, Grand Funk Railroad, Canned Heat, Chicago, Santana, Johnny Winter...even the mighty LED ZEPPELIN played the show (they were actually called "The Led Zeppelin").

You can see the original flyer from 1969 down below too so you can see all the big names included:

Texas State Historical Association [TSHA][/caption]And yes... there is footage (and audio) of that very performance online.

You can find audio from some of the other acts such as Ten years After, Chicago, Grand Funk Railroad at the 1969 Texas Pop Festival too.

The show was not without incident however; there were a total of 36 arrests during the 3 day music festival & sadly one fatality. 27 year old John Allen Shope collapsed & died of heat exhaustion at a Dallas hospital.

Today there exists a historical marker for the Texas International Pop Festival; if you travel to the Hebron train Station, that's where you'll find it.

Despite there not being another "Texas Woodstock", the Texas International Pop Festival was still a pivotal piece of Texas music history that we still look back on & remember fondly.

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