Boots Hughston has spent 37 years promoting concerts. When he looks at the state of American society and the music that animates it, he sees both signs of what was promised in 1969 and evidence of how far there is still to go. His answer was to independently fund and organize West Fest — a free concert held October 25th in San Francisco, designed to demonstrate that individuals can still create positive change.
West Fest was conceived as a direct echo of the original Woodstock spirit. The event drew attendees nationally and internationally and featured original 1969 Woodstock performers sharing a stage with contemporary artists, speakers addressing global concerns, and beat poets. The message was clear: the ideals of 1969 are not artifacts of a dead era. They are a living tradition.
For Hughston, West Fest was also personal — a chance to reconnect people with performers and voices that had shaped their lives:
We've once again reached the point where we realize that we can make a difference. This is the Mecca of our generation — a chance to see people and artists that we haven't seen in 35 years.
— Boots Hughston
Hughston is cautiously optimistic about the direction of society, but doesn't let that optimism blind him to the fragility of progress:
We are swinging toward the liberal side, which is good. But there is always a possibility to go right back to the way we were.
— Boots Hughston
What gives Hughston the most hope is what he sees in the youngest generation — people who were born decades after the original Woodstock but who have independently arrived at similar values of community, environmental awareness, and spiritual connectedness:
I see the spirituality living on in the younger generations. I see things like Water Woman and Burning Man moving humanity to a new place and changing its mental state.
— Boots Hughston
For Hughston, what the young people at these modern gatherings embody is not a pale echo of what the 1960s generation discovered, but a genuine continuation of the same human impulse that filled Max Yasgur's farm in August 1969. The values are not transmitted — they are rediscovered. Generation after generation, people arrive at the same recognition: that peace and community and music are not ideals reserved for one decade or one generation. They are the permanent human answer to a world that keeps asking the same question.