A concert this weekend will feature a line of local and nationally-known musicians who have performed in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, while also benefiting a long-standing youth organization in the city.The Legends of the Lighthouse concert series returns to the Boys' & Girls' Club of Pittsfield Sunday after its launch two years ago. Organizer Ric Fetridge says it’s a way for area musicians to thank the organization that gave them a place to play and enjoy rock n’ roll as teenagers in the 1960s.
“All of the musicians locally, their first job was at Pittsfield Boys' and Girls' Club,” Fetridge said. “It was one of the first venues that allowed us to play and honestly paid us. We all would laugh because we’d leave on a Friday night with all these crumpled one-dollar bills which is what it cost to get into the dance.”
All proceeds go to the Boys' & Girls' Club. In 2012 about 1,600 people attended the first concert. It raised roughly $9,000 for the organization, which has been offering young people a slew of programs and activities in the Pittsfield area since 1900. Born and raised in Pittsfield, Fetridge says the center was ahead of its time in the 1960s, stocked with three basketball courts, a swimming pool and an ice rink—on the third floor of all places—leaving room for a club.
“They dug out this whole underneath of the building,” he said. “Someone said let’s put a teenage club down there. Someone came up with the name ‘Lighthouse.’ They made it look like a lighthouse with some paintings on the wall, life preservers and the rest was history.”
Aside from the local bands and musicians who took to the Lighthouse stage in the basement of what was then the Boys' Club or the gym floor, national acts like Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys also left their mark. Fetridge explains Pittsfield was an off-day stop for acts traveling between Albany and Boston.
“Our managers would have us sometimes be the head act for The Lovin’ Spoonful, Mitch Ryder and Detroit Wheels, [Bob] Dylan, Beach Boys and the Zombies,” Fetridge said. “These were all national acts. We’d have the opportunity to start off the show and it was phenomenal for a 13-year-old kid to be able to do that.”
By their early teenage years, Fetridge and other local rock n’ rollers were touring in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts, even putting out records at age 14. Some went on to play at Woodstock and places like Carnegie Hall. And some of those same musicians will be taking the stage this Sunday.
“There’s going to be about 90 musicians that still think they’re 16 and they’re going to play like they never played before,” Fetridge said. “We all learned music at a time where there was nothing to hide behind. No special effects. We used to have three guys plugged into one amp. Rooms with 800 young people and played our hearts out. It was a foundation I think for a lot of us to grow from.”
Fetridge is also putting together a documentary telling the story of how live rock n’ roll blossomed in clubs and school gymnasiums’ across the country. Ric Fetridge’s wife Wendy serves as stage manager for the event. She says the aging acts revert back to their teenage ways during the concert.
“I was getting ready to put him on stage and he was getting ready to go in the wrong direction,” she said. “I said ‘Teddy, you got to get back here.’ He said ‘Wendy, a girl’s asking for me.’ So I said ‘Alright, Teddy I’ll go over to the curtain with you and you can talk to her for a minute, but then you got to on stage.’ We pull back the curtain and here’s this little old grandmother standing there. But in Teddy’s eyes she’s a girl back to the day when she was 14 and he’s being looked at like he’s a guy back at 14 and it was just so funny.”
The concert starts at 1 p.m. on October 12th at the Boys' & Girls' Club of Pittsfield. Doors open at noon. Tickets are $15 at the door. Reduced advanced sale tickets are available.
