Festivals - Part 19

Kickapoo Creek

On Memorial Day weekend, 1970, a rock festival was held on a farm in central Illinois near the town of Heyworth.  The festival was billed as "Incident at Kickapoo Creek," featuring 30 rock groups including B.B. King, Canned Heat, Country Joe and the Fish, and REO Speedwagon.  Kickapoo Creek was a creek running through the farm.

In the year following Woodstock, it was the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and everyone wanted to hold their own Woodstock.  Illinois was no exception.

The concert organizer was L. David Lewis, son of the owner of the farm.  Like many other rock concerts, locals sought to block the event, and a judge granted an injunction to stop it.  Unlike other rock concerts, where promoters moved the event somewhere else, in this case, Lewis simply ignored the judge's injunction and held the concert anyway.  It was attended by an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 people.

Like many rock concerts in that era, some people in the audience got naked, and of course, people skinny-dipped in the creek.

I mean, what else would you do in a creek at a rock concert?

Many in the audience had never seen public nudity before, and it made an impression.  As one person says in this video clip, "I think the music was secondary.  The naked thing was first."

And, like other rock festivals, there was mud.

Here, naked people are climbing up a hill of mud.  Why?

To slide down the mud hill, of course.

Nudity was common enough that nobody was paying much attention to this naked guy right in front of the stage.

The aftermath of the festival was unusual.  L. David Lewis, the concert organizer, was arrested when he showed up at a bank to deposit duffel bags full of cash, the proceeds from the concert.  He was tried for criminal contempt because he had ignored the judge's injunction not to hold the concert.  The judge fined him $10,000 and sentenced him to a year in jail.  On appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that because of the severity of the sentence, he should have had a jury trial, and it ordered a new trial.  That never happened.  Lewis fled the county (presumably with his money), never to return.