In May of 1970, United States troops illegally invaded Cambodia, four student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University, in Ohio and at home the US was facing revolt on college campuses...Civil unrest was a buzz word.  At the same time, Dave Lewis, a 42-year old gentleman farmer/bail bondsman a small mid-western town with a population of around a thousand (if you counted all the cats, dogs, and chickens) decided to hold his own personal "Woodstock". There was one slight difference... Woodstock was basically a ‘free concert’. Lewis learned from this. He was not into the movement, he was into the money.  The promoter was planning a three day rock-n-roll festival on his 320-acre farm. He hired a local motorcycle gang called the Grim Reapers to police the grounds. Basically, hiring the same undesirables you would want to keep out of a music festival and all of their cohorts. Lewis hired college freshman Irving Azoff to manage the rock festival. It was obvious even then that young Azoff was the only local band manager that could potentially create something of this magnitude successful. Considering he had fifteen bands in his stable available to play the festival at a "reduced rate" didn’t hurt his chances either.  Included in his local line-up were Michael McDonald, (later of Doobie Brothers fame), Dan Fogelberg and REO Speedwagon. The headliner band list included blues legend BB King, Canned Heat, Country Joe and the Fish, Butterfield Blues Band, Rick Nielsen and Fuse, New Colony 6 and the Amboy Dukes featuring a young Motor City Madman,  among thirty odd bands that played during the three day festival.

The local State's Attorney served a court ordered injunction, outlawing the Heyworth Rock Festival the day before the widely advertised festival was to begin. By the time it was finally served, thousands of hippies, freaks and longhairs had already gathered in the community.  Festival goers, many who didn't have much money, let alone a place to sleep, sought refuge. Residents of Heyworth, (whose idea of hippies was the Charles Manson family), awoke finding people, some naked, asleep on their front lawns, on their porches, in their cars and tool sheds.  The tide had hit Heyworth.

When it was all over, there was a warrant for the promoter’s arrest. The courts ordered Lewis to turn over the profits from the illegal event and seized his bank accounts. By then, the farmer had disappeared with his teenage secretary and two sleeping bags stuffed with cash.  He was never heard from again. Leaving his hometown, his wife and child, the family farm and a one year jail sentence.  

In recognition of the fortieth anniversary of the festival in 2010, film maker RC Raycraft will finally release the long rumored documentary. “Its been an investment” Raycraft says describing the film.  Ultimately, its the foggy memories and mysteries surrounding the festival that holds the fascination for generations of fans.  To some, glorified images of a long lost festival weekend forty years ago.  To others, the realities of a wanted fugitive, 60,000 filthy trespassers and a criminal case that to this day remained unsolved. Either way, as shown in the film, everybody involved with the illegal music festival remembers it more fondly as the years go by. “I was personally intrigued by the mysteries and scandals surrounding the festival... I wanted to find out what really did happen on the Lewis farm that weekend in 1970” says Raycraft.  “I did the principle interviews for the twenty fifth anniversary as rookie film maker investigating an unsolved mystery.  Fortunately, I directed and edited Kickapoo fifteen years later at forty.  Let’s just say I’m a little more of a well seasoned storyteller now, than I was back then”. 

Find out for yourself how a middle-aged farmer and his chronies, several college students and a motorcycle gang pulled off one of the last successful rock festivals of the generation.  How did they pull it off? “Barely”, says the director.

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