Here is the Wavy Gravy feature that appears in the current issue of Relix. Also, be sure to check out Pre-Wavy Gravy: Selected Stops Along Hugh Romney’s Road.

When I arrive at the Hog Farm collective’s Berkeley, Calif. compound on a sunny, late April morning, I find Wavy Gravy in the living room of the large, rambling brown-shingle main house on the phone, cheerfully telling stories about himself to whomever is at the other end.

As I kill time examining a wall that’s plastered with hundreds of snapshots of Wavy, other Hog Farm folks, assorted hippies, kids who have gone to his rustic-but-hip summer camp Camp Winnarainbow, and God-knows-who-else, Wavy is enthusiastically uncorking little stories and one-liners that he’s probably told thousands of times: How Hugh Romney acquired his Wavy Gravy moniker (for no particular reason, B.B. King called him that backstage at the Texas Pop Festival in 1970); the reasons he took to dressing like a clown (here’s one – the police are less likely to beat up a clown at a demonstration); the secret of staying married to the same woman for 45 years ( “Don’t get divorced!” ); some riffs on Woodstock (the event and film of the same name that made him famous); and in a much less jokey vein, he gets in a hearty plug for SEVA, the charity organization that he co-founded 33 years ago dedicated to eradicating cataract blindness in parts of Asia and Africa.

When he hangs up the phone he remarks with mild excitement, "That was Vanity Fair. "

Why does Vanity Fair – prestige magazine of the Hollywood and Manhattan elites, filled to the brim with ads for Dior and Dolce & Gabbana and expensive wristwatches and more expensive cars – want to talk to Wavy? Because he’s Wavy – the funny and articulate Woodstock veteran, the unabashed old school hippie clown, the tie-dye-clad humanitarian who has stayed true to his ‘60s peace-and-love ideals and devoted his life to service in a way that few of his peers have. Wavy gives great quotes, as they say, and he isn’t a bit shy about spinning a good story about the amazing people he’s encountered and the events he’s been a part of. But why all of the attention now?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. On May 15, Wavy turned 75, and he celebrated his birthday as he has for many years – putting on a benefit concert for SEVA in the Bay Area featuring a slew of his musical friends such as Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Chris Robinson, jamband pioneers Zero (with Steve Kimock), bluegrassers Hot Buttered Rum, and many others. Then, further capitalizing on the 75th birthday hoopla, he also put on a show at the Beacon Theatre in New York City with a lineup that included Jackson Browne, Crosby & Nash, Jorma Kaukonen, Dr. John, Buffy St. Marie, Bruce Hornsby, Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco and more.

The list of folks who have played for Wavy’s benefits through the years is long and varied, which says much about him and the esteem he has earned from socially conscious musicians everywhere.

The other news peg this year is this fall’s DVD release of Michelle Esrick’s exceptional (and critically acclaimed) 2009 documentary about Wavy, Saint Misbehavin’. The film, a decade in the making, artfully traces the Hugh Romney/Wavy Gravy story from his roots in the East Coast poetry, jazz and folk scenes of the late ‘50s, to the early days of the California counterculture, the creation of the Hog Farm, Woodstock (of course), the cross-Asia bus adventure that led to the founding of SEVA years later, colorful political shenanigans that include running Pigasus the pig and Nobody for President, and his more recent work with SEVA and at Camp Winnarainbow. Esrick combines interviews with Wavy, his wife Jahanara (nee Bonnie Jean Beecher) and such friends/admirers as SEVA co-founders Dr. Larry Brilliant and Ram Dass, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Weir, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Odetta and others, with copious archival footage and a soundtrack that spans the decades with tracks by the Dead, Dylan, Sly, Joni Mitchell, Willie Nelson, Ben Harper and many more.

Like Wavy himself, Saint Misbehavin’ is both funny and inspirational. Showtime Networks is also planning to put the doc on its schedule in the not-too-distant future, so that will give the film more exposure, too.

The song that plays at the very end of Saint Misbehavin’_, during the credits, is also destined to have a life of its own. “Basic Human Needs” is a catchy humanitarian call-to-arms written by Wavy and performed on the soundtrack by a typical cast of his talented friends. “It’s the ‘We are the World’ of SEVA!” Wavy tells me. “We’re in the process of getting the agreements to turn it into a charity single. I guess the people who are playing at the Beacon benefit are going to sing it for me at the end of the show. I think I’m not supposed to know about it,” he adds with conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll act surprised!”

_Photo by Bob Minkin

We’ve moved upstairs in the house now, past a little room containing a shrine packed with hundreds of sacred and silly objects – as befits this holy goofball – and into his personal lair, which is also stuffed with memorabilia, books and odd artifacts. Jahanara pops in briefly to say hi and give him a good morning peck – they were up late watching the Royal Wedding, of all things, and are a bit sleep-deprived.

Wavy, who has endured severe back pain for decades and doesn’t move easily these days, sprawls on a bed in one corner, directly beneath the word “smile” written in small script on the ceiling, and settles into storyteller mode. Almost any topic will elicit a long, detailed yarn filled with names and places and, as often as not, a punch line of some sort.

As he spins his tales, his eyes are frequently closed, his head raised toward the ceiling as if he’s homing in on the anecdote, most of which he has memorized from constant retelling – he’s been a press favorite since Woodstock – but still tells them enthusiastically, peppered with hoarse laughter and a flash of his rainbow-toothed smile.

I wonder aloud how he feels about the “Saint” tag in the title of the film about him and whether it’s difficult to remain humble in the face of near constant adulation, bordering on hagiography. He pauses reflectively.

“To be honest, whenever some uses the ‘s’ word around me, I get really nervous. [Bob] Weir is the one who started it, about a decade ago. Michelle [Esrick the filmmaker] got it from Weir. Obviously, I don’t take it seriously. I screw up like everyone and there are plenty of people around who don’t let me get away with stuff.” He looks across the room to the windowsill. “See that little piece of cardboard?” he asks me. “Read what is says.”

I pick up the small, laminated document and read the handwritten message:

On the 22nd of January in the year of our Lord 1970 in the year of the dog as the moon moves full into Leo we the undersigned do solemnly pledge our union of separate beings and souls to the glory and unfoldment of the great whole.…We shall direct our primary efforts toward the emancipation of the planet starting with the purification of our individual entities and moving to the land around us. We is just a bunch of fuck-ups – lawd knows we’ll do our best – together we are you. One step at a time we mount the rainbow singing peace to all beings. Yes, I am going for it. My name is: …

The first of six names, all signed in blood, is Wavy Gravy. He’s quiet for a moment and then quietly repeats, “We is just a bunch of fuck-ups,” then laughs.

Maybe so, and he sure has a truckload self-deprecating stories to prove it. Ask him about the seagull shitting on his Third Eye during a profound acid trip in Del Mar, Calif.

Or the time he drove to Arizona to be with a Native American Hopi tribe because he and his pals were convinced that California was going to fall into the sea: “We said, ‘We’re here!’ You see, it was written in the Book of the Hopi that in the condition of a planetary emergency, all the races would come together on this mesa in Hopi country. But when we showed up, they said, ‘Uh, you’re kind of early. ’ But they took pity on me and I got to hang out there a bit.”

Not surprisingly, a lot of Wavy’s stories from the ‘60s and early ‘70s involve psychedelics. It’s not a secret that he was involved with the Acid Tests and subsequent adventures in that world (though he will tell anyone who will listen that contrary to what his good friend Tom Wolfe wrote in The Electric Kool-Acid Test, he was not responsible for mixing the super-potent LSD that caused so many freak-outs at the notorious Watts Acid Test in March ‘66).

But today, in the midst of his harrowing and hilarious dope stories, he says seriously, “I have to be very careful what I say because, remember, I run a children’s camp.” He notes that even pot is verboten at Camp Winnarainbow; he and the counselors there are all strict. “We’ve even fired people for [pot],” he notes.

Camp Winnarainbow is a source of great pride for Wavy. Each summer, hundreds of kids head to Black Oak Ranch in rural Laytonville, a few hours north of San Francisco, to spend a couple or a few weeks at what is billed as “a circus and performing arts camp” featuring “stilts, trapeze, drama, juggling, unicycle, martial arts, swimming, singing, dancing, hot cocoa, the labyrinth, hanging out and much, much more.” (There’s also a one-week adult camp every year.)

Wavy talks to the campers at the beginning of each day: “I get to hit them with some Lao-Tzu, maybe followed by Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. And in the evening time, we have talent shows and dances and various kinds of performances. Creative imagination is pure spirit coming out and dancing you around. Surrender to that and amazing things will happen.”

Though some of the campers are the sons and daughters of counterculture and rock and roll types, many are not; and for years the camp has provided scholarships to both homeless kids and low income Native Americans living on reservations.

Wavy and friends at the Fillmore in 1994 – photo by Bob Minkin

In Saint Misbehavin’, there’s a poignant scene in which Wavy is sitting around the kitchen table of the Berkeley house talking with some of the kids who were raised in the Hog Farm commune – including his 30-year-old son Jordan (actual birth name: Howdy Do-Good Gravy Tomahawk Truckstop Romney).

They tell fond stories of a life spent in a huge extended family outside the American mainstream for better and worse. What are the Hog Farm kids doing today? “Actually, a lot of them help me run camp, helping turn out kids with a good take on political and spiritual reality,” Wavy says. “Jordan runs my website and my Facebook and does a heckuva job.”

I ask him whether his experience with kids today matches the media portrait of a self-absorbed generation obsessed with social media and not engaged with the world. "No, no, these are great kids! We have 700 kids a summer and… there’s a line from [actor/poet] Steven Ben Israel I like: These kids make me ‘nostalgic for the future!’ If you look at young people around the world, social media has got a lot of them chatting about how to make things better.

“It’s a two-edged sword, and I think the cutting edge is young people have discovered you put thousands of people on the streets and you get ignored, whereas electronically you can maybe make a difference. They’ve found a whole new way to organize and do things, which blows my mind. They have a different head and they’re going about things in different ways.”

Being a well-connected counterculture legend certainly has its advantages. When he turned 70, Google and Sun Microsystems offered to send Wavy and Jahanara anywhere in the world – they chose Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia, reputedly among the great spiritual Power Spots on the planet, and also stopped to visit their old friend Owsley Stanley near Cairns, off the Great Barrier Reef, on the way.

Earlier this year, Wavy was flown into Maui to celebrate Ram Dass’ 80th birthday, and when we spoke, a trip to the Bahamas for a “peace yoga” retreat was looming. He was also starting to get excited about his annual appearance at the Gathering of the Vibes festival in Connecticut this summer.

He could probably fill every day with the invites that he receives to come to this or that event or benefit, yet he still makes a point to keep his main focus on his Hog Farm family, SEVA and Camp Winnarainbow. For someone who has spent so much of his life in chaotic and unpredictable situations – living on hippie buses for years at a time, staying active in various social and political issues, “being blown by the wind” (as he puts it) since he was a teenager – he is amazingly together.
And there is something reassuring about knowing that Wavy Gravy is in the world, spreading joy and doing good works. This is the guy who wanted to provide “breakfast in bed for 400,000” at Woodstock, and he still wants to take care of us – and make sure we take care of each other.

A little after midnight, on his 75th birthday, Wavy is presiding over a SEVA benefit at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond (north of Berkeley), clearly visible near the back of the stage, sitting on a gilded throne dressed in a star-covered clown suit, wearing his trademark red nose, being greeted by well-wishers and occasionally getting up to blow some bubbles toward the musicians – and maybe do a little jig.

Onstage, Mickey Hart’s dynamic band for the occasion – including Steve Kimock, ALO drummer Dave Brogan, former Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools, former Rent singer Crystal Monee Hall and a few others – is unleashing one giant trance/dance groove after another and many in the crowd of close to 4,000 are dancing deliriously.

All of a sudden, Wavy appears in the sea of dancers, elevated on another throne being wheeled through the cavernous hall behind a small parade of clowns. A spotlight follows his journey across the dance floor, and he waves and smiles at people as they cheer for him, and the beat from the stage gets bigger and stronger.

Soon, more than 50 people fill the stage, playing instruments, pounding hand drums, shaking anything that rattles, clapping and dancing; and the groove turns into a recognizable song – it’s “Jingo,” all right, but the happy throng onstage is singing different words: “Wa-veeeeeee, Wavy G!” which they repeat over and over as the crowd eagerly joins in the chant.

Finally, near the back of the hall, hundreds of balloons float down from the ceiling and bury Wavy and the crowd surging around him in bouncing dots of color. In the delirium that follows, Wavy’s procession somehow makes it back to the stage, and once the “Wavy G” jam finally ends, everyone in the place serenades our lovable psychedelic relic with a spirited, off-key “Happy Birthday,” as people continue to bat the every which way.

Then, it’s back to the dance party. For the next hour and a half, Bob Weir presides over a constantly mutating band of players who lay down a selection of Grateful Dead favorites – Kimock, Hart, Mark Karan, Chris Robinson, John Molo, Jeff Chimenti, Dave Schools, Henry Kaiser, Barry “The Fish” Melton, Janis Joplin’s old sax player Snooky Flowers; a whole heap of talent kicking out the jams one more time – for Wavy.

And there’s Wavy, back on his stage throne, hugging friends as they come by, bopping his head in time with the music when the spirit moves him, a near-constant smile on his big round clown face. Not a bad way to celebrate three-quarters of a century.