BETHEL – Eric Frances is not one to rest on his laurels.

Ask about Bethel Woods Center for the Arts about being named the Best Amphitheater in the country by USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards, and you get appreciation mixed with a bit of restlessness.

“It’s a really nice feather in our cap knowing that we try to be the best, so to get that status feels wonderful,” said Frances. “But over here, we are overachievers; we’re already working on the next thing that makes it even better.”

So when a Gen Z team member pitches the idea of disc golf as the next thing, Frances, who just turned 49 and suggests he’d end up with rotator cuff surgery if he tried the sport, says while this might not suit the aging Boomers, it could appeal to young campers. Have a historic photo at each hole with content to let them know where they are on the course, in relation to the overall historic site. 

Now in his fifth year as CEO after more than a dozen years as CFO and general manager, Frances knows that in order to maintain the vision of Alan Gerry, the hometown hero and cable magnate who built Bethel Woods, he needs to preserve the legacy of the 1969 Woodstock festival and what happened on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm that August summer. 

That mission, said Frances, is behind the initiatives to expand Bethel Woods, now in its 19th season as a nonprofit cultural center with an award-winning museum, multifaceted campground, studios for creative learning, indoor Event Gallery and yes, home to the Pavilion, the top outdoor music venue in the country. 

Talking exclusively with the Democrat, Frances said the key is remembering the Summer of ’69. 

Barry Lewis: It seems you always try to work the message of what happened at Woodstock

Eric Frances: That’s one of the things we do with a lot of our kids’ programs, integrate that music, civil rights, all these things in the ‘60s, it was such a rich decade of content, we try to work it in. When I interview people who want to work here and they’re in their early 20s, they don’t know what Woodstock is. They might know because they Googled it for their job interview, but they’re not sure what it is, not as prominent as it used to be, which is our job. Keep that candle lit. 

BL: Make it meaningful so they want to come back – even if it’s not about music?

EF: One of the things we’re tasked to do here is recreate in our own way the same type of things that happened in ‘69 that created a memory or a life event that people are bringing their kids and grandkids back to see here. They’re coming back and saying, `this was a defining moment in my life in 1969 and it happened here.’ Our job is to create those same things for the younger people to do, and hopefully, 60 years from now, they’re bringing their grandkids to the site because I came to the Spartan Race here in 2025.

BL: What’s the next thing that makes Bethel Woods even better?

EF: We’re focused on how to use the site and what happened here, use it to amplify the message of peace. I don’t mean that in a way that we want to come out and take sides on huge global issues. But is this a place where people can come and experience peace, or where people who don’t agree with each other can take a walk and find common ground. Working on some programs around that. We feel like that’s what happened here in ‘69. We know from oral histories that people left here saying they left different from when they were here in ‘69; it kind of refocused and changed how they viewed the world.

BL: Sounds like the Camp David of Woodstock? 

EF: Absolutely. I think most would agree that there are a couple of things that make humans human; one of those things is music. What we saw in ‘69 was people here in what was not the most pleasant of weather, and all these situations and running out of food and chaos, nobody started rioting. That’s something unique to the site, the history, and the vibe.

BL: You also talk about fine-tuning the camping experience.

EF: I think we would consider ways to grow and expand it, in the woods versus in the fields, more RVs and more cabins. Part of the reason why camping is important is because that’s the first couple of steps of getting us to use the original field for something big. We know our roads can’t handle 30,000 people coming in and out for a 4-to-6-hour period. Getting campers here, taking that traffic off the road, gives us the ability to do something bigger on the original field one day. 

BL: Will there be push-back to use the field?

EF: I don’t think so. When you talk to some of the historians, reenacting on the Gettysburg field is fine. So, doing a concert or a festival that’s big on the field, we’d just be honoring what happened there.

BL: You’ve gotten people to share what happened to them on that field.

EF: The oral history project has been huge with people reconnecting their story with us, their history with each other. People on one side of the country telling a story, and Neal (Hitch, Museum Senior Curator) hearing and reconnecting people on this side of the coast. It’s been great. The museum will be 20 years old shortly, it’s going to need a refresh at some point and while we know what the story was, there are probably quite a few more things you want to say about what happened, now that we have people’s voices on what they saw, what they experienced, what they heard. I think that it becomes part of the legacy of the museum, where that content becomes available for people to hear, and because history repeats itself, it’s probably a good thing that they hear it.

BL: How is BW dealing with federal cuts to the arts and humanities?

EF: There’s definitely going to be a difficult climate for some of that funding that the museum has received in the past, and the trickle-down effect of federal money to state money is an issue. Our hope is that many of the foundations that we work with and some of our really wonderful donors who are supporting the programs will understand that it has an impact. It definitely will have an impact on the decisions we make, and the goal is to forge ahead, not step back.

BL: Despite the top honor, it seems the experience of Bethel Woods is more than just sitting under the pavilion, more than just the music. 

EF: It’s a very special place. There’s a vibe. You almost immediately relax when you start walking around the venue. I think part of what our job is, there should be so many things for you to do that it’s not just the one visit for the museum or the one visit for the concert. Or you can do all these things in one visit because it’s that bucket list trip that had you drive across the country for in your RV. Part of it is what does our county and the region need in terms of programming for our kids, that tied to exactly what we want to do, which is to engage kids in music and art, because we know that that helps with graduation rates, it helps with social/emotional learning. We know all the great things that come with exposure to the arts, so hopefully, somebody who comes to a concert realizes we have those programs. Buys a second home and then becomes part of our community for a long time.