Watch the Trailer for Echo in the Canyon, the New Documentary on the 1960s Laurel Canyon Music Scene

Next month will mark the release of Echo in the Canyon. Direct­ed by Andrew Slater, the new doc­u­men­tary revis­its the 60s music scene that emerged in L.A.‘s Lau­rel Canyon–a fer­tile peri­od when folk went bril­liant­ly elec­tric. Find the brand new trail­er above, and a short sum­ma­ry below:

Echo In The Canyon cel­e­brates the explo­sion of pop­u­lar music that came out of LA’s Lau­rel Canyon in the mid-60s as folk went elec­tric and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buf­fa­lo Spring­field and The Mamas and the Papas gave birth to the Cal­i­for­nia Sound. It was a moment (1965 to 1967) when bands came to LA to emu­late The Bea­t­les and Lau­rel Canyon emerged as a hotbed of cre­ativ­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion for a new gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians who would soon put an indeli­ble stamp on the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music.

Fea­tur­ing Jakob Dylan, the film explores the begin­nings of the Lau­rel Canyon music scene. Dylan uncov­ers nev­er-before-heard per­son­al details behind the bands and their songs and how that music con­tin­ues to inspire today. Echo in the Canyon con­tains can­did con­ver­sa­tions and per­for­mances with Bri­an Wil­son, Ringo Starr, Michelle Phillips, Eric Clap­ton, Stephen Stills, David Cros­by, Gra­ham Nash, Roger McGuinn and Jack­son Browne as well as con­tem­po­rary musi­cians they influ­enced such as Tom Pet­ty (in his very last film inter­view), Beck, Fiona Apple, Cat Pow­er, Regi­na Spek­tor and Norah Jones.

The film will be released in LA on May 24th and in NYC on May 31st.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!