Pictured: from left to right: Mark Schaffel, Michael Visconti and Miles Aubrey. Photo by John Jones.

The counterculture movement of the 1960s and ‘70s is alive and well at Florida Studio Theatre. Catch the organization’s hit summer cabaret, The Music of Laurel Canyon, this weekend before it closes out on Sunday, September 1. The hit rock revue, which was extended back in July, was created by Michael Visconti back in 2022 for the Casa Mañana Theatre in Texas and features his band, Buffalo Rome, which has been performing for nearly 20 years.

The show is in many ways a time machine to a unique period in American history. In the mid-60s and ‘70s, the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles became a hub for the counterculture movement of the era, a place where legendary rock musicians would call home and go on to write some of the most legendary music in the rock and roll canon. Members of bands such as Buffalo Springfield, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills & Nash congregated with musicians like Jim Morrison and Joni Mitchell, creating music that expressed the attitude of the era and would live on long after the careers of its creators.

“The songs that you’ll find in this cabaret will really hit our audience from that timeframe. They’re gonna know all those songs and they have meaning. They tell you musically and historically where we were in the country and what was happening to us in the world,” Associate Artist and Literary Manager Catherine Randazzo. “They’re gonna start out in 1965 and hit you with all of the songs in which people were looking for meaning. The draft was happening, Vietnam was happening and the Laurel Canyon group created their own little coven of music creation and it just took off. It was like Woodstuck but only on the West Coast.”

Randazzo credits some of the music’s long-lasting impact because of its outward look and interrogation of the world around the musicians. “I don’t listen to pop music as much as I used to, but I find that a lot of pop music today is about the artist themselves. The music they write is about themselves and how they feel the world treats them,” says Randazzo. “Back then, these guys weren’t talking about themselves. They were talking about the world around them.”

June 18 to September 1, John C. Court Cabaret, 1265 First St, Sarasota, 941-366-9000.

Pictured: from left to right: Mark Schaffel, Michael Visconti and Miles Aubrey. Photo by John Jones.

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