A long-planned documentary about the fabled 1970 "Festival Express" tour of Canada -- which featured Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Band and others -- is nearing completion, JAM! Music has learned.

In an interview from his home in New York City Monday, legendary rock producer Eddie Kramer told JAM! he has been intimately involved in preparing the soundtrack for the film, which has been in the works for 30 years.

Kramer, who was doing interviews to promote an upcoming four-CD box set of unreleased Jimi Hendrix Experience material, laughed when asked about the long-gestating documentary of the tour, which crossed Canada June 27 to July 3 in 1970.

The multi-band tour travelled in a 12-car train, with bands holding jam sessions in the specially-outfitted rail-cars between cities.

"You're asking about my current nemesis," Kramer chuckled when asked about "Festival Express."

"That may be a bit harsh, but (the documentary) has been an ongoing saga for three and a half years, and we are very close to making the final deal. It is going to happen. That's all I can say," Kramer said.

The original program for the tour described it as "one of the greatest assemblies of rock talent this country has ever seen -- or heard."

According to the program, other acts featured on the tour were Traffic, Buddy Guy, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, Mountain, Delaney And Bonnie, Ian And Sylvia Tyson's Great Speckled Bird, 10 Years After, Sha Na Na, Quebec rocker Charlebois, The Good Brothers, Mashmakhan, Ides Of March, Gallery, Happy Feeling, Parallel, Done On Bradstreet and Yellowstone.

Kramer said the documentary draws on 85 hours of footage shot both onstage and off. The performance sections were compiled from four-camera shoots of each act, many of the artists at their performing peak.

"It is terrific. It is a wonderful piece. I think people are going to get a real kick out of it. Janis (Joplin's) performance is wonderful. The Band is fabulous. Traffic are at the top of their game," he said.

"The footage was good. It is in pristine shape ... I am going to be massaging the sound and making it great."

Despite the great music onstage, behind-the-scenes things didn't go quite so smoothly for "Festival Express." Militant students tried to block the Toronto performance, and it only went ahead after The Dead organized some of the acts to play a free show at Coronation Park in Toronto.

The Dead's Garcia reportedly later called the tour "the best time I've had in rock n' roll," particularly the chance to mingle with other musicians.

"It was the musicians' train. There were no straight people. There wasn't any showbiz bulls---. There weren't any fans ... It was like a musicians convention with no public allowed," Garcia was quoted as saying after the tour.

Kramer, whose producing resume includes Hendrix, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, David Bowie and Eric Clapton, said he was not at liberty to say who would be producing or distributing the film.

He would only say that "a company in England" is working on putting the project together.

"There is a Canadian person and an English person involved," he said.

"I think the money has been raised. Now it is a question of getting all the legal clearances from all the various (acts). We're dealing with quite a few dead people, I'm afraid," he said.

"Once that is done, we are off to the races."

Kramer was initialy called in to the "Festival Express" project to produce some audio-visual "demos," excerpts from the film which were used to secure further funding to complete the project. He said the mixes for the final version of the film will be done in state-of-the-art, 5.1 surround sound, for both theatrical and home DVD release.

Kramer mixed the "demos" at MetalWorks Studio in Toronto, and said he intends to return here to complete the movie's sound mix.

He said he also recently completed a surround-sound mix of an extended cut of Hendrix's Isle Of Wight performance.

"He was in the (original) movie (of the Isle Of Wight Festival) for 20 minutes. We now have two hours, and we have 10 minutes of documentary footage just shot this year. It is just over two hours, and I mixed in 5.1 surround sound, which is enormous," Kramer said.

The new version of Hendrix's "Isle Of Wight" will likely air on network TV in the U.S. before being released to DVD home video.