Watching this morning’s local newscast, the weather theme was dire: apparently, according to the two longtime morning hosts, it was going to be “too darn hot.” Warnings were proffered about excessive heat—along with “important” tips thrown out on hydration and the need to keep cool. All of this could be summed up as, “you need to stay home, with everything shut up and the A/C blasting.” Sorry, but that’s not how I plan to roll today.
Back on Saturday, the southern Midcoast’s version of a local summer festival, the Bath Heritage Days, launched what is likely the most ambitious line-up of bands and musical performers I can recall in these parts. Hell, even Portland doesn’t have a music event this summer boasting five successive days and nearly 30 acts!
Five days of music in Bath.
We live in odd times. People seem more enamored with the 0s and 1s that live inside their hand-held screens. My assessment mainly comes from being there from the start of the programming on Saturday at noon, at Bath’s Waterfront Park to hear my first performer. Actually, it’s more than that, too. No matter where you go these days, people are usually staring at their phones more often than they are engaging with their fellow humans.
The first musician I got to hear and watch perform was the talented Will Bradford (who also has a band, SeeeopleS). I enjoyed hearing Will with just his guitar, fulfilling his role as troubadour. There were about 20 of us gathered in this idyllic setting along the Kennebec River.
I’d first received an inkling that this year’s Heritage Days (the celebration has been going on since before I was in high school in the late 1970s) were offering to be different when I’d read an article in our regional local news weekly, The Forecaster. The piece (likely culled from a news release the paper received) indicated that this year’s festival would be highlighting a “broader musical lineup” than the usual assortment of “amateur-ish cover acts” (my take on prior festivals and their music offerings).
The article offered up the name of the event coordinator. It sprang from out of my past. The name? None other than Johnny Lomba. I know most people are so deadened to the past and even current events happening in their communities (let alone the places just miles from where they live), but for perhaps the two or three people who read my blog and have a sense of Maine’s rock music past, they’ll recall that it was Lomba who was the driving force booking acts at a place called The Skinny, on Portland’s Congress Street.
If you remember the venue, you’ll also recollect that it was housed in what had been The Fine Arts Theater, a porn emporium on Congress Street, back before that section of what is now known as The Arts District began getting a makeover. To have pulled off what Lomba managed to do back then demonstrates his entrepreneurial nature and vision of things prior to the crowd arriving. Or something like that.
I learned that Lomba is now in Bath. Since I’m still finding my way around as an official resident of Brunswick, I don’t pretend to know the history of the shipbuilding “city” that lies just north and is my neighbor. That’s probably why I didn’t know Lomba was a Bath native. I also just learned (in the course of following his adventures with Bath Heritage Days) that he’s opened a new eatery along Bath’s quaint Front Street (one block up from the Kennebec) called No Coward Soul. This is in what was the former Solo Bistro space, a place that foodies venturing to Bath and who had meal at that previous eclectic restaurant might recall. All this to say that Lomba seems like he’s not lost any of his prior verve and flair for making things happen.
One theme I’m picking-up in the bands and performers he’s curated for the festival in Bath is that many of the Portland-based artists likely date back to when Lomba was working his booking magic in Maine’s closest approximation to a city, in the late 1990s to the early-to-mid aughts. This idea presented itself to me yesterday afternoon while sitting on the shady bank and being blown away by Dan Capaldi (performing as Sea Level). I also recall Bradford in his between-song-banter on Saturday, when he’d mentioned that SeepeopleS had been around “for 18 years.” I did the math then, and again, yesterday.
Sea Level (Dan Capaldi) and Zach Jones perform at Bath’s Heritage Days.
“That’s it,” I thought, in answer to my curiosity about Lomba, the festival, and his booking ambitions. Bradford would have just been getting rolling in Portland’s close-knit music community around the time when Lomba was booking acts like Bad Brains and other nationally-known indie and punk artists at The Skinny. As I’ve been ruminating about all of this for the past few days, I ran across what I thought was a really great interview with Capaldi at a website I’d forgotten about, Factory Portland.
Sometimes I think my blogging is akin to that one individual sitting in their room with a four-track, laying down songs and accompaniment, simply for the sheer act of creation. Maybe that’s why Lomba’s ambitious music programming has resonated with me and why I’ve found myself sitting or standing in my usual spot along the Kennebec. It might even be somewhat connected to a writer who left his acoustic boxed up in its case for years, taking it out two months ago and realizing that I still played as badly as ever. Or, it might be simply the continuation of months of ongoing grief at losing Mark and finding that seeing live music helps to mitigate a bit of the sadness (and senselessness) of having my only son ripped from me by the actions of a woman who I can’t think about or else I’ll lose my mind.
All of this nostalgia about music in my home state makes me recall that something else happened with me around the time that Lomba began booking bands at The Skinny. I was in my late 30s at the time and like happens with a lot of people, I began going out to shows less often. Bands like SeepeopleS and Sea Level sadly never made it onto my local music radar, or if they did, it was probably due to mention by Chris Busby or another writer at The Bollard (one of the musical sponsors during Bath’s Heritage Days).
Yes, I did make it out occasionally during this stretch to see old friend Jose Ayerve and Spouse, The Coming Grass (and Sara Cox), and even Phantom Buffalo. But I seemed oblivious to so many other bands and artists. The shows I attended were more-often-than-not at Space Gallery, which was the venue that took up the mantle of adventure that Lomba laid down when The Skinny closed.
One name I have to mention because like Lomba’s, it jumped off the music program for the festival was Chicky Stoltz. Stoltz is another local musician/entrepreneur/food guy who I remember well from that prior time.
Stoltz opened Chicky’s in Westbrook long before the hipsters even knew there were communities beyond Portland’s West End. They now Uber out there from Portland—their version of “slumming,” as it’s hard to get Brooklyn-ites moving to Portland to leave the three-block radius around their high-end Portland apartments. But I’ll leave gentrification and how the city’s changed since the days of The Skinny and Chicky’s, and let the topic lie for now.
Before plant-based veganism, Chicky’s was the only place I’d ever found north of the Mason-Dixon that knew how to do chicken-fried steak in the manner intended. Of course, Stoltz was a musician as well as a cook, so he booked some damn fine music into what was the closest thing to a juke joint that Portland had then and has existed, since. Does anyone remember seeing Sleepy LaBeef at Chickys?
Sadly, I missed Stoltz’s solo performance at the library bandstand on Saturday afternoon. I’d headed home earlier than I intended due to my balky back. But on Sunday, after hitting the beach at Reid State Park, visiting Five Islands for the blessing of the fleet at Five Islands Lobster Co., Miss Mary and I stopped-off in Bath and I got to hear Stoltz lead his three piece through the second half of their Sunday set on Bath’s waterfront main stage. Somehow, it felt like I’d made my way around the outer rim of some sort of circle, from a place in space and time where I’d have dinner at his Westbook restaurant and road house, and stay for blues, other roots music, or local indie rock, afterwards.
Today will be Day #4 for me heading out and seeing (and hearing) musicians brought into Bath courtesy of someone who thinks the town deserves something more than musical mediocrity and the usual fare. Not sure if the crowds will be substantially larger than they’ve been. Maybe tonight a few more people will find their way, down by the river, to catch the remaining members of Boston’s Morphine, headlining tonight. I’m excited to catch Dave Gutter’s Armies prior, and probably someone mid-afternoon.
To hell with dire pronouncements of the pending heat and humidity. I’ll bring my water bottle to stay hydrated. I actually got a foreshadow of this in North Carolina last week. Not only did I catch Steve Malkmus and the Jicks, but I also got to experience walking around in 100-degree heat and it didn’t do me in. This Northerner can handle it being hot. It sure beats freezing my ass off in mid-January, and I am one that prefers feeling my music in the open air to programming on Spotify.