The Bangor Daily News from Bangor, Maine • 25

I Lava heats up Jackie will publishedC7 MaineStyle Bangor flatly Neuis PAGE C5 FRIDAY APRIL 25 1997 University of Maine Off Campus annual festival has grown in scope Country musician makes hall of fame Allan McHale to join state organization 25 Years Bumstock but its mission to celebrate spring and local talent remains the same By Jeff Tuttle Special to the NEWS By Dale McGarrigle Of the NEWS Staff After 45 years of performing throughout Maine Allan McHale will join many of his inspirations and friends in the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame At the induction ceremony Sunday in South Paris McHale a Bangor native and Tim Farrell of Weeks Mills will become the latest members of the hall McHale is a mainstay of both the Old-Time Radio Gang a country band and the Northeast Winds an Irish group McHale 64 is excited to be joining Gene Hooper and Betty Gribbin with whom he tours and Smokey Valley and Dick Monroe two of his fellow musicians in the Radio Gang in the hall an absolute thrill for said McHale who now lives in Kennebunk the highest McHale is a mainstay of both the Old-Time Radio Gang and Northeast Winds honor a country musician can get in this This high honor is a long way from first paying job in 1952 when he received $150 for playing one night at the American Legion in Orono McHale who sings and plays guitar mandolin and banjo pointed to two influences that headed him in the direction of a musical career First was his mother mother was an excellent he recalled had a wealth of knowledge about the old songs which are the ones still performing McHale was also a product of the times in which he grew up He got to listen to such musicians as Hooper Ray and Ann Little Smiling Bill Waters and Doc Williams and the Border Riders the late and early Bangor was a hotbed of live music with four or five performances a day on he said See McHale C6 Col 6 Bumstock has come a long way since a group of off-campus students living in a circle of cabins on the fringes of the University of Maine campus had some bands play at an outdoor party 25 years ago Today and tomorrow more than 20 bands will take the main stage at Bumstock Field behind Somerset Hall on the Orono campus the fruition of months of planning and preparation by the Off Campus Board which has been responsible for Bumstock for more than a decade From their crowded bustling office on the third floor of the Memorial Union Off Campus Board co-chairmen Shannon Lundin and Kean Brown make final preparations for the festival While the event has grown Lundin said the message remains the same a wonderful feeling behind this and the volunteers have worked hard to put on a quality Lundin said a celebration of spring and a celebration ami support of local Local bands including Chiaband Brown Hornet and Brew will be joined by some of New best up-and-coming groups Boogieman a seven-man funk band from Boston will head to Orono to play for a crowd that at its peak last year numbered 5000 people Jiggle the Handle of Boston is the headliner for Friday night Motel Brown a Burlington Vt reggae band will wrap up Saturday performances did try to cover as many genres as we could and bring a broad spectrum of musical Brown said While the history of Bumstock is fuzzy at best music has been a constant at the popular festival since its beginnings Until the early 1980s a circle of somewhat primitive cabins were located at Cabins Field where Bumstock began in the spring of 1972 After the cabins alternative living space for off-campus students were relocated Bumstock remained they took the cabins out when flavor began to said Scott Wilkerson a former OCB vice president in 1987 started to move away from the local flavor It became the thing to Throughout the years every Off Campus Board president has had a different Bumstock experience Mike Scott now a microcomputer specialist at the university served as OCB president during the 1987-1988 school year At that time Bumstock was still at Cabins Field a location that was as much symbolic as it was traditional according to Scott was sort of a bridge between the students and the he said then it has evolved into more of an internal campus event It used to be a lot more inclusive of the community than it is now Bumstock was at Cabins Field the townspeople could see it and they could hear Scott said they could either include themselves in See Bumstock C6 Col 1 Shawn Rice Illustration Allan McHale UM chamber festival born of determination Beatroots bring world music to Maine Bar Harbor group blends traditional folk melodies with heavy rhythms a festival of cello and chamber music which begins tonight with a public concert by Romanian cellist Mihai Tetel and continues Saturday when he will present a full day of master classes to music students from around the country To make this all happen Roscetti had to pull some strings Not only did the event require major organizational skills but a real eye for digging up money Because Tetel is a member ot the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Roscetti tapped See Chamber OS Col 1 By Alicia Anstead Of the NEWS Staff Diane Roscetti has a plaque in her office at the University of Maine School of Performing Arts where she is associate director people are ordinary people with an extraordinary amount of it reads and few sayings could be more appropriate for this woman who is both musician and professor at a state school where budgetary cuts have forced ordinary academics to make extraordinary decisions Roscetti teaches cello organizes much of the chamber music activity on campus and fits administrative duties in there somewhere too Her space is part studio part classroom part office More recently it has also been the planning site for ager and producer of their CD characterizes their music as that finds its roots in Eastern European folk songs Caribbean calypso and reggae sounds and Brazilian rhythms for starters He marvels at the complexity of the music I find amazing is that four people from the coast of Maine had the guts to release an album on which the first cut is an a capella arrangement of a Macedonian folk tune said Raymond mean it exactly easy The music offers a sometimes startling cohesion of rhythms and deceptively simple melodies On Az Is a Hungarian devotional solitary flutes set a See Beatroots C6 Col 1 By Mary Wells Pope Special to the NEWS For the Bar Harbor-based Beat-roots the gypsy caravan is ready to roll Since the Day release of their first album the these four coast-of-Mainers have staged their world-beat party almost every weekend dazzling audiences with traditional folk melodies energized by heavy rhythms the has been the most-played album on Blue WERU for seven weeks straight and the tide shows no sign of turning: The Beatroots have 25 dates booked already for the summer months and anticipate a full schedule for the rest of the year Joel Raymond the man The debut album the has been the moat-played album on WERU tor seven weeks straight (Kim Corey Photo) -L i i.