READFIELD — On Saturday, Dec. 1, the Maranacook String Band and Sandy River Ramblers will celebrate the release of their “Cry of the Loon” CD, featuring original songs about Maine penned by Stan Keach.
The CD’s 14 songs cover topics ranging from Colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s decisive skirmish at the Battle of Gettysburg to Donn Fendler, the 12-year-old boy who was lost on Mt. Katahdin in 1939.
The Maranacook String Band, a youth band started by Keach almost three years ago when he taught at Maranacook, and the Sandy River Ramblers are closely connected.
Keach, mandolinist Dan Simons and fiddler Jay Smith play in both bands. Also in the Ramblers are veteran banjoist Bud Godsoe, a Madrid man who learned to play banjo while working on the Alaska pipeline, and Keach’s wife, Liz, on upright bass.
“Liz helped me write a couple of the tunes in the collection,” Keach said.
Besides Keach, Simons and Smith, the Maranacook String Band includes Maranacook students Lee Stetson on guitar and vocals and Zach Greenham on bass; plus Maranacook grads, Julie Churchill on vocals/mandolin and Megan Dood on banjo. Churchill and Dood are sophomores at the University of Maine.
The collection of songs on the “Cry of the Loon” CD stretched the bands beyond their normal bluegrass licks. “We’ve tried to give the songs what the songs need,” Keach said. “ ‘Slow Down (You’ll Hit a Moose)’ has a boogie-woogie beat and ‘Goin’ To China’ is a doo-wop vocal quartet number. ‘Donn Fendler’ is sung in the a cappella-ballad style. I wanted it to sound like the ballads that loggers would sing on Saturday nights in the Maine lumber camps around 1900.”
One of the songs, “Lobsterman,” a sad ballad about a dangerous occupation, features Godsoe playing the bodhran, a Celtic hand drum, and composer Philip Carlsen, head of the music department at the University of Maine at Augusta, playing cello.
The concert, benefiting the Maranacook School Health Center Student Advisory Committee, will be at 7 p.m. at Maranacook Community High School. Refreshments will be sold at intermission. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for students and $20 for families. For more information, call Keach at 397-2241 or the MCHS Health Center at 685-4923.
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- Members of the Sandy River Ramblers and Maranacook String Band will perform on Saturday, Dec. 1, at Maranacook Community High School in Readfield.
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