2012 Free Range Music Festival - Belfast, Maine
The Belfast Free Range Music Festival is a volunteer powered celebration of original music that takes place annually in the beautiful coastal city of Belfast, Maine. Acts come from both near and far, representing a wide range of genres. Visit for more information.
The 2012 Free Range Music Festival took place on Saturday, April 28th and included performances by: The Anders Parker Cloud Badge (Burlington, VT), the What Cheer? Brigade (Providence, RI), Callers (Brooklyn, NY), Arborea (Lewiston, ME), Sharron Kraus (England) with Glenn Jones (Cambridge, MA), Kath Bloom (New Hampshire), Shell Shag (Brooklyn, NY), The Black Swans (Columbus, OH), MV & EE (Vermont), Curious Mystery (Seattle, WA), The Bill Barnes Trio (Hope, ME), Spirit Family Reunion (Brooklyn, NY), Lonesome Shack (Seattle, WA), Mother Popcorn (San Francisco, CA), Bunwinkies (East Hampton & Turner Falls, MA), Butcher Boy (Portland, ME), The Coloradas (Portland and Waldo County, ME), The End Times Spasm Band (Fort Wayne, IN), AWAAS (Portland, ME), Coke Weed (Bar Harbor, ME), The Colin Langenus Orchestra (Brooklyn, NY), the Sun Parade (Northampton, MA), When Particles Collide (Bangor, ME), Prisma (Montville, ME), Alice Limoges (Rockport, ME), The Living Daylight (Brooksville, ME), Gypsy Caravan (Midcoast Area, ME), The Rugged (Jackson, ME), Meteora (Friendship and Lincolnville, ME), and Timbered Lake (Blue Hill, ME).
Festival performances took place at: Aarhus Gallery, the American Legion Hall, Belfast Free Library, Colonial Theatre, First Church, Myn's on Market, and Waterfall Arts.
The festival after party was presented by HillyTown.com at Three Tides and featured performances by A Severe Joy, Great Western Plain and Vistas.
2012 Festival Organizing Crew: Meg Fournier, Dan Beckman, Bub Fournier, Kristen Burkholder, Nathan Raleigh, and Janane Tripp
2012 Festival Sound & Tech Services provided by: Ed Goguen and the students of the New England School of Communications, Bub Fournier, Dan Beckman, Nathan Raleigh, Eric Blackmer, Derek DeJoy, Ezra Rugg, Wes Reddick, and Alan Crichton.
Presented in partnership with the Waldo Arts Mission, a 501(c)3 non profit that develops opportunities for artists, educators and community groups to collaborate on projects that advance our shared missions for environmental sustainability and a vibrant cultural life.
Presentation and promotion made possible in part by an Arts Visibility Grant from the Maine Arts Commission.
2012 Festival Sponsors: Major Sponsors: Bangor Savings Bank, No Umbrella Media, ReVision Energy, WERU Community Radio. Contributing Sponsors: Bangor Daily News, Bay Area Fitness, Belfast Co-op, Belfast Harbor Inn, Bluestreak Wireless & Unitel, Comfort Inn Ocean's Edge, G O Logic, The Green Store, Liberty Graphics, New England School of Communications, Our Town Belfast, Trillium Caterers, and Yo Mamma's Home. Supporting Sponsors: Darby's Restaurant, Front Street Shipyard, & Mainely Pottery.
Additional funding was raised through a winter Kickstarter campaign. Many thanks to:
JHC Wood & Glass, Lorna Crichton, The Martin Family, Morningstar Midwifery, Old Stuff, Coyote Moon, Morgan McCann, Stacy Cannon, Sherwood & Kathie Bailey, Liz Deane, Mike Hurley, MRLD Landscape Architecture + Urbanism, Phyllis Buchanan, John Zavodny and Anna McGalliard, Roy Rodgers, Sean Ociepka & Elly Burnett, The Bywaters, Cheryl Morin, Kate Harris, Dorothy Havey, Elizabeth Garber, Bindy Pendleton, Belfast Bicycles, Kathi Langelier, anonymous, Kim Morse, Matt Wagner, Stephanie Francis, Robin Peskoe, Jeremy Shaw, Nancy Roth Remington, Virginia Throckmorton, Dan Beach, The Alden House Inn, Christopher Dodd, Karen MacDonald and Jaye Martin, Michelle Picard, Colin Sullivan-Stevens, Dagney Ernest, Gunther Brown, Nick Callanan, Elaine Bielenberg, Kat Gillies, Jacki & Lee Graf, Melody & TJ Vinci, Her Majesty's Cabaret, Bob & Pettina Harden, Robin Jones, Jeffrey Weinberger, The Marshall Family, Heather Small & Justus Magee, Bree Candland, Levi Krajewski, Erik Perkins
The festival organizers would like to thank this year's wonderful volunteers and venues for their hours of hard work and dedication. Thanks also to the numerous businesses, organizations and individuals that have helped along the way. This event would not be possible without the support of the amazing Belfast and greater Waldo County community. Special thanks to: The Green Store for helping us sell passes, Trillium Caters and the Belfast Co-op for stocking our musician's green room with amazing food, to Waterfall Arts for providing meeting space and space for the green room, and to Our Town Belfast for donating space for the day-of Info Center. Thanks also to the ever talented Eric Hou for designing the 2012 poster and fest graphics and to No Umbrella Media for hustling all over town to capture the event on video.
Find the Free Range Music Festival on Facebook:
Auburn Coach Wife Kristi Malzahn Agrees with Match & eHarmony: Men are Jerks
My advice is this: Settle! That's right. Don't worry about passion or intense connection. Don't nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling Bravo! in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It's hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who's changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)
Obviously, I wasn't always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option, and even though settling is a rampant phenomenon, talking about it in a positive light makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment, the way a child might look at an older sibling who just informed her that Jerry's Kids aren't going to walk, even if you send them money. It's not only politically incorrect to get behind settling, it's downright un-American. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is—look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality.
Even situation comedies, starting in the 1970s with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and going all the way to Friends, feature endearing single women in the dating trenches, and there's supposed to be something romantic and even heroic about their search for true love. Of course, the crucial difference is that, whereas the earlier series begins after Mary has been jilted by her fiancé, the more modern-day Friends opens as Rachel Green leaves her nice-guy orthodontist fiancé at the altar simply because she isn't feeling it. But either way, in episode after episode, as both women continue to be unlucky in love, settling starts to look pretty darn appealing. Mary is supposed to be contentedly independent and fulfilled by her newsroom family, but in fact her life seems lonely. Are we to assume that at the end of the series, Mary, by then in her late 30s, found her soul mate after the lights in the newsroom went out and her work family was disbanded? If her experience was anything like mine or that of my single friends, it's unlikely.
And while Rachel and her supposed soul mate, Ross, finally get together (for the umpteenth time) in the finale of Friends, do we feel confident that she'll be happier with Ross than she would have been had she settled down with Barry, the orthodontist, 10 years earlier? She and Ross have passion but have never had long-term stability, and the fireworks she experiences with him but not with Barry might actually turn out to be a liability, given how many times their relationship has already gone up in flames. It's equally questionable whether Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, who cheated on her kindhearted and generous boyfriend, Aidan, only to end up with the more exciting but self-absorbed Mr. Big, will be better off in the framework of marriage and family. (Some time after the breakup, when Carrie ran into Aidan on the street, he was carrying his infant in a Baby Björn. Can anyone imagine Mr. Big walking around with a Björn?)