I’m headed back to see my baby
I’m goin’ home no more to roam
I’m travelin’ on to the one I love
I’m goin’ back to the place that I call home
Although Max Silverstein wrote those lyrics and the bluegrass music that goes with them, the 18-year-old Bangor High School grad is headed far from home to perfect his passion.
He will be a freshman this fall at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, population about 62,000, near the Virginia border. Max will study in the Department of Bluegrass, Old Time and Country Music.
“ETSU has the only bluegrass program in the country,” Max said Sunday. “The faculty is great at teaching you how to become a professional touring musician.”
And that is what Max wants to do — travel around the country and the world playing in a bluegrass band.
He’s well known close to home. For the past few years, he’s been part of the trio Maximum Blue that plays one Sunday a month at Paddy Murphy’s Pub in downtown Bangor.
He already has done some touring — performing at bluegrass festivals throughout the state. In May, he performed in Holland and Ireland with an Irish bluegrass band.
On Thursday, he will head to the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in Oak Hill, New York, about 35 miles southeast of Albany, to accept a scholarship totalling at least $3,500. The amount could increase depending on donations made during the festival.
Max also will perform at the event.
ETSU awarded Max a public performance scholarship that will allow him to attend the school at in-state instead of out-of-state tuition rate, according his father Jeffrey Silverstein, a criminal defense attorney in Bangor. Without the scholarship, it would cost Max almost twice as much to attend the university.
To win the scholarship, Max had to audition a year ago for Daniel Boner, the director of the program.
“I like bluegrass music because every song tells a different story,” Max said on Sunday. “It’s very challenging to get the right bluegrass sound on the fiddle.”
Max said he started playing classical music on the violin but fell in love with bluegrass music after his father, who plays the guitar and fiddle, took him to a music camp in Maine.
Jeffrey Silverstein tells a slightly different version of the story.
“I kind of pushed him into this in first grade,” the elder Silverstein said in October 2013, as Maximum Blue was about to release a new CD. “He wasn’t psyched on it. I said, ‘This is the way it is in the Silverstein family. We all play a musical instrument.’ Within a year or two, he started doing pretty well at the fiddle side of things.
“He continued to progress, so when he was about 10, I took him to the Maine Fiddle Camp kicking and screaming, figuratively,” he said. “When we got there, he said, ‘I’m here now but I’m not coming back.’ The next day, he was having a blast. From that point on, he’s never looked back.”
Max is looking ahead. In May, he released his first solo CD called “Traveling On.” He composed four of the five songs on the album, and he plays guitar and mandolin in addition to the fiddle.
One place he will not be playing this summer is at the American Folk Festival, scheduled for Aug. 28 to 30 on the Bangor Waterfront. In years past, Max and his father have played on the sidewalk at the event.
Max must be at ETSU for orientation Aug. 20. If he isn’t touring, Max could be available during semester break to perform with his Dad on New Year’s Eve, as they’ve done in recent years.