BANGOR, Maine — When the Treme Brass Band opens the American Folk Festival by parading down Front Street at 7:15 p.m. Friday, players and festival-goers may experience a bit of deja vu.
The same band opened the festival when it debuted on the Bangor waterfront 15 years ago.
Band member Benny Jones Sr. remembered that Mainers really enjoyed their music.
“Wherever we go, we try to give the New Orleans flavor — some of the old tunes,” he told festival organizers. “People are used to seeing parades and bands marching down the street and playing in New Orleans. This is something fairly unique to the people of Maine. They really appreciate our style of music.”
The National Folk Festival, and its successor, the American Folk Festival have had a tremendous impact on the Bangor waterfront and the city’s downtown, John Rohman, the Bangor man who was instrumental in the festival’s creation, said Thursday.
“The city’s plan for its waterfront 15 years ago was focused on hotels, condos and office buildings,” he said. “It didn’t include a lot of open space. After the folk festival, the city adjusted its game plan.”
In August 2002, there were fewer than a handful of restaurants, more empty than occupied storefronts and scarcely any people living above them in Bangor’s downtown. The Maine Discovery Museum had been open just 18 months and the University of Maine Museum of Art would not move downtown for another few months.
“When we first started this thing, it was for two main reasons — economic development and community building,” Rohman, who still serves on the festival’s board of directors, said Thursday. “At the same time, we wanted to expose our waterfront to everybody who would come. We wanted people to see the potential of the waterfront. Clearly, we’ve met all those criteria.”
The festival’s greatest impact was how Bangor thought about itself and how people perceived the city and its future, Dan Tremble, a longtime Bangor resident and Penobscot County treasurer, said Thursday.
“I think the biggest impact was the way people thought about what Bangor could do on the waterfront,” he said. “What the Waterfront Concert series has done has been tremendous, but I think it would have been hard for people to see that happening if they hadn’t seen what the folk festival did. It made people realize we could do big things in Bangor.”
Attendance at the festival continued to grow until 2009, when a weekend rainstorm drastically reduced attendance and revenue. The festival wound up $130,000 in debt but also owed the city $280,000 for a revolving line of credit it had offered.
The festival was downsized from six stages to five and moved away from the downtown squares and further south along the waterfront. A 10-year plan to repay the debt over time was put in place, and by 2011, the festival was on sound financial footing again.
Over the years, the mission of the festival has remained the same — to bring the best music and culture from around the world to Bangor. Each year, new performers are added.
This year, Shodekeh will bring the tradition of beatboxing, a form of vocal percussion that mimics the sounds of drum machines, to the waterfront. Michael Mwenso and the Shakes with Brianna Thomas will perform American jazz, a first for the festival.
The budget for this year’s event is about $950,000, according to Rick Fournier, president of the board of directors. He said Thursday that donations from individuals continue to come in and the goal for this year’s on-site donations is $120,000.
In addition to the traditional bucket brigade — volunteers who solicit cash donations — festival-goers will be asked to make the suggested $10 per day donation on their cellphones by texting the word “bucket” to the number 20222.
“That will automatically add $10 to the person’s phone bill, which will go to the festival,” Dan Cashman, vice president of the board of directors, said. “We added that option this year because not as many people carry cash as they did 15 years ago.”
The festival also has partnered with Eastern Maine Medical Center to give attendees pedometers that will measure the number of steps people take.
“The goal is for each person to walk 10,000 steps each day of the festival,” Cashman said.
The food court, children’s village, marketplace and folklife area, which will focus this year on fiber arts, again will be part of the festival. American Sign Language interpretation of some performances will expand to include a Sunday afternoon tour of the marketplace.
The weather is expected to be sunny, clear and in the low 80s Friday and Saturday with a high of 78 on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service in Caribou. There is a chance of showers early Friday evening as the festival kicks off and after it closes Sunday.