On many an evening in the early 2000s, a former 18-wheeler garage covered with graffiti at the end of a dirt road past a cemetery in the Bucksport woods shook with hardcore music and throngs of young people.
This was The Kave, an all-ages music venue at the home of Kathy Findlay, who became like a second mother and provided a home away from home for numerous teenagers while growing the hardcore and punk music scene in central and eastern Maine.
A decade has passed since The Kave closed while Findlay successfully fought leukemia, but the defunct venue is now getting its flowers in a documentary made with community support that tells the kind of story local filmmaker Ricky Leighton said isn’t always recognized.
“It’s always a part of my life, because it’s not really a building or a venue, it’s a mentality,” Findlay said Thursday about the former teen club — acceptance and being there for each other.
The story shows how dedication filled a need for a generation of young people in the region, gaining international recognition and bringing major acts to Maine along the way.
“Downeast Hardcore” is a universal tale of belonging, love and community, Leighton said, that just looks a little different from the mainstream.
Leighton, of Penobscot, attended some shows as a teenager but didn’t necessarily see himself as a “Kave Kid,” as diehards were called.
When a friend brought up the venue a few years ago, though, Leighton knew right away that its story needed telling and won grant funding to do it. He also felt some ownership as someone who knew the music and remembered how it felt to be an “angsty teenager” growing up in rural Maine.
Findlay had been approached by others before, she said, but as time went on, she started to feel the kids’ story might need to be told — not so much her own, though much of the documentary and the now-grown Kave Kids in it pay tribute to her. It took all of them to make an impact, she said, with herself like a ringleader.
“It was like peeling back layers,” she said of the documentary. “I guess I didn’t realize the impact it was having on people at the time.”
A social media call for participants garnered 90 responses that led to 60 interviews, 40 of which ended up in a film that grew into Leighton’s first feature-length endeavor.
Opening scenes interspersed with home video footage describe Bucksport when it was still a mill town, far from urban venues that attracted hardcore bands and with few opportunities for teens who didn’t necessarily fit in.
Findlay, then a local school occupational therapist, started taking groups of teens on road trips to see bands in the late 1990s, then began booking shows at local churches and halls. When rental costs started to equal a mortgage payment, around 2000, she bought a truck garage turned line dancing club near Silver Lake that the kids helped transform into the Kave.
“Sure, you’ve got to drive out of town and try not to slip on the ice, but once you’re there, you’re home,” former BDN writer Emily Burnham wrote in 2009, noting its importance among a diminishing number of regional venues as noise restrictions increased. The Kave was “one of the few constants in an eastern Maine music scene that’s seemingly always on the brink of collapse,” she wrote.
In rural Maine, kids often shared rides to shows, which also helped create a close community, Leighton added.
Findlay was “very crafty” about providing a space kids felt ownership of, he said, giving them responsibilities like making pizzas and taking tickets — though she said she didn’t realize at the time that she was empowering them.
That led to them policing themselves to preserve the space, according to Leighton, who feels that carries a message about providing teenagers with a sense of belonging and ownership, rather than simply telling them what to do.
“The Kave is home for a lot of people,” one Kave Kid told the BDN in 2012 as they fundraised to fix its leaky roof. “It’s like fixing our home so we can keep living there.”
Mario Moretto, who started going to Findlay’s shows as a teenager before she bought the venue, said that many of his existing friendships and connections were strengthened there.
“The minute most of us went there for our first show, it was like apparent immediately that Kathy had built something really special,” he said.
Conversations about the scene now often turn nostalgic, but it was the music that brought them all together and was a core part of their identities, according to Moretto, who still attends hardcore shows.
The scene can be easy to judge, Leighton said — his documentary includes tales of broken bones and lost teeth, and one screening attendee proudly got a black eye at a show afterward — but is welcoming, with a key rule to treat people with respect.
Outsiders often assume hardcore music is just angry and may not understand its emotional depth, he added, so he paired it with resonant scenes in the film. Lyrics often focus on perseverance, according to interviewees, and dancing with swinging fists is an emotional release more than an act of interpersonal aggression.
For teenagers looking for a sense of identity, the hardcore scene, music and venues provide something to cling to that reinforces who they are and how they feel while connecting them with similar people, Leighton said.
Near the film’s end, Kave Kids talk about experiencing love from someone outside their immediate family who saw them for who they were for the first time. Leighton recognized the power of an older person “treating you like you’re cool,” he said, recalling figures outside of his family who stepped up as mentors in his life.
The film closes with a “pretty extensive” in memoriam section for former Kave Kids, which Leighton said shows that the work Findlay started isn’t done; she provided a safe space for kids for years, he said, but there’s still a lot of need to support teenagers like them today.
Findlay also built the Kave as a grassroots effort, Leighton noted, taking time to understand what the community needed before starting a venue.
“You have to ask the kids what they want, and then you have to respect the answer,” he said.
The Kave’s days are done, but the Old Town Theatre has helped take up the mantle as a hardcore venue — a screening there on Oct. 3 will be followed by a show — and former Kave Kids continue organizing. At recent screenings, they have turned out in droves and cheered along, Leighton said.
Findlay has stayed active in the scene and is now mentoring two teenage children of Kave Kids as they put together shows of their own. Their interest is a cue for her to bring the Kave mentality to a new generation, making a difference in more young lives, she said.
“If one person can do all that just because they care, without even any [funding] resources, imagine what we could do if we put our heads together,” Leighton said.
Screenings are also planned for the Black Moon Public House in Ellsworth on Nov. 7 and the Blue Hill Public Library on Dec. 2. Leighton hopes for a film festival run in 2027 followed by streaming availability that spring.
