Highlights

The Northampton drum-and-bass duo Film & Gender harnesses the elemental power of punk to smash anti-queer bigotry and give voice to the sexual and identity angst of a generation. Oh, and also to play a wild-ass rager of a show, which’ll happen tonight at The Apohadion Theater (107 Hanover St., Portland) when they’re joined by NYC Glitch-hoppers AFK and jazzy rock locals ENiAM at 8 p.m. Suggested cover: $15 (all ages).

Darksoft first crossed my radar when I was putting together our road trip playlist for the 2024 All Roads Music Festival in Belfast and included his smooth and groovy “Iloveyou,” a song about a flirty bot. His new album, Everydayness, is the dreamy synth-pop record you almost missed this summer, and he headlines a fantastic lineup of fuzzy shoegaze bands including Philly’s Cigarettes for Breakfast, locals XO, and Crystal Canyon — whose shimmering “Belt of Orion” also made that mix — at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) at 7:30 p.m. Tix: $18 (all ages).

Rustic Overtones singer-guitarist Dave Gutter didn’t make that digital Maine road trip mixtape, but he sang, produced and/or performed on three tracks on our Maine Summer of ’25 compilation, including a country song and a rap track — a testament to his impressive musical versatility. Already at the pinnacle of Portland rock fame, he performs atop the roof of Bayside Bowl (58 Alder St.) with keyboardist and singer Keenan Henricks of Rigometrics at 6 p.m. Tix: $15-$20 (all ages).

Behind all the pickin’ and grinnin’, there’s a goodly amount of attitude in bluegrass music — players always tryin’ to out-wow one another with hotter licks, for example, or Bill Monroe, who could be a real ornery sombitch and take it out on his mandolin and his bandmates. Now, I’m only speculatin’ here, but lets say Yonder Mountain String Band’s show bein’ moved from the State Theatre to Live at Madrid’s (144 Fore St., Portland) was on account of slow ticket sales. You think them boys is gonna deliver a lackluster show tonight at 8 p.m.? Hell no! They’re liable to burn the place to the ground. Tix: $40 (all ages).

Highlights

There’s a massive metal show at Geno’s (625 Congress St., Portland) tonight headlined by thrash legends D.R.I. and packed with other high-quality, high-decibel acts like veteran New Hampshire shredders Candy Striper Death Orgy. But the local heads are especially excited to bang along to Portland sludge-metal heroes Pigboat, who open the five-band bill at 6:30 p.m. Tix: $30 ($35 under 21).

The heavy Los Angeles trio Pegzilla kick off their East Coast tour to slay patriarchal attitudes in metal at Zero Bar & Grille (155 Riverside St., Portland) at 8 p.m. with locals Jeez and Latin-core band Manuel. Tix: $10 (all ages).

Looking for something more acoustic and family-friendly? Tonight’s free Music on Mall concert in the Brunswick Town Mall (191-195 Maine St.) is by Maine bluegrass band Breakin’ Strings at 5:30 p.m. And dig this: there’s a mini farmers’ market for people who work mornings and afternoons! It’s the Night Market in the (all ages) beer garden at Moderation Brewing Company (now located at 21 Town Hall Place) from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Vendors include Mere Point Oysters, Freshwater Baking Co., Mare Brook and Sparkplug farms, and Gambit Coffee Roasters. Also free!

The new word you learned today is flowmie, a noun referring to a friend, or friendly person, who gracefully dances to electronic music with a colorful and/or glowing prop of some sort, such as psychedelically patterned squares of fabric, hula hoops or lights. Tonight at Flask Lounge (117 Spring St., Portland) it’s the Big Birthday Flowdown Throwdown hosted by the Portland Maine Flowmies and Cold Water Crew, with a long lineup of DJs playing funky tracks from various EDM genres, face-painting, a community mural, free eats and flowmies all over from 7 p.m. until past midnight. Tix: $5 (21+).

As noted last week, my crummy digital archiving skills led me to believe I’d run out of episodes of Pat Corrigan’s “Hacker Sketch” story to share with you. Not so! After the episode published in our February 2016 issue, the story picked up again that July with this gem. Yes, I pulled a copy of the print issue out of the closet and photographed this page.

Highlights

Short notice, I know, but maybe grab lunch or start day drinking at Portland Lobster Company (180 Commercial St.) at 12:30 p.m., because Maine rock star Dominic Lavoie is playing their waterfront patio for free!

Director James N. Kienitz Wilkins will be on hand at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) for a discussion after tonight’s 7 p.m. screening of The Misconceived, his eccentrically animated film about two artists — one a failed filmmaker turned carpenter, the other a successful sculptor — whose old college friendship is tested by the fact that the former is working as a contractor on the latter’s home renovation project. Tix: $10.

Let’s start the month by highlighting an exhibition that’ll be on view all of September, giving you plenty of time to check it out. Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas, at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, is “the first major exhibition to use contemporary art to examine the impact of extending Manifest Destiny beyond North America, challenging the perception of the US as a purely continental nation,” its program says. The show features about 50 stunning works in a variety of media that express the history, culture and identity of our evil empire’s scattered island holdings of the past and present. On view through June 6 of next year (so, yeah, no rush).

Local Music Monday

The Portland synth-pop band Forget, Forget’s music “lives somewhere between a dance party and a good cry,” their press says. Unless you’re already on the verge of bawling, that’s a lot of territory to cover. But of course, most thinking people these days are being triggered to tears daily by the tragedies scrolling by on our screens and sleeping on our sidewalks, not to mention our personal struggles and losses.

“I went to the movies / At the end I wept,” guitarist Tyler DeVos sings on “couldn’t matter less,” from the band’s new album, what should we do today? “I felt down / I was so in debt. … We’re living in the future and it couldn’t matter less.”

“Your breath is a poem I read and I weep,” sings synth-player Patia Maule, the band’s other vocalist, on “take care,” a song about worrying about your partner’s health condition. “I don’t want to wake up all alone tomorrow / I know that I might / It’s the way things go / Your heart is a weapon that’s firing on you / Any day, it could blow a hole in mine too.”

We’re supposed to boogie to this?

what should we do today? is a product of, and response to, Trumpism and the pandemic. “During the last ten years, as the world spun out of control, we focused on what could keep us connected to our community and to each other,” DeVos says of the record in press materials. It’s been nine years since Forget, Forget — originally a duo of DeVos and Maule — released their sophomore album, You’re Not Gone. So making this one, and expanding the band to include guitarist Glen Capen and drummer Aaron LaChance, was both a creative endeavor and a coping mechanism.

The plague years are recalled in songs like “staying in,” “errands” and “socialize like a butterfly, hibernate like a bee,” the last of which greatly benefits from the contributions of trumpeter Emma Stanley and saxophonist Andrew Bedard.

On the ethereal closer, “standby,” DeVos speaks to a question Minuteman D. Boon memorably posed on “Maybe Partying Will Help”: “What of the people who don’t have what I got? / Are they victims of my leisure?”

“Let’s try this spring to unplug and relax,” DeVos sings, “and prioritize time for a couple of naps / But remember people’s lives are always under attack / and think about if we do enough to fight that.”

The most danceable track here, “floating away” — the other one on which Maule sings lead — is also the one that makes best use of new members Capen and LaChance, giving everyone room to stretch out at the end, and a song free of social concerns. It’s about leaving the boozy city apartment life of a gig musician for the suburbs, where “we mow the lawn and we laugh at the birds.”

The goal of struggle is the end of struggle, this record reminds us, though Buddhists and biologists would just as quickly remind us that all life is, by nature, an experience of struggle, yearning, and suffering when wants are unfulfilled. Just ask all the ladybugs and baby trees and wildflowers slashed to death by those whirring mower blades, and all the pollinators denied the sweet dust of new flowering life by stupid suburban social pressures.

On the bright side, Forget, Forget celebrates the release of this long-awaited album during a show this Friday at Blue Portland Maine (650 Congress St.) with Fraternity Leave at 7 p.m., followed by an afterparty fueled by popular salsacore band El Malo. Should be a fun time!

Occupy Scarborough
A report from the roadside across from ICE’s Maine headquarters
by Sarah

“Wild” Bill Dawson, 1948-2026
by Chris Busby

Out There: The Look of Laughter and Forgetting
by Elizabeth Peavey

Racisms: Endurance test
by Samuel James

Catch & Release: Always In September
by Emma Chance

Politics & Other Mistakes: Making No Sense of Nonsense
by Al Diamon

Shining Light on Humanity: Systemic injustice inside Maine’s prison system
by Leo Hylton

Radical Mainers: When City Workers Took on Boss Barlow and the Portland City Council
by Andy O’Brien

The Notorious F.I.G.: Zaitun Restaurant
reviewed by Figgy DiBenedetto

Major’s League: A New Pitch
by Tom Major

Crossword: Off Base
by Dan Zarin

Read more

Saturday

It sounds like something you’d say aloud five minutes after a bong hit: “What if for one day everything stopped... And we all just listened to the music?” Brian Mallman, a visual artist and gallerist based in Los Angeles, posed that question in 2014 and turned it into a global movement for world peace. Untold thousands of people now participate in Play Music on the Porch Day the last Saturday in August. It’s simple: just go outside and make musical sounds today. In Portland, the Neal St. Brass Band will celebrate the holiday by playing traditional New Orleans street jams at 129 Neal St. at 11 a.m.

The ukulele has a reputation as a beginner’s instrument, like the recorder or the AI, but every virtuoso was once a beginner. Four-string wizard Jake Shimabukuro shreds at Aura (121 Center St., Portland) at 8 p.m. Tix: $56-$72 (18+).

Legendary Jamaican vocal harmony group The Meditations sing for peace, justice and irie times at Bayside Bowl (58 Alder St., Portland) at 8 p.m. Tix: $25-$30 (all ages).

In Sherman’s March, the 1985 film by Ross McElwee, the director films himself as his documentary about the Civil War gets sidetracked by his longing for love and fear of nuclear annihilation. A groundbreaking work that changed the way many people thought about first-person storytelling, it screens at the Portland Museum of Art (7 Congress Sq.) at 3 p.m. Tix: $10 ($7 students).

In a world where so many new bands can’t be bothered to even make a poster to promote their shows, nevermind walk around downtown with a staple gun and Scotch tape, it’s refreshing to see the effort the Mount Desert Island indie-rock group Boy Scout is making. They haven’t even dropped their first EP, Alternate Universe, yet, but they’ve got a nice website, a cool video, and an electronic press kit for the poor schlubs like me who have to find a decent photo to post. They play Blue Portland Maine (650 Congress St.) with Boston rockers Key Found, Aedan MacDougall, and Maine psych-ers Glassfishis at 8 p.m. Tix: $15 (18+).

Haitian-American filmmaker and musician Sascha Rose, an Indigo Arts Alliance fellow, is developing a screenplay about Haitian sisters who time-travel back to help fight their nation’s founding Revolution, and making trippy/soulful electronic music rooted in Black folk traditions. Hear it live at The Apohadion Theater (107 Hanover St., Portland) when Rose shares a bill with experimental house music producer wetworld3 and the lovable hip hop duo Small-Town Dispatch, supported by Forty Ounce (perhaps literally), at 7:30 p.m. Suggested donation: $10-$15 (all ages).

Sunday

The Portland emo group Primrose bills itself on Instagram as “Americas Hottest Boy Band,” and since the lack of a possessive apostrophe makes that claim meaningless, who can argue with it? They play Live at Madrid’s (144 Fore St., Portland) with Gnocchi and Sorry Safari at 8 p.m. Tix: $15 (all ages).

And here we are, back on Neal Street, listening to music that should inspire peace, especially as regards our unconscionable militarism in the Middle East. The Maine Middle Eastern Orchestra performs “Majestic sounds of the Ottoman Imperial Court, devotional and transcendental music from the Mevlevi and Alevi Bektashi Sufi orders, and lively traditional folk songs that have echoed through Turkish villages for centuries” at the Portland Conservatory of Music (28 Neal St., Portland) at 2 p.m. Tix: 28.

And here they are, another brass band, this time the Undertow Brass Band (formerly What Cheer? Brigade), playing street party music from around the world to inspire a revolution of togetherness, with DJ Red Tide at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) at 8 p.m. Tix: $16-$20 (all ages).

Highlights

Maine State Music Theatre and The Public Theatre join forces to stage the primordial rock musical Million Dollar Quartet, about the night in 1956 when Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins combined forces for a jam session at Sun Records’ Memphis recording studio. Amid all the shakin’, a whole lotta drama’s also goin’ on at The Public Theatre (31 Maple St., Lewiston) today at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tix: $55-$85. Continues through Sept. 13.

To attract audiences and remain financially viable, community theater companies usually stick to the tried-and-true classics, the chestnuts, and the latest fluffy/Disney kid stuff when deciding which plays to produce each season. So it’s big news that the community troupe at the Waterville Opera House (1 Common St.) is presenting the world premiere of Unabashedly, a clever comedy by Mike Teverbaugh about newspaper staff grappling with the interconnectedness of all life. Tonight’s opening performance is at 7:30 p.m., preceded by a reception with the playwright at 6:30 p.m. Tix: $25-$34. Continues through Sept. 6.

Singer Kelly Caufield and her band channel the music of Linda Ronstadt this weekend during three shows titled, Heat Wave: The Linda Ronstadt Experience, at Stevens Square Theater (631 Stevens Ave., Portland); tonight at 7 p.m. Tix: $30 ($10 students and patrons 30 and under).

Make it your business to hear the Isness Ensemble when the New Hampshire funk band plays a free show on Portland’s Thompson’s Point at 5 p.m., followed by dope sets by DJs Mosart and Gabe FM at 8 p.m. All ages. Jello shots and boozy slushees available for kids 21 and over.

See, this is why y’all read to this thing: to get word of entire music festivals you might not otherwise hear about, like Leavittfest 2026 at The Leavitt Theatre (259 Main St., Ogunquit). The four-day fest begins tonight with performances by badass blues band 13 Scotland Rd (featuring singer/guitarist Bill Binford), rap star eyenine, and hotshot rock guitarist Max Boras’ group, among others, at 5 p.m. The local and regional acts featured on future days include Spencer Albee’s Speed of Sound, Sneaky Miles, Small Pond, Rick Rude, the seemingly ubiquitous Crazy Déjà Vu, Dirty Rogers, and The Moon Snails. Tix: $25 ($40 festival pass; all ages).

Highlights

It’s probably inevitable — you play so many outdoor bluegrass festivals that you end up, like veteran Virginia pickers Nothin’ Fancy, writing a corny/catchy song called, “I Met My Baby in the Porta Jon Line.” The Shenandoah Valley boys join The Gibson Brothers, Kentucky’s Dave Adkins & Mountain Soul, Illinois act Special Consensus and several other top-notch bands from near and far during the 65th Blistered Fingers Bluegrass Festival at the Litchfield Fairgrounds (30 Plains Rd.) today through Sunday. Oh, there’ll be camping and kids’ stuff and food and open jams happening all over, plus “indoor bathroom facilities.” Tickets for today’s music, starting at 4 p.m., are $25.

Interesting feature recently in the Portland Press Herald about charming retro crooner Pokey LaFarge, who moved to the Midcoast a couple years ago. Didn’t know he saw a rainbow after a bad breakup in 2019 and pledged his life to Christ. So I guess we should literally “thank God” he reunited with that gal and she wanted to live in Maine, because Pokey’s playing another home-state show at Vinegar Hill Music Theatre (43 Old Post Rd., Arundel) at 8 p.m. Tix: $35-$50 (all ages).

Man, Mayo Street Arts (10 Mayo St., Portland) is slayin’ with their Under the Willow series of back patio shows this summer. Tonight it’s the perfectly composed bill of underground psych sensation Clay Camero, multi-instrumental jazz-groove merchant Kafari, and purveyors of the new freakout sound, Crazy Déjà Vu, at 7 p.m. Tix: $20-$25 (all ages).

The Square to Square Outdoor Concert Series combines the Wonder Twin powers of One Longfellow Square and Friends of Congress Square Park to manifest free concerts in Congress Square Park. Tonight it’s the choice pairing of the soulful Melvin Gradiz Band and indie-folk rising star Heather Lynn at 6 p.m.

From Congress Square, the crowd divides. The more folk-oriented folk flock to Blue Portland Maine (650 Congress St.) for Madison, WI Americana trio Bloodroots, alt-country standouts Chico States and the light soul-pop duo Juniper Blue at 8 p.m. Suggested donation: $15 (18+). The funksters walk down to Bayside Bowl (58 Alder St.) and then walk up the stairs to the rooftop for Kenya Hall’s 6 p.m. show (granted, they’ll be late if they were at Square to Square, but whatever). Tix: $15-$20 (all ages).

Runnner is much more than a troll of spell-check programs. It’s folky indie-rocker Noah Weinman and friends growing ear worms for your brain and the headliner tonight at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) with likeminded acts Pleasure Systems and Hello Shark opening at 7:30 p.m. Tix: $22 (all ages).

The Unteachables are “a group of stand-up comedians who just happened to fall backwards into educating America’s youth.” Also living proof that educators are underpaid. Stephen Taylor, Miss Redacted and Lou Pharis work their night jobs at Empire Comedy Club (575 Congress St., Portland) at 7 p.m. Tix: $20-$25 (21+; they’re not accepting donated school supplies, but bring some anyway).

Confession time: I’m a lousy archivist. Especially in the early years of The Bollard, I neglected to give computer files belonging to specific series of work we published consistent titles, so as to make future reference to those series much easier. Now I’m reaping the consequences. Luckily, the consequences are quite mild.

Back in June, I posted what I thought was the last installment of Pat Corrigan’s “Hacker Sketch” published in 2016. I was wrong: there are more, and I’ll be posting those in future weeks. Plus, I missed Pat’s prequel to the series, first published over a decade ago and presented here for your enjoyment. (Note: the link to the YouTube video is no longer active.)

Highlights

“Twenty years after they began releasing records as the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have politely declined the opportunity to slow down with age.” So begins the bio the pop-folk duo’s management is using these days for live shows, like their appearance at Portland’s Thompson’s Point tonight at 7 p.m. with opener Lucy Wainwright Roche. The bio on the Girls’ own website notes they signed to Epic Records in 1988, so that’d be 38 years now, but who’s counting and who cares? They still sound great. Tix: $61 (all ages).

If your yen for nostalgia goes deeper than the ’80s, check out the Thurston Howell Band, a live yacht-rock act playing AM hits from the ’70s and early Me Decade with kitsch galore at Portland House of Music (25 Temple St.) at 8 p.m. Tix: $25 (21+).

Local Music Monday

This morning I realized, with no small measure of horror, why death metal bands like the Portland trio Shabti are releasing new albums on cassette in 2026. Haze, Cacophony, and White Light is also available online, but that’ll do you fuck-all when the grid and Web go down for good and you’re wandering the wastelands of the former U.S.A. scrounging for food and hiding from killer AI-guided drones likes the ones whose terrifying debut in Ukraine was reported atop the New York Times today. Boomboxes and Walkmans will still work so long as you have batteries, and magnetic tape encased in plastic is more durable than easily scratched CDs, the portable players of which were never very reliable.

And you’ll want this Shabti album, maybe even need it to bolster your courage and strengthen your resolve to survive and fight the techno-monsters scouring and devouring the planet. Plus, the record rips, packed with airtight tracks displaying stunning musical dexterity and a proclivity to prog-out beyond the well-worn forms of the genre.

You just know the white Christian nationalists currently in control of our government are gonna try to keep rallying the masses with their bullshit post-apocalypse; after all, that’s when their holy book says Jesus will return and the saved will get their permanent heavenly vacation. Songs like the first two tracks here, “Ambrosia and Lamb’s Blood” and “A Weary Creation,” explicitly denounce and discredit those preaching servitude to a sky god whose rewards are bestowed beyond the grave.

“Charlatan!” growler/guitarist Rob Cook calls out on “Ambrosia,” while drummer Ray Capizzo and bassist Brendan Hayter — all of whom have been playing for decades in this and other dark Maine metal bands — make the sonic ground rumble and periodically erupt. “For your obedience you’ll be paid but not ’till after death / Currency of slaves and fools.”

Echoing the famously creepy line from Poltergeist II, Cook declares, “God is in his holy temple” on “A Weary Creation,” the couplet closing with, “rotting in his holy temple,” while the weary people who consider themselves this deity’s creation suffer, “stumbling, listless, gnawing.”

Play these songs if you get tempted in a moment of weakness to join the flock or need to persuade a loved one not to fall for their fantasies. There are other helpful tips here, too.

On the title track, Cook describes the world you can expect if we allow political leaders to keep doing their bloody business as usual. “The stench of exhaust and gasoline, concrete, chain link fence. / A product of a climate that he would anathematize. / Glare on asphalt and car windows, / Desperation of the trapped animals … The only lesson to be learned is that you are only worth what they can take from you.”

“The lands will weep away their verdure as they are wracked with drought,” Cook poetically predicts on “Sojourner.” And on “Rise of the Shabti,” he reports from the rockets headed to Mars with their cargo of billionaires escaping the hellscape they’ve made. “Slumbering in glass tombs, the elite lay in stasis / A place among the stars purchased with grift and gold. … A parasite in search of a new host, / A monoculture encased in metal, / An ark bearing the human animal, / And those on which they satisfy their hunger.”

Enter the Shabti, a post-modern version of the eponymous funerary figures placed in Egyptian tombs to work for the privileged dead in the imagined afterlife. “Spawned of human mind, the legacy of our kind, impervious, enduring,” Cook describes them, adding, “The lizard brain has been lobotomized.”

These new “silicon” Shabti are “all that remain” after the inevitable “schism and violence” always wrought by the “degenerate scion of humanity.”

“Watching and waiting, born in chains, inhuman and of humans,” the Shabti “Stand on the shoulders of giants, pushing their heads under.”

I advise that you stock up on both AA and D batteries so you’ll be able to play this cassette on a variety of portable devices. And maybe print out this review for future reference if we don’t have room, or a printing press, to include it in the next print edition of The Bollard. Good luck and rock onward!

Highlights

Fiddler Andrew Martelle of The Mallett Brothers Band joins one of said siblings, Will Mallett, for a free waterfront show at Portland Lobster Company (180 Commercial St.) at 6:30 p.m.

Saturday

The annual Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival, grounded by high winds yesterday morning, continues this weekend with a packed calendar of on-the-ground events like today’s 10 a.m. parade, a tent full of medieval activities, hot rods, a carnival, skydivers, and music by Robert “Elvis” Washington, Denny Breau and Motor Booty Affair. Join the fun for free at Simard-Payne Park (46 Beech St., Lewiston) and check out the schedule here.

Soulful singer Andi Fawcett has been a fixture in Maine’s music scene for three decades, belting it out in groove-rock and funk bands like Relish Gruv, Doubting Gravity and Sly-Chi, and playing bar and patio gigs several times a week that mix originals with pop and country covers. Tonight at The Porthole (20 Custom House Wharf, Portland), Fawcett celebrates 30 years of performing with a cavalcade of past bandmates, followed by a set by funksters Skösh, starting at 7 p.m. Tix: $28.29 (all ages).

House party at 12 Androscoggin St. in Windham! See experimental vocalist The Asthmatic, hear the cow-punk of Midwestern Medicine, experience the madcap antics of the Bumbling Woohahs, discover Million of Energy and several more underground acts from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. Cover? Age limit? Entertainment permit? Don’t worry, just go.

Gorgeous cinematography shot in Italy, preserved on an original print. A Satanic Medieval spell that dooms one lover to become a wolf at night and the other a hawk by day. A soundtrack that mixed Gregorian chants and orchestral music with Alan Parsons’ space rock. Matthew Broderick “inexplicably doing bits for the camera.” These are just a few reasons to see director Richard Donner’s 1985 film Ladyhawke at Kinonik (121 Cassidy Point Rd., Portland) at 2 p.m. or 7 p.m. Tix: $12.

Sunday

Just the other day I was marveling at Intricate Mouse Work’s cover of The Cambiata’s “Shards of Pornography.” Now comes news the emo-tinged prog-rock trio is playing Austin Street Brewery (115 Fox St., Portland) with DJ Just Milk, fun rockers Lean Meats, folk-punk Plague Dad and R&B act Sunburned Sharks at 1 p.m. Free (all ages).

OK, what the heck’s going on? There’s a four-band rock show at Lenny’s Pub (1274 Bridgton Rd. Westbrook) this Sunday, too? Two New Hampshire emo acts, Cozy Throne and Cellardoor, join Philly screamos It Helps Me Sleep and local noise-rockers Silverfish at 7 p.m. Cover: $5 (all ages).

Experimental guitarist and visual artist Bill Nace has collaborated with icons like Steve Gunn, Joe McPhee, Yoko One and Kim Gordon. His “unorthodox approach to the electric guitar, often [includes] using preparations, extended techniques, and unconventional objects to generate sound,” wrote the promoter of tonight’s performance at Open Systems Studios (47 Portland St., 3rd floor) by Nace and drummer John Truscinski, which follows a drone set by Portland’s Sam Seda at 8 p.m. Cover: $10-$20 (pay what you can).

Highlights

The three-day Art Park festival begins today at Homegrown Acres in Winthrop (Lakeside Farm Rd.). It’s pointedly not a music festival, though there’ll be a long lineup of groove-heavy acts performing this weekend, including lespecial, Neighbor, and Consider the Source. The focus instead will be on visuals, as over 70 artists from near and far, including Gabriel Welch, Randal Roberts and Bradley Snook, make murals and smaller works while you watch them create. “The land will be a constantly-evolving landscape of live painting, large-scale mural installations, interactive visuals, and immersive lighting environments,” the promoter promises. Daily admission costs a bit over $100 and car camping is available for another $60+, but the fest will be free on Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.

Nationally known stand-up comic Dave Attell stands on stage at the State Theatre (609 Congress St., Portland) and makes the funny happen at 8 p.m. Tix: $35-$55 (all ages; “Mature content warning”).

If you’re one of the millions who’ve only heard fingerstyle guitar virtuoso Alexandr Misko via his viral YouTube videos, you’ve been missing out. Seeing Misko perform in person and hearing his music unmitigated by digital compression, tinny speakers and such is something else. Lucky for you, he’s playing One Longfellow Square (181 State St., Portland) after a set by Forest Bailey at 8 p.m. Tix: $40 (all ages).

If you’re one of the … let’s check real quick … nearly 24 million people who’ve heard fingerstyle guitarist Kaki King’s song “Night After Sidewalk” on Spotify, you’ve also been missing out, because the sound quality on that platform is ass. Hear King inside the visually and acoustically beautiful wood-beamed space of Vinegar Hill Music Theatre (53 Old Post Rd., Arundel) at 8 p.m. Tix: $20-$35 (all ages).

“Their sound is a sophisticated collision of modern jazz and immersive ambient soundscapes, where the structure of the groove meets the freedom of the ether,” reads the alluring bio for Nina Ott’s Hum Quartet, the group kicking off the Seacoast Jazz Festival this summer at The Dance Hall (7 Walker St., Kittery) at 7:30 p.m. Tix: $25 ($12 students).

In the plot of The Last Class: A Jazzercize Play, a Jazzercize aerobics instructor is moved to mount a campaign against the rising popularity of Zumba, which threatens the future of her preferred fitness program. Little does she know why Zumba is so popular with dudes in Maine, but that’s not part of this story. Actual audience members participating in a Jazzercize class during the play (pre-selected by the production, so don’t worry…) are part of the fun when this Off-Broadway hit comedy comes to SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) at 7:30 p.m. Tix: $22. Additional performances take place through Aug. 30.

Highlights

“Fox Bramble Theatre Company exists to explore the weird and wilder sides of theatre,” its founders, Todd Brian Backus and Beka Bryer, explain in a press release. “[T]he prickly, thorny parts of the canon that are oft left unexplored in favor of more well-trod paths. Like a fox on the hunt, we aim to seek out fresh plays of the American theatre that draw blood.” Thus Heart of Duckness, the darkly absurd political satire by A.J. Ditty that Fox Bramble is producing at Portland Stage Company’s Studio Theater (25 Forest Ave.) tonight (at 7 p.m.) through Sept. 4. Set in Berlin in 1884, the play portrays European and American delegates attending a conference about their colonial holdings in Africa as ducks squabbling over stolen morsels and the pecking order. “[T]hough inherently majestic and beautiful,” the production notes observe, ducks “are more often than not … the most violent, horrible creatures ever to walk this Earth. So, basically, exactly like us.” Tix: $30.

Ouch! Yet another sharp political play is drawing blood around here. The Portland Theater Festival concludes with a production of Enemy of the People, Amy Herzog’s modern adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 drama in which a doctor’s efforts to alert his community about water contamination make him … you guessed it: Antifa! Or a far-left communist wacko who believes everyone should have clean water, etc. Tonight’s preview performance at the Crewe Center for the Arts (111 Bedford St., Portland) starts at 7:30 p.m. Tix: $30. Continues through Sept. 6.

Tall Heights pointedly does not draw blood. The Boston cello/guitar duo of childhood friends Paul Wright and Tim Harrington stresses togetherness, harmony and healing in their easy-on-the-ear pop-folk songs. They play a free show in the sculpture garden at the Portland Museum of Art (7 Congress Square) as part of this evening’s Concerts on Congress summer music series that also includes reggae by Catcha Vibe in Monument Square at 4:30 p.m. and the hot emo-raised country of Toby McAllister & The Sierra Sounds in Congress Square Park at 6 p.m. Keep an eye out for intaglio printmaking demos, food trucks and other sidewalk attractions, too.

Dude, look at that ax! With all due respect to modern luthiers and the designer of Gibson’s Flying V, the early “guitars” made during the Baroque period of the 17th and early 18th centuries slay the instruments of today. Lutenist Timothy Burris joins violinist Sylvia Swartz and cellist Raffael Scheck, also performing on period instruments, for a free concert at the Portland Conservatory of Music (28 Neal St.) at 12:15 p.m.

Gipsy Kings founder and leader Tonino Baliardo leads an incarnation of his famously virtuosic gypsy-guitar group, which now includes sons Mikaël and Cosso Baliardo, on its Historia Tour, stopping at the State Theatre (609 Congress St., Portland) for an 8 p.m. show. Tix: $45-$75 (all ages).

It’s been called “jazz punk jam,” the intense, mostly instrumental music by bands like The Messthetics, formed by Fugazi’s rhythm section, and Winged Wheel, which counts former Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley among its members. A trio version of Winged Wheel plays SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) after a set by Double Gaze, the new harmonic project of Portland musician Ian Paige, at 8 p.m. Tix: $20 (all ages).

Finally, someone in the government is doing something good for us! I don’t mean Aunt Janet’s $300 checks, which have begun arriving in mailboxes, though that’s nice. I mean the Governors of Groove, WMPG DJs spinning soul, funk, disco and hip hop at The Thirsty Pig (37 Exchange St., Portland) every third Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m. for free! This month’s selectors are Low Down Dirty Shane, Mr. Dana, DJ Comrade, and my comrade from the Soul Mates show, Ben Allen.

Highlights

The bad news came in hot over the telegraph wire: singer Tre. Charles has taken ill and can’t perform tonight’s Western Prom Sunset Concert in Portland. The townsfolk panicked. Chickens and pigs ran wild in the dusty streets (granted, they always do). Sheriff Clark acted quickly and put out a call for a short-notice replacement act. Anxious hours passed with no response. Then from over yonder came the sound of gallopin’ hooves, lots of ’em, and sure enough, when they crested the promenade, it was the bangin’ Maine bluegrass group Tricky Britches ridin’ to the rescue! Starts at 6:15 p.m. Free for y’all.

Tiger Bomb — the bad-ass, leather-attired, all-female ’60s garage-rock band from Portland — plays a rare show in the sunlight on the Brunswick Town Mall at 6 p.m. Also free.

Robert Samantha is not a man. Nor is Robert Samantha merely an indie-rock band. “Robert Samantha is a soup,” their bio reads, “and it’s all going in there — middle school bullies, fears of premature balding, international tales of being cuckolded. It’ll make you laugh, dance, and shake your head in awe and disgust.” Soup’s on at The Apohadion Theater (107 Hanover St., Portland), when they play an album-release show for their LP Get well soon! with Isaac Raven (also more band-like than man-like), who’re releasing a new single (“Domino”), Snake Lips (who we were just talking about), and Savor at 7 p.m. Cover: $10 (all ages).

Stories from Maine Cemeteries: Lives Cut Short
Ron Romano
The History Press

Ron Romano grew up in Portland and had a successful career in Boston as an insurance executive and, subsequently, a college professor teaching courses about the industry. In 2008, a family genealogy project got him looking into old gravestones, and in 2011 he moved back to Portland and set foot for the first time inside Eastern Cemetery, the city’s first burying ground. “My first visit — at age fifty-five — sealed my fate as a gravestone enthusiast,” he writes with a corny historian’s good humor in the introduction to his latest book, Stories from Maine Cemeteries: Lives Cut Short.

Maine has no shortage of graveyard geeks who’ll devour this book like candy. Witness the popularity of the Eastern Cemetery tours run by Spirits Alive, the nonprofit boneyard conservation organization Romano works with, and the cemetery tours he and others lead all over the state — Romano has developed walking tours of 20 historic burial grounds.

Those, like me, whose interest in the subject is mild to moderate, will be educated and entertained by Romano’s writing. Although the subject is grim, and the stories often deeply tragic, he maintains a light yet respectful tone throughout this short book packed with black-and-white photos by the author.

Romano is also sensitive to the political and socioeconomic forces that determined where and how people were interred during the 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, Eastern Cemetery was segregated, he notes, with Section H, in its original center, full of bones previously covered in white skin, and Section L, in “the far back corner … in an area out of view from … outside the cemetery’s fence,” was “reserved for people of color and other minorities, such as Catholics, criminals, and paupers.” Due to its population and location, Section L was marred by vandalism for many years, Romano reports.

The book is a mix of scholarship and history, with some chapters devoted to specific motifs found on gravestones — in particular, the stones of people who died young — and others detailing sensational stories of people buried in Maine.

If you enjoy strolling through sprawling graveyards like Portland’s Evergreen Cemetery or South Portland’s Mount Pleasant, you’ll be pleased to have Romano’s insights into what certain common symbols mean, like acorn caps missing their nut (an allusion to early death), columns sculpted so as to appear intentionally broken off at the top (ditto), and tree trunks made of limestone (denoting dead loggers).

Among the stories Romano relates is the 1878 murder of Rose Vincent in Biddeford. The killer, a man aptly named Fred Savage, was soon apprehended and initially denied he’d done the deed. “Fred asked if the penalty for murder in Maine was hanging,” Romano writes. “When told it was life imprisonment, not hanging, he admitted his crime. When asked why he killed Rose, he replied, ‘Oh, I loved her too much.’” That line made the story go viral, 19th-century style, with articles about the killing and subsequent court actions printed in newspapers worldwide.

At the end of the book, Romano delves into a subject with strong relevance today: the way the town of Scarborough struggled to care for indigent and mentally disabled or ill residents in the late 1800s. It’s an interesting, inspiring and, ultimately, horrifying story that begins with an account of how much public money was spent to reimburse residents who housed and cared for the needy (called “letting out” — i.e., renting to — “the poor”) or to support them directly (e.g., “$1.42 for a pair of shoes for James Libby … $3 for a pig for Emma Moody and her sister”). Expenses after death were likewise tallied: $1.50 for an indigent woman’s “grave clothes,” $2 for “digging grave,” 75 cents for “shoveling a path to the burying ground.”

In the 1850s and 1860s, those sums were equal to or exceeded the funding annually dedicated to building and maintaining schools, roads and bridges. To save money, the town bought a farm in 1867 and housed penniless and mentally troubled residents there. Conditions at the “Poor Farm,” “Poor House” or “Alms House,” as the property was variously called in town documents, were better than those in Portland’s “almshouse,” which Romano notes housed “well over one hundred people at a time, many of whom were non-English[-]speaking immigrants,” in crowded conditions that fostered the spread of diseases.

The Poor Farm initially looked like a progressive program far ahead of its time. Town officials furnished it, stocked it with food and farm animals, and hired an overseer to manage operations at an annual salary of $300. Residents lived and worked on the farm, and proceeds from the sale of its produce and livestock helped offset its expense. “While never quite self-sustaining, the farm was proving itself to be of great value to the town,” Romano wrote.

Then the dying began.

It seems there were never more than about half a dozen residents (called, disturbingly, “inmates” in town records) living at the farm in any given year during its first decades, but turnover among overseers was high, as was the body count. The first fatality was of a woman named Deborah Dyer, in the farm’s first year, and two more people died there before that year was over. Two years later, in 1869, two more residents died, and four expired on the property in 1870.

The Poor Farm had its own graveyard, where plots were either unmarked or given a wooden marker that deteriorated quickly. “In just over twenty years, the farm cemetery had received the remains of at least seventeen people,” Romano wrote, soon followed by an eighteenth, around 1890. He makes no mention of suspicious circumstances — and surely would have if such speculation were in the records or the newspapers at the time — or unhealthy conditions at the Poor Farm, but the mortality rate indicates something was not right.

In the early 1890s, remains at the Poor Farm’s graveyard were disinterred and transferred to the town graveyard, Dunstan Cemetery, and the farm’s residency program ended in the mid-1920s (the 125-acre property was sold in 1953 and was redeveloped earlier this century into a subdivision of about 50 homes). Dozens of unidentified bodies of disabled and destitute Scarborough residents, including those from the Poor Farm, lay beneath the “paupers’ field” in Dunstan Cemetery. Romano led an effort to place a memorial marker with an inscription he wrote on this section of the graveyard. It was unveiled during a ceremony earlier this year.

Ron Romano discusses Stories From Maine Cemeteries tonight at Longfellow Books (1 Monument Way, Portland) at 6 p.m. Free.

Local Music Monday

“The love you need is around / in your own damn hometown,” Kate Sullivan-Jones and Galen Richmond of Gum Parker sing on “The Love You Need,” an obscure song by a largely forgotten Portland indie-rock group from 20 years ago called Diamond Sharp. That line could be the motto of Maine Covers Maine, a compilation released this month by local label Mutants of the East. It’s 28 tracks by Maine musical artists covering other Maine bands and singer-songwriters, past and present, and it’s tremendously fun — like 28 love notes passed around a classroom, followed by a concert in the auditorium during which all the notes are played.

The proof is in the concept. Very few of the acts here are known beyond the borders of the Pine Tree State, but with music this good, who the hell cares? Around here, we take care of our own, supporting local bands through word of mouth (and indie publications like this one), one five- or ten-dollar bill at the door at a time. Nobody gets rich, but everyone eats*, and the enthusiasm of local fans and friends is generally enough to keep playing.

Delights and discoveries abound on this comp, their proportion reflective of each listener’s familiarity with the scene. Here’s my list…

Delights

• Veteran metal trio Ogre covering punk legends Big Meat Hammer’s “Retro Music Sucks,” from a recent gig at The Apohadion, I believe. Love the blasphemous Hendrix bit during the solo, too!

• Snake Lips and Little Oso trading tributes, the former getting more melodic than usual with “Metaphorical Ohio,” the latter getting louder than ever with “Melt the Sun.”

• Crystal Canyon’s version of Phantom Buffalo’s “Mrs. Connelly” and Upper Narrows’ take on Metal Feathers’ “Tough” — two of my favorite indie rock songs covered by two fave acts.

• Ada Bonnevie’s moodily beautiful rumination on Theodore Treehouse’s banjo-picked rave-up “Two Hearts.” Like the aforementioned Diamond Sharp song, it assures me I’m not the only music nerd around here who still remembers and listens to that stuff, and it’s gratifying to know this collection will be turning more people on to great one-off records like Mercury: Closest to the Sun, from which Bonnevie’s selection was chosen.

• Toby McAllister doing Skösh’s “Tall Grass.” It was only last week that I heard Skösh’s countrified “Tall Grass” and was impressed by this funk group’s musical range. Being impressed by McAllister’s singing happens all the time.

Discoveries

• Naythen Wilson. WTF? First we hear Wilson belting out Lisa/Liza’s elegiac “Back on the Eastern Shore” for seven-plus minutes. What a song and what a voice! Then Jojo Picone (origin unknown) covers Wilson’s gorgeous “Seraphim, 1965.” Again, both song and vocals are astounding. Cool. I’ll just visit Wilson’s Bandcamp page and dig into some past releases… Wait, there’s like 200 or more albums here, but luckily one’s a “Best of” compilation covering 2018 to 2024. I’ll start there. But hold on again — there are 135 tracks on it. Fuck me. Guess I’ll catch up with y’all in about three years…

• Million of Energy doing “Dirtbiker” by Buddusky. Mercifully, neither band I now must hear more of has an extensive discography.

• The Amoebas’ high-octane take on Jud Strunk’s 1972 folk classic “Daisy a Day,” as perfect and sad a song as was ever written.

• “Sunbeam,” by Sawdust, a late-’60s psych-rock band from Lewiston, covered by Mr. Vinegar, a project of Maine musician and researcher Thomas Bennett. How satisfying is it to hear a group like Sawdust rediscovered and appreciated again? Very, very satisfying.

• Nicholas Burgess’ wacky electro version of “Italian” by The Wicked Good Band. It’s about the sandwich, and provides a fitting coda to this compilation.

Delights & Discoveries

• Wayne Werewolf & The Howlers (whom I’ve never heard of) covering a garage-rock stomper by another legendary local punk band, The Pontiffs, called “Death Lookin’ Monster Girl.” Kip Brown is surely smiling from the skies.

• Psych-rocker Jeff Beam tripping out on the opening track, “Aquamarine,” by Laminated Cat, a group that either played Slainte two decades ago or I hallucinated that like an AI. Regardless, a really cool song.

• Intricate Mouse Work resurrecting “Shards of Pornography” by The Cambiata, a band whose experimentalism, complex orchestrations and go-for-broke vocals (courtesy of Chris Moulton) make them almost un-coverable. The Mousers nail this one and then some.

• Greenbriar’s “Ballad of the Perpetual Frontiersman,” a song by the old Geno’s metal collective Swamp Witch Revival that I either never heard or forgot due to beer and pot.

*A quick but beautiful aside here. My pal Neal Jocher, a veteran of several grungy Portland rock groups, recently told me an anecdote about Chris Godin, proprietor of Granny’s Burritos, who was tragically murdered in his apartment building three years ago. In the mid-1990s, when Chris started his fledgling business, he’d park his burrito cart outside Granny Killam’s Industrial Drinkhouse on Market Street in the Old Port — a music venue that later became The Big Easy. Late one night, broke and hungry as usual, Neal and a couple bandmates saw Chris outside. He asked them if they wanted burritos and they told him where they were at. Without missing a beat, Chris wrapped up fatties for all of them, no charge. He knew, Neal explained, that they were in a band.

Highlights

TEMPOart, the local arts organization that commissions temporary works of public art and performance, presents The Monumental Body, a “ceremony of remembrance and commemoration” led by queer Afrofuturist performance artist Aquarius Funkk, “culminating in a soulful dance party and celebration” at Lincoln Park in Portland (corner of Congress and Pearl streets) at 5 p.m. Free.

Twenty years ago in Portland, an Emmy-nominated producer, musician and songwriter named Con Fullam was inspired to form a girls’ chorus of young women whose families fled political violence, famine and war to settle in Maine. Together with kids already here, they’d sing songs from their homelands as a way to heal and form new friendships. The Pihcintu Multinational Chorus has since been heard by millions and performed at the Kennedy Center and the United Nations (with Bono, naturally). It’s fitting that today at 4:30 p.m. they’ll sing inside City Theater (205 Main St.) in Biddeford, accompanied by the band Akiwacu, as the chorus embodies the values ICE was tasked to destroy (compassion, tolerance, diversity and inclusivity). Sing it loud, girls! Free.

Two years ago, LA Arts in Lewiston hosted the first solo exhibition in the U.S. by Angolan artist Serafim Yssolo, Life on Scraps. Life on Scraps is also a life philosophy the painter employs to explore the “dignity, beauty, and transcendence within what the world has learned to overlook.” In Scraps and Memories, an exhibit on view this month at 82Parris (82 Parris St., Portland), Yssolo takes viewers on a “journey through matter, memory, and ancestry, where painting and remnants become a language of resistance, spirituality, and human reconstruction.” The gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Great news: Your kids are invited to a birthday party. No, not literally. That’s the title of the delightful new indie-rock EP by Philly band Wallace, Tonight!. And yet more great news: they’re playing Blue Portland Maine (650 Congress St.) with the astounding Alma June and the Persian Cats, Newfield psych-rock trio Peach Hat and Boston’s Ashy Finn at 7 p.m. Tix: $15 (18+).

The North Mississippi Allstars play that deep Southern blues-rock rooted in the soulful sounds of the founding brothers’ father, legendary producer and musician Jim Dickinson, and neighbors like RL Burnside. They get greasy at Portland House of Music (25 Temple St.) at 8 p.m. Tix: $40 (21+).

The Buckfield funk foursome Skösh plays eclectic sets that dip toes into country, hip hop and rock while keeping feet moving at Portland Lobster Company (180 Commercial St.) at 5:30 p.m. Free.

Looks like a beautiful day for the Brunswick Outdoor Arts Festival. Maine Street and the town mall will be filled with local artists and makers of fine crafts showing and selling their work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., there’ll be music by the likes of Jimmy Jo & The Jumbol’Ayuhs and Maine Marimba Ensemble, and undoubtedly plenty of delicious street food.

Half an hour’s drive in the opposite direction from Portland you’ll find another free festival, River Jam, in Biddeford’s Mechanics Park from noon to 8 p.m. There’s a makers’ market here, too, plus beer and food from several of the city’s tastiest breweries and eateries, and live music by country singer Stephanie Ryann, Spencer Albee’s Speed of Sound band, New Hampshire indie-folk heartthrob Harrison Goodell and others.

An hour’s drive west of the big city brings you to the Dam Jam Revival in Denmark’s Bicentennial Park (W. Main St.) from 2 to 7 p.m., where there’ll be crafters, stilt-walkers, a beer tent, a food truck, and music by Americana act Cold Chocolate and Maine folk quintet Bold Riley. This festival is also free — if you’re 12 years old or younger; otherwise, it’s $30.

Not to be outdone, Westbrook’s got a festival today, too: the Wild Pines Music Festival at Rock Row from 2 to 8 p.m. This one’s a little different. “Wild Pines is what happens when your favorite indie zine throws a backyard rave with a woodsy soul,” the description reads. “Built for wanderers, weirdos, and rhythm chasers, it’s a one-day fever dream of sound, style, and sensory surprises. … A little grit, a little freaky, a little forest magic. Expect thrifted gems, pickled things, disco twirls, denim stacks, sun-drenched sets, and a pop-up market full of oddities and obsessions.” The musical lineup includes club DJ Ben Spaulding, power-punkers East End Redemption, “blues-punk prophet of doom” Cryin Caleb and more. Tix: $20 (21+).

It’s not technically a festival, but there’ll be a fun festival atmosphere in Bath’s Waterfront Park this afternoon as crowds gather for Mystic Bowie’s Talking Dreads, a reggae reimagination of Talking Heads songs, at 5 p.m. You know there’s gonna be food trucks around, and probably somebody sellin’ somethin’ crafty, plus it’s free for everyone!

There is a festival in Portland today. It’s called the Water Lantern Festival, and it’s happening in Deering Oaks from 5 to 9 p.m. Folks are encouraged to bring a blanket, decorate a paper lantern and launch it into the pond as seen above. There’ll be local food trucks, some mild live music and story sharing. To be honest, this feel-good community fest smells a little too corporate. Maybe it’s the ticket price: $30.99. We trust you’ll use your best judgement.

And hey, what the heck? Let’s go ahead and call the show at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) tonight a festival, because it’ll feel like a music fest featuring your favorite local indie-rock bands of 25 years ago. The lineup includes the reincarnated psychedelic stylings of Phantom Buffalo, playing as a four-piece; punkers Gum Parker, a group comprised of past members of scads of bands; the jangly Biz Turkey (read our review of their record here); and a sympathetic lo-fi band from Philly called Honey Radar, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets to the first annual Free Street Taverna Music Festival are $15 (all ages).

Director William Wellman’s 1943 “anti-Western” The Ox-Bow Incident, starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn, is about a posse that forms to hunt down cattle thieves believed to have killed a rancher. “Released in the midst of WWII, the parallels to wartime mob psychology were unmistakable then and have lost none of their edge since,” notes Kinonik (121 Cassidy Point Dr., Portland), the film preservation organization that’s screening an original print today at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tix: $12.

Highlights

A lazy arts writer would preface Maine State Music Theatre’s production of Come From Away, the hit 2017 Broadway folk-rock musical about residents of a small town in Newfoundland helping airline passengers stranded by 9/11, by noting the “current tensions between the U.S. and Canada,” or words to that effect, and how this musical should remind us we’re all one human family. That’s inaccurate. The current tension is between Donald Trump and North America, given that nearly all Canadians and Mexicans, and two-thirds of U.S. adults, loathe him, according to recent surveys. The production runs through Aug. 22 at Pickard Theater (1 Bath Rd., Brunswick), and today’s matinee performance is at 2 p.m. Tix: $149-$185.

It’s you’re into that raw punk-blues thing, tonight’s your night! Fat Knuckle Freddy — singer/guitarist Al Giusto and a funky drummer — tear it up on the back patio of Amigos (9 Dana St., Portland) at 9:30 p.m. Free (21+). Plus, the gritty duo Muddy Ruckus plays Live at Madrid’s (144 Fore St., Portland) with openers Turf ’N’ Turf and Dusty Buckets at 8 p.m. That one’ll cost ya a twenty (all ages).

When it comes to death metal, I’m lucky if I can decipher the band name on the poster, nevermind discerning which acts are good. I just trust The Wizard, and the other day he mentioned that Portland trio Shabti is releasing an album at Geno’s (625 Congress St., Portland) tonight, and it’s sick, packed with punishing progressive riffs and breakneck beats and switches. A preview of the first two tracks available on Haze, Cacophony, and White Light confirms this and then some. They’re joined by Scattered Remnants, Bloodtide, and Matriphagy at 7:30 p.m. Tix: $22 (21+).

Portland singer-songwriter and fingerstyle guitarist Heather Lynn has been touring in the Midwest and Canada this summer with her stellar new album, Laurel, and tonight’s she back at the informal clubhouse of her indie-rock scene, the microbrewery Hi-Fidelity (200 Anderson St., Portland), with pals Modern Friendship and Providence band Wooll around 8 p.m. or so. No cover (21+).

Portland DJ and producer god.damn.chan. mixes hip hop, funk, jazz, soul and beats from around the world as part of the Be Kind Rewind series upstairs at The East Ender (47 Middle St., Portland), paired with a “double feature” (movie title unknown) at 9:30 p.m. No cover (21+).

Local jam-rockers Leaf are in the weird limbo between playing free shows in small venues like The Thirsty Pig (37 Exchange St., Portland), where they’ll be at 7 p.m., and larger venues where there’s a cover, multiple acts, a sound guy who’s not the guitarist’s girlfriend walking around with a tablet, etc. All ages welcome.

The 2023 documentary Welcome Space Brothers explores the colorful exploits of Ruth E. Norman, a.k.a. Archangel Uriel, and her Unarius Academy of Science, a ET-channeling self-help community/cult founded in the 1970s. At least she probably didn’t kill anyone. It screens at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) at 7 p.m. Tix: $10.

Highlights

The Portland Chamber Music Festival begins today and continues through Aug. 22 with several concerts at Stevens Square Theater (631 Stevens Ave.). During tonight’s opening program, “Great Expectations,” attendees will get a rare treat: classical sax. Saxophonist and composer Steven Banks joins pianist Ran Dank and violist Melissa Reardon on Charles Loeffler’s “Deux Rhapsodies,” and the concert also includes works by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Mozart and Brahms. Starts at 7 p.m. Tix: $48 ($12 students and kids).

Artist, harpist and aspiring pop star Clio Berta has been throwing fun dance parties and arty pop-up events in the Midcoast over the past few years, and tonight she performs as part of Mayo Street Arts’ (10 Mayo St., Portland) Under the Willow backyard series with North Carolinian Shane Justice McCord playing a solo set on bass clarinet and the New York-based puppetry group Madeleine’s Puppets presenting a musical shadow-and-crankie piece titled, “Elemental Poetry: the Conference of the Birds,” at 7 p.m. Tix: $20-$25 (all ages).

Portland singer-songwriter Katie Matzell’s exquisite voice shines in many settings: jazz, pop, R&B, Bonnie Raitt’s entire catalog… Tonight the setting will be Portland’s tourist-jammed waterfront as she joins a band called Exsqueeze Me at Portland Lobster Company (180 Commercial St., Portland) at 6:30 p.m. Free.

Real talk: Yeah, I was kinda bummed to see that almost the entire schedule of the Vallée Square concert series in downtown Westbrook this summer is cover bands, but I get it. And I did have a damn good time there two or three years ago watching Wake Up Mama tear through some Allmans. And Masterstroke: The Ultimate Queen Experience puts on one heck of a show, what with powerhouse singer Sean Slaughter as Freddie, a killer backing band and multiple back-up singers. So here they are. Starts at 7 p.m. Free.

Fish fuck. That’s just a fact. As does every member of the animal kingdom, lest we forget. And contrary to Biblical teachings, this sex is not all hetero and performed in the context of marriage. In Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn From Animal Sex, artist and environmentalist Perrin Roosevelt Ireland illustrates the deeply freaky stuff horny animals get into through watercolor comics. She’ll be joined at a lighthearted book-launch event at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) by low-tech transqueer clown, puppeteer and playwright Eli Nixon at 7 p.m. Tix: $5 (all ages).

After a quarter century of arts listings research, I can now say with authority, and no small measure of despair, that the only attraction more popular than cover bands and cotton candy is cats. The Amazing Acro-Cats, a touring circus-variety show of rescued and trained felines, begins the first of a freakin’ 16-show run at The Hill Arts (76 Congress St., Portland) tonight at 7 p.m. Tix: $35-$70 (a portion of ticket sales benefits local rescue organizations). Continues through Aug. 30.