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It may have moved clear across the state of Maine, but the second Puffin Music Festival promises to deliver the same thing the first did: a diverse slate of acts in a relaxed environment.
The brainchild of veteran promoter Scott Spencer, the festival had its debut last July at the Blue Hill Fairgrounds. This year, Spencer has transferred it to Big Squaw Mountain in Greenville, where it will be held June 22-23. The two headliners are Original P, featuring four founding members of Parliament/Funkadelic, on Friday and Max Creek on Saturday.
Other acts scheduled are Divine Nation, SeepeopleS, Culture, Zyrah’s Orange, Psychedelic Breakfast, Reach, birdhouse/Beatroots and Zen Tricksters. After each night’s performances, an all-night rave will be held in the techno barn, featuring imported DJs.
Also planned are climbing walls, hot-air balloons, a food and crafts village, a drum circle and demonstrations.
Original P, a 15-member band, will take the stage at 8:45 p.m. Friday. Its founders, Fuzzy Haskins, Grady Thomas, Calvin Simon and Ray Davis, have played together since 1960, and made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as members of The Parliaments and its spinoff, Parliament/Funkadelic.
Original P is wrapping up two albums, “Original P Featuring Westbound Soldiers,” a joint project with a rap group, and an unnamed release of their own. But don’t expect to hear too many of those songs in Greenville. The former should be out in a couple of weeks, the latter shortly after that.
“We might play one of the new stuff, but I doubt we’ll go further than that,” explained Davis by phone from Detroit, where the group is recording. “We don’t like to do more until the albums are released. Also the old stuff is still sounding better than ever.”
“The old stuff” means such Parliament/Funkadelic classics as “One Nation Under a Groove,” “Flashlight,” “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucka),” “Standing on the Verge of Getting it On” and “Up for the Down Stroke.”
But while they’re playing the hits, it’s still fresh for Original P.
“Everywhere we go on stage, it’s something new,” said Davis, also a former Temptation. “There’s something magical about this group. We were always ahead of our time.”
The Parliaments were a doo-wop-R&B group in the ’60s, featuring the four leaders of Original P and the man most associated with the Parliament/Funkadelic phenomenon, frontman George Clinton. Their biggest hit was the 1967 hit single “(I Wanna) Testify.”
“We wanted to be like The Temptations, with good, clean harmonies and dressing in matching suits,” Davis recalled.
But things began to change in 1970, when the Parliaments joined forced with the funk band Funkadelic. The supergroup soon became known for its sound, which came to be known as acid funk, and its colorful, outrageous clothing.
“We were doing lots of crazy stuff, listening to Alice Cooper and Jimi Hendrix and mixing it with what we were doing, and that’s where the sound came from,” Davis said. “The clothing style went along with the music.”
P-Funk faded after the ’70s, with their members going their separate, acrimonious ways. Their sound was kept alive by rappers sampling their music.
“It was just something that was meant to be,” Davis said. “‘Atomic Dog’ is the most sampled song of the century. The rappers kept us alive in a way and we appreciate that.”
In the mid-’90s, the quartet decided to resurrect the Parliaments and Parliament/Funkadelic sounds with Original P. Clinton has his own group, the P-Funk All-Stars.
“George wanted to be the lead and we let him,” Davis said. “He done us wrong some. We thought one of these years, we’re going to get together and do what we always wanted to do. We love each other, and we love the music. We’re just trying to keep the funk alive and satisfy people.”
Saturday’s headliner, Max Creek, which takes the stage at 10 p.m., is nearly as long-lived, as it was founded by bassist-vocalist John Rider 30 years ago at Hartt School of Music in Hartford. Joining thereafter were guitarist-vocalist Scott Murawski, keyboardist-vocalist Mark Mercier and percussionist Rob Fried. A la “Spinal Tap,” the drummer’s stool has been a hot seat for the band, and their drummer of four years, 26-year-old Scott Allshouse, wasn’t even born when the group began.
The southern New England-based quintet melds rock, jazz, reggae, blues, folk and bluegrass into an improvisational style that has gained fans through years of live dates. They’ve also released seven albums, and are in the midst of putting together a retrospective album that will take listeners from 1971 to the present.
The band’s members have families and other commitments, and a couple have day jobs as well. This means they end up doing a lot of what Mercier refers to as “guerrilla touring”: “We’ll fly into an area, play for three or four days, then fly home again.”
This schedule also allows the fivesome time to tackle side projects. Mercier plays in three other bands. He’ll fill in Saturday as keyboardist for the Zen Tricksters as well.
What keeps the band together after all this time?
“We’ve always been able to feed off each other in a creative way,” explained Mercier, a South Portland native. “It’s like a relationship where the honeymoon period never goes away. We all have a very good time at it, both spiritually and musically. If it wasn’t fun, we wouldn’t be doing it.”
Tickets for the Puffin Festival are $20 per day, $35 in advance for a weekend pass or $25 on the day of the event at the venue. Children under12 are free. Tickets are available at the Music Bar in Bar Harbor, the Grasshopper Shop in Bangor and Ellsworth, Wild Rufus Records in Camden, The Wharf Restaurant in Bass Harbor, at all Bull Moose Record stores or on line at www.jambasetickets.com.
Puffin Music Festival
Friday: 2 p.m., gates open; 3 p.m., Divine Nation; 4:20 p.m., Seepeoples; 7 p.m., Culture; 9 p.m., Original P.
Saturday: 11 a.m., gates open; noon, first act TBA; 1:15 p.m., Zyrah’s Orange; 3 p.m., Psychedelic Breakfast; 4:45 p.m., Reach; 6:30 p.m., birdhouse/Beatroots; 8:15 p.m., Zen Tricksters; 10 p.m., Max Creek.
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