No Ray, but lineup at Lobster still strong

ROCKLAND – Ray Charles didn’t live long enough to perform at the Maine Lobster Festival, but the legendary singer, who drew from country, blues and rock, probably would have enjoyed the full plate of music on this year’s schedule.

Charles was scheduled to headline the festival, which opens Tuesday, but canceled all of his shows earlier this year before his death in June.

“He was sicker than he wanted anyone to know,” said Chuck Kruger, festival vice president, who also operates Entertainment Resources, a booking agency in Thomaston.

“There’s no replacing Ray,” Kruger said flatly, but the lineup is none too shabby a mix: bluegrass and country legend Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder; SHeDAISY, a million-album selling mainstream-country band; Southern rock stalwarts .38 Special; and guitar hero Rick Derringer.

In addition to the nationally known acts, the festival features more than a dozen other musicians and bands, who perform at some of the smaller venues around the festival grounds at Harbor Park.

Kruger is excited about SHeDAISY, three sisters whose “straight-ahead, country vocal sound” earned “The Whole SHeBANG” nearly 2 million sales. The first four singles from the sisters – Kassidy, Kelsi and Kristyn Osborn –

landed in the country Top 10 chart.

The follow-up album didn’t fare as well, and the sisters decided that rather than commit to a high-cost tour, they went back to a more homespun approach. Playing it safe has paid off, Kruger said, since SHeDaisy has two songs on the charts at the moment.

SHeDaisy, which performs at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 7, has a lot of Lobster Festival regulars thinking about the Dixie Chicks, who performed at the festival several years ago just before they became household names.

“The road to the Grammys runs straight through my office,” Kruger joked. Seriously, he said, the sisters rely less on bluegrass and folk roots than do the Chicks; SHeDAISY leans more heavily on fine vocals and a clean, contemporary country sound.

And speaking of Grammys and bluegrass, Thursday night’s headliner, Ricky Skaggs, is a legend in that genre, and he and his band Kentucky Thunder recently won the music industry’s highest honor for a song from their album, “Live at the Charleston Music Hall.” Skaggs flirted with mainstream country in the 1980s, but returned to his bluegrass roots in recent years, and continues to wow audiences with his hot guitar playing.

There’s nothing twangy about the guitars that will rule Friday night’s main stage. Rick Derringer, a hot rock ‘n’ roll guitar player who scored hits in the 1960s and 1970s, opens for .38 Special, the Southern rock band often compared with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Derringer was just 16 when his band The McCoys knocked the Beatles out of the No. 1 spot in 1965 with “Hang On Sloopy.” If that weren’t enough, Derringer’s second act included stints with blues brothers Johnny and Edgar Winter in the 1970s. Derringer played with Edgar’s White Trash band, which hit it big with “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride.” Derringer’s solo single, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hootchie Koo,” was also a huge hit.

“I sort of think of him as a guitar god,” Kruger said of Derringer. “He’s just an amazing guitar player.”

.38 Special broke onto the radio in 1979 with “Rocking Into The Night,” and followed with other Southern boogie songs, then transformed their sound into a mix of blues-rock and arena-ready hard rock. Hits in the early 1980s included “Caught Up in You,” “If I’d Been the One,” and “Back Where You Belong.”

Kruger says part of the fun of lining up the festival’s entertainment is trying to book up-and-coming talent.

“You look for the band that’s going to be big,” he said, as was the case with the Dixie Chicks.

Two contenders this year, Kruger said, are Jessi Alexander, a country singer whose “getting a lot of attention in Nashville,” and Little Big Town, a vocal group of two men and two women he describes as “very strong.”

The mix of other bands includes the rockabilly of King Memphis; the rock of the Bill Chinnock Band; the Celtic sounds of Ladies of the Lake; the folk of Carol Noonan; Acadia Brass playing classical and jazz; the polkas of King Pirogi; and Dixieland, jump ‘n’ jive, bluegrass and Christian rock bands.

For information, visit www.mainelobsterfestival.com/pix/item/04LobActs.html. Tom Groening can be reached at 236-3575 and groening@midcoast.com.