Folk festival leaves Bangor proud Organizers call event a success; volunteers clean up along waterfront

The music was over, everyone was stuffed full of tasty food, and the waterfront was empty. After the American Folk Festival ended on Sunday afternoon, all that was left to do was clean up.

“I’m actually standing in a pile of trash,” Heather McCarthy, executive director for the festival, said Monday afternoon, speaking on her cell phone from the Bangor waterfront.

“We had a bunch of volunteers on board [Sunday] night, and a lot of public works folks also. Today we had some people from the Charleston Corrections Facility helping out, along with more public works people and volunteers.”

By Monday evening, most of the waterfront was expected once again to be spic-and-span.

“The majority of the site is clean,” McCarthy said. “We’ve got some porta-potties and trailers to get out, but for the most part, it’s back to normal.”

The festival brought huge crowds, from both the Bangor area and from points north, south, out of state and from Canada.

“We still don’t have an exact number for attendance, because we’re waiting for aerial photos so we can analyze them,” McCarthy said. “But it’s safe to say we had a crowd that equaled or surpassed last year in size and satisfaction.”

Last year’s festival drew 135,000 people over the three days.

Most of the performers had headed out by Monday afternoon, though a few met with problems catching flights to the South due to Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina also affected one of the groups headed for Bangor before the festival kickoff on Friday. The hurricane was hovering over the Caribbean when the Bahamas Junkanoo Revue was set to take off for Maine. The group’s flight to Bangor ended up getting canceled.

“You get these little glitches, but they’re just for a moment, because someone jumps right in and helps,” Brad Ryder, owner of Bangor’s Epic Sports and chairman of the festival board of directors, said.

The Skatalites took the place of the Bahamas Junkanoo Revue for the parade on Saturday.

“That was an instance where they had a lot of percussion and couldn’t walk behind a truck,” Ryder said. “One of the public works trucks was all gussied up, and [the band] just hopped right on board. It all happened in a really short amount of time.”

Downtown businesses were initially hesitant to embrace the original National Folk Festival, which started in 2002. Owners thought that the throngs of people attracted to the waterfront would just stay at the festival and would not spend any money at shops and restaurants.

Ryder said that’s only partially true.

“A lot of our regular customers say, ‘It’s too busy, I’m not going to shop downtown,'” he said. “But on the same note, we have a lot of new visitors that say, ‘Well, let’s go check out downtown and see what’s there.'”

Ryder said that the festival was still good for business, even if the effects weren’t immediate.

“We don’t get the immediate effect, but we get the residual effect,” he said. “A month from now we’ll have someone come in or call and say, ‘I was passing by during the festival and saw some ski poles or a sweater or jacket. Do you still have it?’ That happens at Christmas especially. It’s really great exposure for everyone.”

McCarthy said the new addition of paid public parking did not have any adverse effects on attendance, and she didn’t hear many grumblings from festival-goers.

“I think for the most part people weren’t resentful,” she said. “Those who were concerned found other places to park.”

McCarthy said that figures for the amount of money brought in by the $5 parking fee were not available yet.

For those involved in the planning and the execution, it’s hard not to call the first American Folk Festival a resounding success.

“You just don’t see thousands of people in downtown Bangor,” Ryder said. “It’s pretty amazing.”

Ryder said he also felt very hopeful for next year’s festival.

“Just as the last performer finished [on Sunday], it started raining,” he said. “And then there was that rainbow. If there’s a good omen, that’s it.”