And a very Merry Christmas to all of Maine’s music makers

I finished the bulk of my Christmas shopping in about two days. Fancy kitchenware and stocking stuffers for my family, check. Mix CDs and gag gifts for my friends, check. Homemade candy for co-workers, check. I’m a single 23-year-old fresh out of college, so no one’s going to think poorly of me if I’m not able to drop hundreds of dollars on presents, even though I’d love to. I’m not cheap: I’m broke!

However, if I could buy whatever I wanted for whomever I wanted, I’d probably be getting some special gifts for those individuals who have worked hard this year in supporting the Maine music scene. Without the dedicated few that have worked on their own time, often with little or no pay, to bring live music to a hungry audience – well, there wouldn’t be a Maine music scene.

For starters, I would buy Kathy Findlay, who runs the Kave in Bucksport, a week in Hawaii, or Tahiti or someplace like that. Wherever there’s lots of sunshine and cabana boys to bring you cocktails. She works like crazy to bring shows to the Kave, and even though she has plenty of help, I still wonder how she manages to find time to do it while she’s finishing a master’s degree and working a full-time job. The hardcore and metal scene in eastern Maine begins and ends with her, so if anyone deserves a week of doing nothing but hanging out on the beach, it’s Findlay.

Perhaps no one is more immersed in the local scene than Myke Billings. Not only is he the front man for Bangor jam band Overdub, he’s the host of the weekly Open Mike Night every Wednesday at Soma 36 in Orono. Over the past few months, Billings has seen Open Mike grow from just a few participants every night to more artists than he can fit in over the course of each evening.

At a recent Open Mike, there were plenty of dudes with acoustic guitars, sure, but there was also a hip hop MC, a piano player and a songwriter who programmed his own drums and synths. It’s probably the most vital musical happening in the greater Bangor area, and Billings deserves a good chunk of the credit. And he should wake up Sunday morning to find a couple thousand dollars worth of state-of-the- art recording equipment underneath the Christmas tree, so he can really get his studio off the ground.

But what about the bands? And the DJs? There are tons of them around, but who rose above the crowd to achieve something great? One that springs to my mind is Eric Green and the Frozen Swamp Choppers, the local blues rock band who live by the adage of “never turn down a gig.” They’ll go up north, or Down East, or anywhere in between, and the result is that they’re probably the most visible act in northern and eastern Maine.

Green and company even played backing band to “Ready” Teddy McQuiston, a New Orleans musician who landed in the Bangor area after Hurricane Katrina blew his life away. Not only do they deserve a round of applause for that, they deserve a sweet touring van, so maybe someday they can head down to a rebuilt New Orleans and meet up with him again.

But it may be a band that’s not even officially together anymore that wins my unofficial “Band of the Year” award.

Skawabunga started out as a joke – a group of friends who met in college at UMaine and decided to form a ska band just for the hell of it. None of them took it seriously. But after a year or two of playing together it became apparent that this was a little more than a joke: they had actual fans. They recruited local scratch DJ Phonicoid to spin with them and add another musical dimension to their ridiculously high-energy live show. They had a whole mess of original songs. When Skawabunga broke up last May, after various members graduated from college or moved away, they were one of the most beloved bands to come out of the area in years.

They’ve managed to play two reunion shows since then. One was at a memorable Halloween concert sponsored by UMaine’s college radio station, WMEB, that was supposed to be the real farewell gig. But it wasn’t. They played one last time just a few weeks ago, and not under the best of circumstances – at a memorial concert for Phonicoid, a.k.a. Mark Seiler, who died in late November.

I don’t think there’s anything I could get for Skawabunga that could really convey the gratitude that they warrant. And there’s nothing that could replace Phonicoid, of course. But at least everyone that saw them while they were around knew they were witnessing music being played in one of the best possible ways: by friends, for an enthusiastic, grateful audience. And that’s a pretty awesome gift all around.

Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net.