Paul Benjamin knows about the Monday night blues. For most people, Monday is a back-to-work day. For Benjamin and other music lovers, it’s live blues night at Time Out Pub in Rockland.

Benjamin is best known around his neighborhood as the creator of the North Atlantic Blues Festival, a two-day summertime lineup of some of the hottest blues artists in the world. The festival, which is in its 13th year, won the Keeping the Blues Alive promoter award from the Blues Foundation in 2002. Since 1994, Benjamin has co-produced the festival, and it’s a happy stop on the regional blues map in July.

But music is a year-round passion for Benjamin, who is also a festival consultant and private investigator. He knows that, for performers, Monday night is typically dead. Coincidentally, Monday nights are also dead in Rockland. Could he bring both to life?

The answer is yes.

As a hobby, Benjamin began booking blues artists on the first day of the workweek after they had played in other places either in Maine or other places in New England. Or he brought them to Rockland for Monday night, and booked additional gigs on Sunday and Tuesday in other towns such as Auburn and Waterville. Before similar clubs in Portland closed, Benjamin also coordinated with those venues. Eventually, Benjamin settled into Rockland’s Time Out Pub, a former dinner theater with excellent acoustics and a dance space.

The arrangement got off to a slow start, but these days, Benjamin fills the pub – up to 140 people – on a night when the only other happening thing is football. And Time Out owner Jim Beaulieu offers that on TVs in the sports bar in the basement.

“Nothing goes on Monday nights anywhere in town,” said Beaulieu, an affable man in a Red Sox cap. “The blues here has grown and grown and grown. It took awhile, but, I’ll tell you, the blues is a force in Maine now. People drive here every Monday from Bangor in rain or snow. It’s a responsible crowd, too. There’s never that kind of problem with the blues. It’s adults who love music. And they’ve worn out three dance floors.”

The stage at Time Out is situated in the left corner of a dimly lit, rectangular room filled with folding tables and metal chairs in the style of a school auditorium. Patrons don’t spend much time at the tables, however – unless they’re eating dinner. Otherwise, they dance through two 75-minute sets. The show starts at 7 p.m. and ends by 10, benevolent hours given the day of the week.

“I’ve been here every Monday night for six years,” said Edd Morang, a Realtor in Bangor. “There’s no bad music that goes through here.” Another man from Bangor, who had driven to Rockland with a group, called it “Monday night therapy.” A woman said she didn’t usually go to bars alone, but blues night was convivial; she didn’t feel threatened. One regular called his participation “exercise.”

“I don’t have to go to the Y if I come here,” said 37-year-old Tim Sullivan of Rockland. “When you have some of the best blues bands in the country right next door, people who don’t come are …”

“Missing out” might be one way to finish Sullivan’s sentence. That night, Sullivan had come to listen to Ana Popovic, a blues guitarist who grew up in Belgrade, Serbia. “I love this place,” said Popovic, who praised Benjamin for keeping the blues going after the tourists leave. “The very first festival I did was in Rockland. And Paul is one of the reasons so many blues bands are playing.”

Popovic could easily fill the stages of a festival, but she is a loyalist to Benjamin’s Monday night gigs and to the “Monday night people,” as Benjamin calls his patrons. For artists, Rockland isn’t an easy place to get to, especially in the winter. But bands are willing to make the stop between gigs in Boston and Canada, or Hartford and Chicago.

And who wouldn’t want to play to a grateful crowd of 100-plus hard-core blues junkies on a cold night in March?

“People who come here are fans of the blues, and they respect the choices Paul makes,” said Robert Haley, who is 47 and lives in Gardiner. He attends several blues festivals a year and had just returned from the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkansas. “Even if the people here don’t know the band, they’ll take their chances. I come here on a regular basis to hear some great blues from all over. But I also know that you can go all over the country and drop Paul’s name. People know him.”

That’s certainly true of official blues fans, scholars and hard-core festival-goers, many of whom are members of the Blues Foundation in Memphis, Tenn. The nonprofit organization oversees the Blues Hall of Fame and administers the Blues Music Awards, a kind of Grammy for the genre. Its mission to preserve and celebrate blues history, excellence and education is a full-time job for Jay Sieleman, a lawyer who took over the organization three years ago.

As with others familiar with the larger blues scene, Sieleman was hesitant to call Maine a blues Mecca. But he readily applauded Benjamin’s work both in Rockland and nationally. Benjamin is president of the foundation’s board of directors, and he is the first person to hold the high-ranking position and not live in Memphis, which is sometimes called the birthplace of the blues.

“Quite a few of the top acts show up in Rockland on a Monday night,” said Sieleman. “It’s tough out there for touring bands. There are fewer and fewer clubs. They may be in the Northeast touring on Friday and Saturday. But to get that Monday gig is tougher. By putting this on and thinking outside the box, Paul has been able to create something good for everyone. If you check out the performances there in the course of the year, Paul has some of the top acts in the country.”

For instance: Lil’ Ed and the Blues Imperials, Lucky Peterson and Kenny Neal of the famed Neal blues family. And for the annual New Year’s Eve celebration, usually scheduled long before the actual date – this year, Dec. 4 – Eddie Shaw and the Wolfgang have been the featured act. Loyal patrons use the event to dress up in formal evening garb including tuxedos and gowns. Or not. Benjamin also hosts occasional theme nights when participants show up in pajamas or Hawaiian shirts.

Larry Sementini and a date drove up from Spruce Head on the Popovic night because a friend had e-mailed from Lewiston with a tip about the Serbian guitar player. Sementini had never been to Monday night blues, but he quickly was talking with others in the room.

“I’m surprised,” said the 61-year-old Sementini, a retired special education teacher who moved to the area from Connecticut in 1999. “I’m impressed with the mix of people – all ages, all types.”

He meant couples, singles, groups. And groupies: Edd Morang had several posters for Popovic to sign, which she did during a break at the bar.

“About a month ago, a friend dragged me up here, and now I’m a regular,” said Laurie Knowlton, who owns The Saucy Contessa, a gift store in Boothbay Harbor. She’s such a blues enthusiast that the New Jersey native closes her shop during the summer blues festival. And she recently co-produced a blues show at the opera house in Boothbay. “I walked in here the first night, and everybody became my friend. It’s not the typical bar scene. There’s no heavy drinking. No fights. I love dancing. I don’t have a partner, but here you can just get up there. It’s a free-for-all.”

Of course, it’s not free. But Benjamin keeps the costs low because he can book the acts for less on an off night. Admission is either $10 or $15, depending on the act. If the show is bigger, the cost goes up and the location may even change. Benjamin moved Harlem-bred singer Shemekia Copeland, a favorite among Maine audiences since Benjamin first booked her in Rockland almost 10 years ago when she was 17, to the Strand Theater up the street. Tickets for the Sept. 12 performance were still a very reasonable $23.

“I live here,” said Benjamin, who wears a chain with a gold blues guitar pendant, which his wife had custom-made for him. It’s the official logo of his festival. “I’m a blues fan first. If I wasn’t doing it for a hobby, I’d still be a blues fan. This place has good sound and a good dance space. And it’s a big blues family. When people have birthday parties on Monday nights, they have to bring enough cake for the whole house.”

After the New Year’s celebration in December, Benjamin goes on hiatus for the rest of the year, then books a few acts in January and February. By March, he’s back to every Monday night. And, if the bands show up, he goes on with the show regardless of weather or audience size. One Monday last year he did have to cancel because the weather kept the act – not the fans nor Benjamin – from showing up.

For information about Monday blues night at the Time Out Pub in Rockland, call 593-9336, or visit www.northatlanticbluesfestival.com.