Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. sits at sea level on Marshall's Wharf in Belfast Bay, close enough to the water that the tide is part of the building's biography. On Saturday, Oct. 24, the brewery hosts what it is calling the Good Times Double Feature: an afternoon that rolls into an evening with two of Maine's more reliably danceable bands, The Hot Suppers from 3 to 6 p.m. and Tricky Britches from 7 to 10 p.m. It is all ages, and the organizers' instruction is simple — bring your friends and your dancing shoes.
The format is the interesting part. A double feature is a movie-house idea, two pictures for the price of one, and here it means two full sets with a changeover in between rather than a single headliner with an opener. The early slot belongs to the Midcoast, the late one to Portland, and the audience is invited to stay for both.
The Hot Suppers are a Waldo County band, and their own description is a fair one: musicians who meld original songs with favorite rock, blues, old country and Americana tunes into something dynamic, harmonic, rhythmic and electric. The lineup is Annadeene Fowler on vocals; Tom Fowler on vocals, mandolin and baritone saxophone; John Pranio on vocals, fiddle, harmonica and guitar; Pete Davis on vocals and electric guitar; Jeff Densmore on vocals and drums; and Adam Nordell on bass. That baritone sax in a band with a fiddle and a mandolin is a good hint at what they do — a dance band with a horn section's worth of low end and a string band's front line.
Annadeene Konesni Fowler's background explains some of the range. She grew up steeped in the music and festival traditions of western North Carolina and Kentucky — she was named for the old-time guitar player and singer Annadeene Fraley — and after moving to Maine she was performing on Midcoast stages by age seven, sang with DownEast Singers, was a featured vocalist with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and finished her youth studies majoring in opera at Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts. These days she sings Americana with family and friends, teaches at the Strung Together Music Festival in Searsport, and co-produces the Belfast Summer Music Series. The Hot Suppers are, in other words, a local band in the best sense: people who live here, teach here, and book the other shows here too.
Tricky Britches come from the other direction, and from further afield. The band formed in 2009, when four friends in Portland took their street-corner fiddle tunes and country songs on the road across the United States. A University of Hawaii concert listing from 2015 described them then as the product of mountain music, rockabilly and country swing thrown together, with fiddle and mandolin tearing through honky-tonk rhythms and lonesome harmonies pulling the audience in "until a spontaneous dance explosion occurs." At that point they had recorded two albums, Hard Fought Day and Good Company, and they have since grown into a high-energy string band that folds bluegrass, country, folk and rock together. They have played stages across the U.S., Hawaii and Europe.
The current lineup is Tyler Lienhardt on fiddle, Seth Doyle on guitar, Jed Bresette on bass, Jake Henning on mandolin, Richard Bicknell on banjo and Riley Kern on drums. A banjo-and-fiddle string band with a drum kit is a configuration built for volume and momentum, which is roughly what a brewery with a dance floor wants at seven o'clock on a Saturday night.
The venue has its own story, and it is a survival story. Marshall Wharf opened in 2007 and quickly became one of the anchors of the Maine craft beer wave, the kind of place that made bold ales with local ingredients — a Pemaquid Oyster Stout brewed with fresh Maine oysters, a 9-percent Cant Dog Double IPA that has been called dangerously drinkable — next door to Three Tides bar and restaurant on the working waterfront. It also became a community gathering place, the site of birthday parties, anniversaries and holidays for Belfast residents.
Then, in April 2019, owners David and Sarah Carlson announced they were closing both the brewery and Three Tides. After years of fighting rising sea levels and storm surges, the flooding on that low wharf had become more than they could keep ahead of. Longtime Belfast residents Kathleen Dunckel and Dan Waldron, friends of the Carlsons, were heartbroken — and rather than mourn, they went looking for financing. When the brewery and property were slated for public auction in January 2020, the couple bought the building and both businesses just days before the auction date. Dunckel had been a professor of landscape ecology at Unity College; Waldron joined her in the resurrection. "Marshall Wharf is an anchor to our community," Dunckel said at the time. The brewery's own line now reads: brewed in Belfast, Maine, since 2007, rooted in community, made to be shared.
That is the thread running through this particular Saturday. A Waldo County band whose singer co-produces the town's summer music series, a Portland string band that started on street corners and now tours Europe, and a waterfront brewery that a pair of neighbors refused to let close — all in one afternoon-to-evening bill, with room to dance and no age restriction at the door.
Tickets are available through the brewery's website, marshallwharfbrewing.com. Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. is at 36 Marshall Wharf in Belfast.