The Unorganized Portion of the 2015 Fryeburg Fair

If you’re new around here, those are my two sons. They call themselves Unorganized Hancock. One is twenty, and the other is twelve. What you see here is their vision of themselves, not perfected, but somewhat realized.

This video is part of a 3-hour stint at the 2015 Fryeburg Fair. It’s the third year in a row they’ve played there. In Maine, agricultural fairs are considered plum jobs for working musicians. There are nighttime shows with sort-of name acts, and dozens of daily performances here and there around the fairgrounds from all kinds of entertainers. There was a wandering bagpiper standing near us while we set up the equipment, and he was louder than a rock band. There are folkie-strummy bands, novelty acts, blues bands, and above all, country bands.

People from away figure Maine is like an LL Bean catalog, but only about ten zip codes look like that. Maine is like a frostbacked Alabama in every other burg and township. Mainers bomb around on motorcycles, wear cowboy hats and feed caps, and everybody listens to some version of country music. The bands and audiences make a million distinctions between the types of country bands, distinctions that are entirely lost on me. The bro-country crowd won’t settle for truck-driving’ country. Countrypolitan bands can’t play at nu-grass shows.

Our kids can get a flutter with the devotees of the Lubbock sound when they blast through Oh Boy!, but then the train leaves the station. They’re the Ed Sullivan Show on Saturn, and so must blaze their own trail out here in western Maine.

The audience liked them a lot. They just couldn’t figure out why.