ROCKLAND – The Lobster Festival board recently named Paul Benjamin, organizer of the North Atlantic Blues Festival, to be the artistic director of the 2018 Maine Lobster Festival. Benjamin will replace Chuck Kruger, who retired after 32 years with the festival.

Cynthia Powel, president of the festival's board of directors, said they are excited to have Benjamin on board. The festival will celebrate its 71st anniversary this summer in Rockland.

"On behalf of the Maine Lobster Festival, I'd like to congratulate Paul on his 25th anniversary of the North Atlantic Blues Festival," said Powell. "We are excited to welcome him aboard as our new artistic director. Paul brings a wealth of knowledge and experience and we are looking forward to working with him to put together a great lineup of Maine music and entertainers for this year's festival."

Entertainment for the festival will shift from national bands to Maine-based bands.

There will no longer be a separate charge for entertainment tickets, and seating will be first-come, first-served. The main stage is now being referred to as the "Maine" stage.

"The Maine Lobster Festival featuring Maine entertainment will be a fresh new look for the 2018 festival," said Benjamin. "Maine has a number of great entertainers throughout the state and I am looking forward to showcasing these artists on the Maine Stage. Entertainment will come free with your admission, making it affordable and accessible. We are looking at all styles of entertainers, which, we hope, will bring new people to the festival and to the Midcoast."

Benjamin is in his 25th year heading up the other popular Rockland summer event, the North Atlantic Blues Festival; but, it goes back further.

"I definitely didn't think it could go by so quickly," he said. "It's really my 29th year. In the first four years it was held in the Trade Winds Inn parking lot and it was called ‘The Trade Winds Blues Bash.’ We did it with two national bands and four regional bands."

Benjamin said he was running a bar at the Trade Winds at the time and that was where the idea was born.

"I had my club and I was doing Monday Blues there, and other things on the weekends," he said. "The Blues were growing all the time and I thought it might be cool to bring in some artists and try a Blues festival."

In 1994, Benjamin moved his festival from the parking lot to the public landing in Rockland and gave it the title North Atlantic Blues Festival, but it wasn't because he had outgrown his Trade Winds space.

"Actually it was Gill Merriam, who was the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce at the time, who noticed what I was doing in the parking lot," he said. 

The chamber was holding its Schooner Days that weekend and all the schooners were leaving on Saturday. Merriam invited Benjamin to move his festival to the public landing on Sunday.

"I thought about it, reworked it and changed the name," he said. "I added a couple of partners and we came up with the name, North Atlantic Blues Festival, and decided to move it to the public landing. We did that for a couple of years on Sunday, and talking with Gill, we realized the schooners were leaving early Saturday."

Benjamin said the festival entertained 1,500 people its first year; the second year, 3,000. So they decided to make the festival a two-day event on Saturday and Sunday.

Benjamin said they first promoted the festival in Maine; now it is advertised in publications worldwide.

"As of right now, for this year, I've sent out tickets to 26 states and three countries," he said. "We've averaged over the years 15,000 to 16,000 people for the two-day event. Then, we do the Club Crawl, where we close down Main Street on Saturday night and there might be 4,000 to 5,000 people who maybe can't afford to come to the festival. But, it's free to everybody and it's great for the merchants."

Benjamin said that all the bands playing in the Club Crawl are Maine-based bands.

"On Saturday, after we close the festival for the day, and when we close Main Street, everybody who’s playing on the street and playing in the clubs are all Maine-based bands,” he said. “What's cool is that a lot of the artists who play the festival stop in the different clubs and play with the locals."

In the beginning, Benjamin said he charged $20 for a ticket. Now it's $55 for the two-day event or $30 for a single day.

"Like everything else, costs go up," he said. "We've been fortunate to have people support us and we can keep the ticket prices relatively smooth. If you go up to some of the bigger concerts in other places you will double or triple that to see certain acts."

Benjamin is from Rumford and moved to Rockland after serving in the Marine Corps. That was in 1973. He began living his love of the Blues in 1978.

"I was brought up on blues and jazz, and my parents were huge jazz fans," he said. "Many days, my parents would just turn on the old high fi and play the 78s. A lot of jazz and some blues and I just gravitated towards it. I grew up in the era of the Beatles and the Stones. The Beatles were a great band, but I loved the dirty, gritty music the Stones put out and it was Blues."

In 2002 the Blues Foundation, based in Memphis, Tennessee, designated the North Atlantic Blues Festival as the best Blues festival in the country.

"That was nice because it was before I got involved with the Blues Foundation,” said Benjamin. “In 2003, I was on its board of directors. What people don't get is that there are a lot of different styles of the Blues. I get asked the question a lot, 'what is the blues?' and my answer is that the Blues is the heart beat of life. In the beginning, all music came from the Blues."

Benjamin said that there are so many styles that putting together a lineup that pleases the most fans is key.

The birthplace of the blues was Mississippi.

"I go to Mississippi often," he said. "If someone wants to know the history of the Blues, go to Mississippi and just look up the Mississippi Blues Trail. You can spend a month there and hardly see it. There are 177 markers in Mississippi and I have been to 175 of them."

Benjamin said there is a Mississippi trail marker in Rockland and its placement was a great honor.

"It's right by the Trade Winds and we were given that in 2010," he said. "It kind of tells the history of the Blues in the Midcoast. There are only 10 markers outside of Mississippi. Rockland got the sixth one. We are proud to have it and it was a great honor when they gave one to me here in Rockland."

Benjamin said the marker is not for the festival, but for the number of people from Mississippi he has invited to Maine. Benjamin is also the past chairman of the Blues Foundation in Memphis. Benjamin was the first elected president of the board who had not resided in Memphis.

He served in that position for four years.

Who is the headliner at the festival this year?

"I have 11 headliners on the bill," he said. "Whoever made you buy that ticket, that's your headliner. Everyone of these are national touring acts and they've all been up for Blues music awards, so as far as I'm concerned they are all headliners."

For information about the 2018 North Atlantic Blues Festival and ticketing information visit northatlanticbluesfestival.com/

For information concerning the 2018 Maine Lobster Festival visit mainelobsterfestival.com/