For decades in most towns across the country, high school musicians were forming bands with gigs at high school dances, town halls and YMCAs, playing the music of the decade. In Boothbay Harbor, early – mid-80s, one such band was The Voyagers: Todd Dadaleares, Nate Campbell, Dennis Creaser, Russell Sherman and Jon McLaughlin, later replaced by George Kazakis.

The band rehearsed at the Shermans' house and eventually at the Creasers' every Saturday morning in Marge's Head Start space.

The Voyagers were into “hair metal,” or as Todd described it, "harmony guitar solos and spandex.” They started out learning Top 40 pop and the hard rock Top 40.  “We were inspired by many different bands and we grew in and out of love with them all: Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, Tears for Fears, Prince, Van Halen, Michael Jackson, Bad Company, Lynyrd Skynyrd,  The Cure, Duran Duran," said Todd. "We used to borrow equipment from The Walking Wounded and Ginc (Glenn Burnham), sang a couple tunes with us now and again.”

“We kind of wrote songs in the frame of doing all kinds of music,” Todd said. "The original Voyagers cassette was never released, but we made copies for friends. The original songs on it were “Can't Say No,” “Rainbow Nightmare,” “I Can't Wait,” “Game of Love" and “Forever" recorded with Nate's uncle who had a 4-track. 

The band decided to enter WBLM’s Battle of the Bands in 1984 and lost, but came back in ‘85 the victors. “We all had spandex,” recalled Todd. “We formed like a pyramid on the stage and were standing, kneeling on each other at the end of the show doing one of our songs. We just totally went for it with crazy show antics, and then we won."

After graduation in '86, everyone left to begin their next journeys at music schools or pursuing other interests at college. The Voyagers would never play together again. 

The short Indie film 

In December 2024, Todd and his son Uther Moon were out walking. He asked Uther what his next project was and then, as a joke, started talking about when he was young and the years with The Voyagers and how the band would make a cool subject for a film project. Uther, in addition to being a musician, is a filmmaker in Portland who specializes in music videos, narrative filmmaking, and several other art forms. He is also the co-founder of Cratermoon Productions. A seed was planted. 

"But," Uther recalled, "in order to do this we’d have to find someone that looked, sang, and played like Dad and who knew everything you needed to do to be in a band. He started giving me details on certain events and it just kind of snowballed from there."

So, drawing on the band's history, the proof-of-concept would be about a band of the same name preparing to compete in Battle of the Bands contests in 1984 and 1985. For authenticity, this would require a copy of one of those cassettes the band made all those years before. Uther, his mom, Nancy Norton, and dad paid Dennis a visit. And to this day, Todd still finds it incredible that after 35 years Dennis still had the original four-track of all five songs.

 "It  was wild. It was unbelievable to hear them; it was like I remembered it all, but I had forgotten it all," Todd said of the experience. "I spent a lot of time kind of resynchronizing some of the layers, and sub mixing things out. I presented the songs to Nick Prato, a musician and friend of my son."

Hearing the songs, Uther was convinced the project had to be realized. "It’s pretty insane to hear a remastered version of a song your dad made in high school; it's brought him to tears several times."

The cast member musicians for the proof-of-concept, presented by CraterMoon Productions, are Nick Prato, Thando Bleu, Maxxim Klub, Alex Parriseau, and Uther. The original Voyagers songs were played for the musicians cast for the film who then reinterpreted and redid two of them: "Game of Love" and "Rainbow Nightmare."

But there was one not-so-small detail needing attention: Fundraising. Knowing everything was good enough to keep pushing for the project, Uther set up a Go Fund Me page. They began shooting a trailer in the summer of 2025. Uther planned to begin filming the coming winter and early in 2026.

"What ended up happening during filming was all of the scenes were so natural and fluid, even for the trailer, that I ended up cutting the scenes together, and it basically made a short film from trailer footage."

Uther sent it to numerous film festivals including the Maine International Film Festival, Tokyo and Italy. And it won Best Screenwriting at one such event in Italy. Said Uther about the prize, "I'm very flattered by this because there was absolutely no script at all when we were doing it, so it is pretty nuts."

For about half of this year, Uther worked on the script for the feature film, planning character interaction, the main points of each story moment and how the three-act structuring of the film would go. Once all of this was completed, he said it was "... basically like putting puzzle pieces together.” 

Filming began in late August. Here's Uther: "So the full-length feature film movie 'The Voyagers' will take audiences from the band members’ high school graduations and college to their reuniting post-college in Maine. It's based on reality, but still its own fictitious, overly stylized, slick and cool Maine world in an 80s way. It’s a story of musicians and young people in their 20s just trying to make something happen in a small town ... Everything is just overly cool, overly stylized and perfect looking.”

Three more completely original songs will be performed in the feature film version of "The Voyagers." The band members in the feature film version are Nick Prato - Todd, Uther Moon - Dennis,  Alex Pariseu - Nate, Luthando Mngqibisa - Jason, and Maxim Bickford - George.

"I think a lot of the elements that Uther is weaving into this film are going to make, you know, all the people here who remember the band, and from what I gather on Facebook, that's a hell of a lot. They will really dig watching this," said Todd. "Yeah, they reinterpreted these songs, and they're just way better. And so it's like we got to make a record. Right now I'm looking into the copywriting and making sure everybody, the original writers, get credited, and all that stuff."

Todd's also handling audio and the musical score, while Nancy serves as creative director and scene styler. 

So far, filming locations in the Boothbay region include Robinson's Wharf, Brown’s Wharf and Ocean Point, and out of region places include Payson Park. Act 1 has finished filming, Act 2 has begun and Act 3 is in the offing. And, a five-song ep will be released soon, created by the main cast of the film. 

To support the continued making of Uther Moon's full-feature film, go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-our-maine-80s-band-film