From beers to Brubeck

Or how the Key Bank Maine Jazz Festival
came to be

by John O'Neill

The Key Bank Maine Jazz Festival runs September 1 and 2. See our listings pages for information on times and venues.

A FEST OF FRIENDS: Paul Clifford, Andy Holman, and Jim Clifford, the men behind the Maine Jazz Festival.

Inspiration can take many forms, not the least common of which is a six pack of beer and a lazy Friday evening. Of course, the problem with these alcohol-induced epiphanies is that they're usually either, one, really stupid ideas, or, two, quickly forgotten in favor of pizza and the sofa. There is the rare exception, however, and that is where our story begins.

It was April of '98, and four guys who'd been friends since grade school didn't have anything to do on a Friday night. So Paul Clifford, his cousin Jim Clifford, and Andy Holman grabbed some beers and headed to their buddy Stevo Orestis's place on the West End.

"There just wasn't a hell of a lot to do," remembers Paul.

Two conversations were going: one talking about how, although the four friends were living and working in Portland -- they'd all moved down from Lewiston -- they really weren't doing anything that cool otherwise; the other discussion was about how much they dug the fact that Bonnie Raitt auctioned off some guitars for the Boys and Girls Club. As the beers were imbibed, the conversations converged: we should organize a music festival to benefit youth programs in town, they decided.

"And I don't remember who said it," Paul explains. "But somebody said Portland needed a jazz festival."

Maybe it was the fact that Jim wasn't drinking, but this alcohol-induced epiphany that actually was a good idea wasn't forgotten when the harsh Saturday sun rose. And now, nearly two years later, that group of 30-something guys, with little more than a fondness for jazz music, decent business instincts, and an absolutely frightening naiveté about the complexities involved in actually pulling something of this magnitude off, are offering up the Key Bank Maine Jazz Festival.

Yes, dreams do come true, but frankly the story behind the making of the largest jazz shindig in Maine is the stuff of fuzzy ABC After School Specials where the good guys win, the bad guys are booted, an unlikely hero steps in to save the day, and the whole town rallies to the cause in the end. And its all true, even the beer-drinking part.

"I can say we never would have come up with the idea on a Wednesday morning," chuckles Holman, who's juggling coordination of the two-day event while running his business, Global TeleServices. "[We were] entirely unprepared for the amount of work it was going to take. If we had a clue, it never would have happened. But now, I wouldn't change a thing."

"We joke about that all the time," adds Paul, a seventh-grade English teacher by trade and a jazz nut in his spare time. "We started to do the work, and by the time we realized what was involved, it was too late to back out. Now it's a full-time job."

Begun as the Maine Jazz Festival, and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit a little over a year ago, Holman and the two Clifford's -- Orestis moved out of the country for work -- envisioned a double-pronged program that would give back to the community in two ways. The primary directive was developing an annual event where money could be raised for youth music programs. Having come up on the short end of the budget scalpel over the past decade, the immediate goal was to re-infuse cash flow into area programs that would in turn offer underprivileged children the opportunity to play an instrument and develop an appreciation for music. This year's recipients, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Portland and the Portland Arts & Technological High School stand to receive roughly $50,000 should all go according to plan. As Paul explains, "We want to highlight the importance of music and help slow the trend of [the budget ax]. We want to provide the community with other options and establish an event that will feed into it on a yearly basis.

"You can get music at school, but the quality varies, and that's only for 185 days a year. [Beyond that] there are band camps, which are wonderful, but there's a financial barrier attached. That's why the Boys and Girls Club would be the perfect place to go to have an option to learn an instrument, as well as [having access to] a rehearsal space and maybe some instruction."

The secondary goal was to attract world-class jazz musicians to Portland to play alongside some of the state's homegrown talent. Under-appreciated in general, the festival would cast an all-too-rare spotlight on that special breed of narcissist known as the local jazz practitioner (like the career petty thief or the neighborhood gas huffer, musicians bit by the jazz bug seem incapable of giving up). A noble and thoughtful undertaking to be sure, except that none of the primaries involved knew the first thing about staging a live event.

Jim, through his work as a lobbyist, was the one with connections and could call on the heavy hitters (Rep. Thomas Allen, justice Carl Bradford, councilor Nathan Smith, and Governor Angus King are but a few of the who's-who that sit on the Festival Advisory Board), Paul was the passionate fan and idealist that drove the operation, and Andy played the tight-assed money man every successful venture needs to keep the passionate idealist on budget. With Northampton, Massachusetts's Iron Horse Productions on line to run the event, all seemed in good hands.

And then the shit began to fly.

"[Iron Horse] came in and said they could make the festival a huge success, and blew a lot of smoke up our ass," Holman confides. "They also wanted a lot of money. We couldn't even get a proposal out of them, so we fired them. They said [they would make sure] we'd never get anyone to play."

Iron Horse Productions began as a small concert venue in Northampton dedicated to providing an outlet for singer-songwriter fare and jazz music, and has since grown to become the only major player in Western Massachusetts and one of New England's most powerful promoters. Because they're also closely tied to the majority of the agents who represent major jazz artists, the fallout from severing ties with the company could have been devastating to the Maine Jazz Festival's plans.

Undeterred, Paul, the fan, jumped into action and went straight to the local jazz community for help. Now a grassroots organization without any formal contacts, he would have to build the show from the ground up. Using the tried-and-true method of networking through friends of friends, he was able to work his way up the jazz hierarchy by utilizing the musicians themselves as contacts. Seventeen hours after canning Iron Horse Productions, Paul had landed the legendary Dave Brubeck to anchor the show.

"The way we recruited for the show was pretty unconventional," says Paul. "I went to the musicians and picked their brains. Every person involved I saw play live or went to lunch with. Then I'd ask 20 other musicians what they thought. Even if they weren't always pals, there was a respect. I can't believe the musicians we got. We used our musicians to get other musicians."

Meanwhile the Portland business community seemed nothing short of thrilled to get behind the festival through either financial support or providing services free of charge. It was a natural. As of last week, Holman estimates that over $50,000 has been raised in sponsorships, and another $40,000 of in-kind assistance from various area businesses. While the three men were optimistic for at least marginal success, the grand slam came at the eleventh hour when Key Bank signed on as the host sponsor for the next five years. A much-needed fiscal coup, the Key link-up, besides ensuring jazz will be returning for at least four more seasons, also gives the organizers a chance to take their vision and expand upon it in a way that could really have a regional, if not national, impact.

In its first incarnation, the jazz fest is larger and more ambitious than the largest jazz fests in the region -- Montreal and Newport, Rhode Island -- were their first year out. And the Labor Day weekend should prove a well-thought choice as there is the potential to expand to three or possibly four days next year, and the only other serious competition for the jazz buck can be found across the Mississippi in Chicago. And don't think that doesn't count. According to Paul, "Jazz fans are sorta like Deadheads: they travel to all of the shows. You'll see the same faces in Montreal and Newport. Plus, with the internet and the way information travels now, it won't take as long for word to build. It's just a matter of good planning and the city getting behind it"

"I don't think the city has any idea of what type of creature we've created," says Holman. "They haven't been to Chicago or Montreal to see how immense a jazz festival can be. I think this thing could eclipse the Old Port Festival in a couple of years."

Regardless of the final outcome this weekend, the end result shouldn't be forgotten: three guys with a good idea and just enough cluelessness to see it through stand to do an awful lot of good simply because it needed to be done. If Portland does eventually become a destination for the jazz elite in the coming years, the basic philosophy of it's organizers won't change.

"The whole idea is a charity first, and a festival second," says Holman. "If it weren't a charity first, it would be an impossible job. It's a great cause that isn't hard to get people behind, and that' because it's such a cool event . . . though it would be great to be bigger than Newport."

John O'Neill can be reached at johndelrey@yahoo.com.