{"id":62940,"date":"2022-06-10T09:20:08","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T13:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=62940"},"modified":"2022-06-10T10:09:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T14:09:58","slug":"the-ghost-of-paul-revere-takes-one-final-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/the-ghost-of-paul-revere-takes-one-final-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ghost of Paul Revere Takes One Final Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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After 11 years of making music and touring across the country and world, the Ghost of Paul Revere announced in April that the band would be breaking up after its summer tour. The Maine-based folk band got its start singing in Portland bars and went on to perform on Conan and had a song named as Maine\u2019s official state ballad. The bandmates said in the Instagram post announcing the news that their two-day Ghostland festival on September 2 and 3 in Portland would be their last shows \u201cfor the sake of our own health, our families, and you, our fans.\u201d Three of the four band members, Griffin Sherry, Sean McCarthy, and Max Davis, grew up together and graduated from Bonny Eagle High School in Standish. Charles Gagne joined in 2018 as the band\u2019s drummer. We spoke with three of the members shortly after they made the announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you feel when the band made the decision to break up?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sean McCarthy:<\/strong> Being a part of the band, there were certain things that I knew I would always have to have a reckoning with, whether it was time away from home or the way in which we tour. There\u2019s always been a sense of inevitability that I can\u2019t have my cake and eat it too. I can\u2019t be home with my hopeful kids every weekend for their softball games and be a professional musician. But when the decision was made to do what we\u2019re doing, it was kind of like two separate sides of the same coin. Is this the right decision now? All these coulda, shoulda, wouldas popped up. Trying to keep the confidence in the decision and knowing that it will be the best thing for us moving forward is something you have to follow up all those doubts with each time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Gagne:<\/strong> I was focused more on the importance of people looking out for what\u2019s best for themselves and their health and their lives and their families, which is, at the sum of its parts, bigger than this band and ultimately more important. It\u2019s life. I don\u2019t know why my brain goes there, and maybe it\u2019s a defense mechanism. But in the weeks following, the reality of it began setting in. We are talking about it like an open book. It\u2019s an interesting thing to have a kind of public dismantling. That is something that I\u2019m still kind of adjusting to and learning to deal with. The silver lining and the greatest thing is that we still for the rest of the summer get to go out and play. That\u2019s the best medicine for me, personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Griffin Sherry:<\/strong> In accordance with any type of loss, you do go through the stages of grief. I think that with the exception of maybe disbelief, I probably went through most of them in the first couple days. We spend a lot of time together, so to say the writing wasn\u2019t on the walls would be kind of a lie. But any time you come to a crossroads in your life, there\u2019s going to be some type of momentary hindsight, where you go, \u201cIf this had changed, maybe this could have persevered, or if we had done something differently here, maybe this would\u2019ve been different.\u201d But at the end of the day hindsight is just a lesson to learn from for the future and not something that can change the present or the past. No matter how difficult it was, there\u2019s another part of it that does have me excited about what comes next for us and what that means creatively for individuals and people\u2019s lives. We are fortunate to be able to play until the end of summer and finish this out with a big bang at Ghostland. That\u2019s going to be one of the few proper send-offs that we possibly could have given this kind of experiment that we\u2019ve been doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Griffin Sherry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sean McCarthy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Max Davis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Charles Gagne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How was it to play that first show in Waterville after the announcement?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

SM:<\/strong> When the comments and all the heartfelt messages started coming in, I got a little nervous about how we\u2019re going to continue to go through the rest of the summer shows because I was getting all choked up. Then when we had our first show and people were coming up to us, I was surprised at how not sad that was. It\u2019s very hard to put into words. It felt like we were tying up loose ends in a way. When all these people were coming up to say goodbye, they\u2019d always start out with something like, \u201cHeard this terrible rumor, say it isn\u2019t so.\u201d But then the next sentence was always, \u201cWe\u2019re so proud of you guys. We can\u2019t wait to see what you do next. And thank you.\u201d Every single time. That\u2019s made it easier in a lot of ways. Harder in a lot of ways, but easier in a lot of ways, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CG:<\/strong> It was kind of like that Band-Aid that\u2019s been on for a little too long and the hair starts growing into the glue. I think the Waterville night ripped that Band-Aid off, and it was a weird sense of relief. It\u2019s relieving in the way that you don\u2019t have to create in your head what it\u2019s going to be like when you first have those interactions or how you\u2019re going to react. I don\u2019t want to say that we\u2019re going to start getting more comfortable with that, but I think that we will, just because of how repetitive it\u2019ll be. Every show is going to be potentially the last show we play in front of X or Y amount of people or at a certain venue, like that probably was the last show at the Waterville Opera House and at Higher Ground the next day in Burlington. Every one of them is going to have a whole lot of meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GS:<\/strong> The amount of support and love we\u2019ve received as a band has never been lost on me. It\u2019s really incredible what we managed to grow over these years and how invested other people were in the music we were making. So, it is sad to know that there\u2019s no repeats for the rest of the summer. Every time we hit a stage, it\u2019ll be the last time we play on that stage as this band. The hope is that we can put on a performance at each of these shows that will be one that people won\u2019t forget and is deserving of how much love and support we get. After all these years, every time I get up on stage, I still feel like I owe the crowd a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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