Neighbors

Folksy Barnes Is Mariaville’s Music Man

Jimmy Barnes, folk musician, is every bit Mariaville-folk, too. The journeyman guitar player calls his style “country-eastern.” He sings and sells CDs largely about life on the water.

Though he has spent years on a variety of coasts, from Maine to Florida to Louisiana to Mexico, he keeps circling back inland—to Mariaville.

“It’s home,” he mused last week, saying as much in two words as he has conveyed in hundreds of original song lyrics.

Now 57, Barnes is ever respectful of his roots. He knows Mariaville as the place where his lumberman great-grandfather brought in woodcutters from Nova Scotia.

He lives in the farmhouse on Route 181 built by his grandfather. He has memories of his father putting the cow’s milk out by the road for daily pick-up by the Hancock County Creamery truck.

Barnes loves to play locally, particularly when he knows it’s for community-building reasons.  Last summer, for instance, the Mariaville Grange tried to revive an old tradition of Saturday night dances and brought in Barnes to help.

“The grange is actually one of the last holdouts of what Mariaville used to be like,” Barnes said.

“The Mariaville Dance was the big thing on Saturday night. People came from Ellsworth, Osborn, Franklin, all around.

“It was the only game in town: You went to the dance because that was it. Now, there are 50 things happening on a Saturday night within driving distance.”

Barnes has also worked on reviving a newer tradition of his own making, “Barnes-stock.” Last weekend, he had dozens of friends over to play music in his field. Those who didn’t play the music were there to enjoy it.

Barnes treasures traditions. He can fill a morning talking about the way life used to be. Such as the way Mariaville people used to gather on summer evenings at the Jones Bridge over the Union River.

“Half the people in town were fishing for perch,” he said. “Kids were swimming, and it was a social thing.

Times change—and Barnes sings about change, among other things.

 “Now people go to town (Ellsworth) two times a day. I came along at a time when people went to town out of weekly necessity, not daily.”

Barnes enjoyed the days when people listened for a combination of rings on their telephone (“everyone else used to pick up and listen”), and when doors went unlocked.

“Once, I basically knew everybody here,” he said. “There are a few Frosts and Edgecombs left, people from those old families.

“But I tell you, there are more people from away living here now, than there are local. It changes the complexion of things.”