Last month, I attended The Cabin Fever Film Festival presented by Points North Institute at The Camden Opera House. The entire festival was terrific, especially the opening night film, Crip Camp. Saturday night we saw Once Were Brothers, Robbie Robertson and The Band.

Watching the film, I remembered back to my first experience with The Band. Rumors were spreading all around the world about The Band and when The Big Pink album came out, I grabbed it. I can still remember listening to it for the first time in my apartment on Cornelia Street in Manhattan. I had heard about it from friends at the Fillmore East and in the rock world.

To use an overused expression, it blew my mind..

That kind of ground-level excitement - I just wanted to find other people who had discovered the album and loved it as much as I did.

Sitting at The Camden Opera House, crowded for February in Maine, I was surrounded by people who had discovered The Band when young, as I had, and millennial, etc. who had heard the album, read about The Band and Robbie Robertson and were fans.

If you’ve seen the film, share your excitement with me and if you haven’t go find it and watch it. It’s multi-layered and beautiful.

It also further inspired by interest in songwriting. Here is a prompt to start you on your own creative writing inspired by The Band:

Martin Scorsese, film director, talks about the sound design of a movie. Music, he says, creates visualization. A piece of music, he says, creates character. And suggests the spiritual life of the character. Create an image/moment and include a song. Maybe start with the song and let that the lead-in to the character.