UNION — A little bit of Texas settled into Maine Sunday, Sept. 6, when Holly and Elmer Savage opened their fields, vineyard and winery, Savage Oakes, to the public for a free James McMurtry concert. And the crowd couldn’t have been more appreciative.

It was a hot and dry September afternoon, with a slight breeze rippling overhead. Some danced, while many sat in lawn chairs beneath a tent, or on the stone walls beneath leafy trees. McMurtry’s lyrics, his poetry and his accomplished band members — Daren Hess, Cornbread, and Tim Holt — captivated them all. 

McMurtry’s genre says “roots rock,” whatever that means; to the hundreds of Mainers, a few Canadians and a handful of southerners who traveled to the farm at the end of Barrett Hill Road in Union Sunday afternoon, it was simply good music, central to the back-road American experience, and these times we live in.

There were cowboy hats and lawn chairs, beer and grins, sundresses and T-shirts, hippies and rednecks, and hipsters. Young and old, dancers and sitters, and wanderers, who made their way back into the thriving grape vineyards of Savage Oakes.

Holly and Elmer Savage, and their extended family — Sandra, Elmer’s sister, worked the tasting room of the winery, while Holly’s father, Don Oakes, and her sister, Hillary Oakes Kuhl, manned the back fence, lending information about the vineyard: The vines are grown on a sloping hill so as to keep the air circulating through them, and the those birds of prey calls, they were recordings, so as to keep out the birds, including wild turkeys, that will scavenge the grapes.

And the grapes this time of year are thick and purple, bowing the branches down with their weight. 

The bucolic vineyard grows on Barrett Hill, whose upper fields also include blueberry barrens. The Barrett Hill Farm, and Savage Oakes Vineyard, have been in the Savage family since 1985, when Bud and Christine Savage purchased the place. Elmer and Holly acquired it in 2000 (naming it Savage Oakes after their respective last names), and have expanded its scope from sheep and Belted Galloways, to chickens, blueberries and 10 varieties of grapes that are pressed into whites, and deep red wines. 

The names reflect the rich farming heritage of Union and its landscape: Georges River and General Knox whites to Come Spring and Sterlington reds, among others.

A visit to the tasting room will likely leave you with a few bottles of wine, as well as a slab of bacon, pork chops or steak, for the farm also raises meat.

On Sept. 6, the fields quickly filled with hundreds of cars, and McMurtry fans headed to the back of the barn, with their folded chairs and coolers. McMurtry and his band played for two hours, as the late summer light continued to filter onto the concert. His lyrics, filled with love, lost love, freedom, wandering, sadness and the small joys, drew clapping and singing along from the crowd.

The band had played at the Blue Hill Fair the previous day, and Tim Holt, who plays guitar and accordion, reported they had a large and friendly crowd over there. McMurtry first came to Maine several years ago at the invitation of the Grand Theater in Ellsworth, and then played last summer at Savage Oakes, adding to the Maine venues. His unflappable cool appeals to Mainers, who are just as unlikely to show too much excitement.

But, as soon as the afternoon ended Sunday, they were packing up to fly home, back to Austin, where they would rest for the night and then head to the south — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, for a few months of concerts, and then to Texas and the southwest, for many more appearances.

Holt grew up in Texas and has been playing with McMurtry for 19 years. They don’t get into arguments on the road or irritated with each other, he said; they’ve been doing it so long, it’s all family by now. They rent new Chevy vans and cruise from concert hall to bar to theater to play their music. 

“It’s not our job to be loved,” McMurtry quotes, on his website. “It’s our job to be remembered.”

For the band’s Maine fans, the Sept. 6 concert was outstanding, by all accounts, and the last car left in a cloud of dust. After the grounds had cleared, Holly and Elmer stood smiling, and tired. It was a good day at Barrett Hill Farm.

Reach Editorial Director at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657