Imagine a room - a big, cavernous room - filled wall to wall with people, most of whom are in their teens and twenties. Some of those people are playing loud, intense music, but most of them are in the sweaty, visceral fervor of the crowd, pushed up against each other, sharing a loud, intense experience.
That could describe a bunch of things - a house of worship, for example. In this case, however, it’s The Kave, the Bucksport music venue that between 2001 and 2016 brought hardcore, punk and metal bands to a rural corner of Maine, where “Kave Kids” from across the state flocked most weekends. During its heyday, The Kave was not only a place to hear loud music, but was also a safe haven for those kids, many of whom struggled at home and at school, and who found community and identity through the bonds of music and friendship.
That’s a powerful story, and that’s what drew Maine filmmaker Ricky Leighton to spend the past three years of his life telling the story of the Kave - a place so unlikely some of the out-of-town bands that came to play there didn’t think it was real, and so unexpectedly vital to its community that it ended up changing lives.
“Downeast Hardcore: Stories from The Kave” premiered last month at the Maine International Film Festival, and is an entertaining, often deeply moving portrait of rural Maine and the power of music. It’s also a love letter to the woman at the heart of the Kave - Kathy Findlay, the queen mother of Maine hardcore, who recognized the positive impact live music was having on the youth in her community and built a place for them to experience it together.
“It’s hard to underestimate how much of an impact Kathy had on a whole generation of kids in eastern Maine,” said Leighton, who previously directed “Candlepin: The Documentary,” a short about candlepin bowling in Maine. “She was the hardcore mom. She made kids that felt rejected feel cool, and accepted.”
Findlay is a Bucksport native and was a longtime occupational therapist in local schools. In the late 1990s, she noticed her daughter was going to DIY hardcore shows around Maine with friends, and decided to check out a show to make sure it was safe for her kids. She emerged the biggest hardcore fan of them all, and began putting on her own shows in churches and halls across eastern Maine. When the former Cadillac Ranch, a long-closed honky tonk bottle club at the end of Silver Road in Bucksport, went up for sale, she took a big chance and bought it, moving into the house next door. A few coats of paint and some elbow grease later, The Kave opened in December 2001.
If the writer of this story may interject, a 2005 article about The Kave1 was one of the first big feature pieces I ever wrote for the Bangor Daily News (or for any publication, for that matter). I’d been to several shows at The Kave at that point, and knew how special it was that such a place existed in rural Maine. I grew up in Searsport in the 1990s, just down the road from Bucksport, and if I’d had something like the Kave when I was a kid, it would have changed my life too.
Flash forward more than 20 years, and now yours truly is actually in the documentary - Ricky interviewed me for “Downeast Hardcore” a while back, and boy, let me tell you, it is weird (and cool!) to see yourself in a proper film for the first time. I was honored to play a tiny role in its creation.
Leighton - a skilled filmmaker with a keen eye for Maine stories - recognized from the start that a documentary about The Kave and about Findlay would not just be about the hardcore scene in Maine. Hardcore is the soundtrack, the setting and the catalyst. The story, however, is all about the people.
“I almost get kind of wary of people calling it a movie about hardcore, because at its heart it’s really not. On the surface, sure, but it’s really about the tremendous difference one person can make in a community,” Leighton said. “It’s also about teenage angst and frustration. And it’s about community in general. Those are universal stories that I think people can understand, whether they like hardcore or not.”
Over the course of 15 years, The Kave hosted hundreds of bands from all over the world - from major hardcore and metal bands like Hatebreed, Biohazard, Madball, Unearth, All that Remains and Agnostic Front to local bands too numerous to mention. Though the stereotype of hardcore is a large, hyper-masculine man covered in tattoos and smashing into people in the pit, Leighton says that “Downeast Hardcore” reveals that beneath that tough guy surface, there’s an emotional intelligence and sensitivity present in many in the hardcore community.
“I wanted to create a story where, if we could convince somebody who doesn’t listen to this music or who might even write off this scene to come in and sit down and watch it, hopefully they can walk away from it understanding more about it,” Leighton said. “And, you know, not judging a book by its cover. Not assuming things about people because of how they look or the music they listen to.”
The Kave closed in 2016, after a leukemia diagnosis put Findlay’s life on hold for several years - running a music venue while fighting for her life was clearly not an option. Since her cancer went into remission a few years ago, Findlay has remained a presence at Maine and New England hardcore shows at venues like The Old Town Theatre and Geno’s in Portland, and stays close with her Kave Kids.
When Leighton began putting out feelers for people to talk to for the film, the response was overwhelming. In total, he and his crew interviewed more than 60 people, all of whom were eager to share their stories of Kathy and the Kave. Ten years after it closed, its impact is still being felt.
“I think that speaks to how important Kathy and the Kave were to people,” Leighton said. “When someone sits down and says that the Kave was the first place she ever felt love, or there’s some big, burly, tatted up guy being completely raw about his emotions… that’s really gratifying.”
“Downeast Hardcore” will screen at 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug 8 at Geno’s in Portland, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27 at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport, and on Saturday, Oct. 3 at The Old Town Theatre in Old Town. More local screenings will be announced in the coming weeks; Leighton is working to secure funding for the licensing for some of the music so that they can get theatrical and streaming distribution. You can chip in to help them cover those costs at the “Downeast Hardcore” GoFundMe.
An important note: the exceedingly cringeworthy choice to hyphenate the word “hardcore” was very much not my decision. Rather, it was the choice of a BDN copy editor who was so utterly devoted to AP Style that, unless it was specifically outlined in the AP Stylebook, hyphenated or wrote out everything (i.e., “hip-hop”, or “disc jockey” for DJ). I registered my complaint, which went unheeded!
This is so cool! I mostly missed out on the Kave scene, but was very much present for the Penny Post / Soundhouse / Heavys era in Old Town. I'd love to see that history get the documentary treatment.