This State We’re In

by Amanda Painter

Portlanders and live music fans throughout southern Maine celebrated last weekend: the State Theater has reopened again. Why should you care if you live nowhere near here? To my mind, this is the sort of thing that signals a community has some of its values in order and is willing to work to make them tangible. If we’re lucky, that may be contagious.

The State Theater was built in 1929 in a semi-Atmospheric/Spanish Renaissance style. Its history is varied and for a while its future was uncertain — though its resurrection has been on the perennial wish list of Portland residents since its last shuttering in 2006. Beginning as a first-run movie cinema at the start of the movie palace hey-day, it reincarnated as a porn theater in the 1960s. In 1989 it closed and languished until its first restoration in the mid-1990s, closed again briefly, and then served as a mid-size music venue until 2006-07 when disagreements between property owners and venue operators over code violations left it boarded up again.

It’s the last movie palace of its era left in Portland, so its maintenance serves as both a functioning lifeline to cultural history as well as an important link in the community’s arts culture between home-grown musical acts and the national music scene.

I wasn’t able to attend the entire day-long open house last Sunday, which was part “welcome home,” part “thank you,” and part fundraiser for a local music non-profit. But I did manage to catch the last hour of big sounds, bright lights, familiar faces and dancing strangers. With my friend Ryan at the helm of the soundboard, I roamed around snapping photos to the practically apocalyptic soundtrack provided by Jacob and the House of Fire, a local band of about nine or so members (horns, violin and accordion?) whose motto is apparently “Love unconditionally and always question authority.” Exhorting the crowd between songs to wake up and pay attention to the moneyed string-pullers of this world, their primal, raucous set of ‘roots rock’ seemed aimed at stirring us up for a united revolution of love and truth — and unbridled music.

In the midst of that, I’m not sure how many in the audience fully appreciated the lobby’s decorative flourishes or care about the golden age of cinema. But what was fully palpable was the sheer joy over what having this space means for music here: the bands already scheduled and the acts we finally feel free to dream about; young musicians hoping for a chance to take the big stage; the bass vibrating older scenesters back into their favorite memories from a decade ago.

I weaved through the crowd as the heartbeat of the downtown district beat a little louder, now that we’ve known what we’re missing when the State is closed. When this place was built, its kind were a dime a dozen. For decades these old theaters have been disappearing steadily, though recent years have seen increased efforts to save, restore and re-purpose the ones we have left in this country. They came into their own during the Great Depression, when the nickel-admission Nickelodeons welcomed those looking for a little communal psychic refuge in the anonymous dark — often several times a week for some patrons.

The world is no less difficult now, though the terms have shifted some. I think we can be stronger together, pooling our energy, though we’ve seen obstacles of attitude past generations do not seem to have known. The era of irony was at a peak when I saw my favorite show at the State Theater. It does not seem to have abated much, though it may be time. The memory of a certain incongruity of that show — Ben Folds and a Piano on June 10, 2002 — walked with me as I photographed the aisles and stage, forsaking my customary earplugs in favor of every ounce of sensory experience on offer last Sunday night.

That night in ’02 Ben Folds was recording for an upcoming live album, intent on including crowd sing-alongs. Improbable as it may have been to all the twenty-somethings crowding the floor, we found ourselves throwing our voices into the effort full-on, coolness-be-damned, as through song after song we sang our hearts out, filling in the parts his former band mates and other musicians used to play. Saxophone section to the right, trombones to the left, inexplicably all in key, we volleyed the call and response bridge in “Army” and begged for more. We sounded good and felt good, filling up that old theater with our voices and bodies and spirit. Ben Folds knew it, we knew it and now we may get to know it again — together.

Move over Facebook, the State Theater is back. And so are we. It’s time to love unconditionally, question authority and sing, goddamn it.