AUBURN – The messages were mostly short, conveying a memory or simply sorrow.

“We have lumps in our throats.”

“Goodbye you wonderful gentleman.”

“He’ll be missed way over here in Missouri.”

They started popping up soon after Kendall Morse put news of Tom Rowe’s death on his folk Web site, mudcat.org. Rowe, an Auburn singer, songwriter and musician with Schooner Fare, died Saturday of throat cancer.

Morse met Rowe and band mates Steve and Chuck Romanoff in 1981. A humorist and country singer, Morse played with Schooner Fare a number of times.

During shows the Romanoffs and Rowe would talk to each other, talk to the crowd.

“It was just like it was in your living room. They were more like entertainers than performers,” Morse, in South Portland, said. “They were there to make you laugh and make you cry and let you know you’ve got your money’s worth and you’ll be coming back.”

The band formed in 1975, three former members of Devonsquare. For the past 25 years, members of Schooner Fare and Devonsquare took the stage every February for a reunion show to raise money for charity, said Sue Brewer. Brewer sits on the board of the Jack McPhillips Memorial Fund, the charity created and funded by that show.

Brewer said she’s known Rowe since college. Back in the 1970s, Schooner Fare played two nights a week at Holy Mackerel, a club on the Portland pier. “If you were in your 20s, it was the thing to do.”

As the band branched out and took gigs in Boston or North Conway, the wives and friends of the bands would hop in their cars for a road trip. They called themselves the Schooner Fare singers and dancers, and they’d weave conga lines through the audience.

“It’s a big gap. He was such a talented, talented man,” Brewer said of Rowe. “He had a wonderful way of being part of something but not having to be the one to shine all the time.”

Steve Romanoff said Rowe stopped playing with the band a month ago while undergoing cancer treatment.

The brothers played the World Folk Music Association concert in Virginia last Friday. They’d gotten lots of support that night from fellow musicians and spread the word that the prognosis for Rowe was good.

It came as a shock when he died the next day. Rowe had been planning to rejoin the band in April for a benefit concert in Milwaukee. “That was the date Tom figured he would be back up to full steam,” Romanoff said.

He later heard that when news of Rowe’s death spread, people took to the stage in Virginia, and “people just made wonderful testimonials about Tom.”

Another singer, Tom Paxton, got up and dedicated “Here’s to you my rambling boy.”

Schooner Fare’s concert this Friday in Bath has been canceled. Brewer said the reunion concert will go on, Feb. 27.

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