RUMFORD – Moontide Water Festival Inc. President Joseph F. Roberts said this week that the organization hopes to hold a concert featuring the band Cheap Trick this spring to help pay for the July 4 celebration.
The organization is responsible for raising about $40,000 each year for Rumford’s weeklong July 4 holiday extravaganza, which has included a sidewalk carnival and a fireworks show.
“As of right now,” Roberts said Tuesday, “Moontide is still on for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, July 2, 3 and 4.”
Last year, the carnival didn’t materialize, but the fireworks did. The committee is still trying to line up a carnival, and a location for it other than the traditional Congress Street venue.
Two fund-raising projects currently being pursued include a cookbook that is being compiled, and a bluegrass/country concert with Mac McHale and the Old Time Radio Gang, along with other Maine artists.
The concert is scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday, April 16, at Mountain Valley High School in Rumford.
Plans are also being developed, Roberts said, to hold a large concert in late spring featuring Cheap Trick, a 1970s rock n’ roll band.
“We’re also trying to bring a rodeo up here, but we don’t know yet where it could be held,” Roberts said.
Last year’s Moontide Mud Run was so successful, he said, that it will be continued again over Memorial Day weekend. Unlike last year’s event, this one will be sanctioned.
The Moontide Water Festival Committee, he said, is still seeking volunteers to serve on the committee. The meetings, which are open to the public, are held on the first Tuesday evening of each month.
“We have new members and new ideas and we want to assure the general public that the activities of the Moontide Water Festival will continue to the best of the committee’s abilities,” Roberts said.
The first Independence Day fireworks show was held in 1995 over the lower dam area near Morse Bridge. In 1996, the committee continued the tradition, naming the festival after the Moontide Spring at Mount Zircon in Rumford. The goal of the group was to make Rumford a Fourth of July destination, and it has boasted the largest fireworks display in the state.
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