By Rebecca Goldfine,Staff Writer

PARIS – Musicians Paul Dube and Ellen Lindsey regularly play at the usual venues around the area – bars, pizza parlors and nursing homes.

So performing at an international arts festival in Santiago, Guatemala, will be a bit of a leap for them.

But the Paris residents are gearing up to leave for the Central American country in March to play near volcanoes and the scenic Lake Atitlan. At least 10 bands from around the world – plus, it’s rumored, Willie Nelson – are gathering for the festival at the end of Santiago Bay.

The festival will help raise money to rebuild a local hospital destroyed by mudslides in October.

Music is “a universal language,” Dube said recently. He was sitting in a chair at his home, wearing slippers, an ashtray of stubbed cigarettes close by.

The couple is well used to the power of music to stir up goodness. Dube said that several times a year they raise money for local causes, like helping out someone with a hospital bill or chipping in to support a family rendered homeless by a fire.

In preparation for their trip, they’re holding two benefit concerts, one at 7 p.m. on Feb. 11 in Norway at Fare Share Market on Main Street, and the other at 1 p.m. on Feb. 12 at The Roost in Buxton. Admission to each concert will be $5, with more donations welcome.

Dube said the concerts will raise money for airfare.

In Guatemala, festival-goers will help support the reconstruction of the devastated Hospitalito Atitlan. Dube and Lindsey will play at the two-day event with their group, the Zingo Zango Generic Jug Band, joining musicians from all over Latin America and farther.

Their act is advertised on the festival’s Web site with this blurb: “This band is coming all the way from somewhere deep in the south of the USA specially to play for our festival. Their music is a complete catalog of Americana, from bluegrass to trailer rock. Clog to some old time Bluegrass, cry to some good ol country music.”

Lindsey shrugged off the geographical mix-up with a small smile, “They don’t know where Maine is.”

Dube plays guitar, mandolin and some banjo. Lindsey plays the bass. Dube describes their music as “primarily acoustic, leaning toward the folk genre, and a lot of old-time.”

Dube, 49, a Lewiston native, and lost his eyesight when he was 12. Lindsey, 59, who’s from Chicago, moved to Maine years ago. They share a small house in Paris. They began playing together about 19 years ago, after Dube taught Lindsey to play the bass.

They hooked up with a Guatemalan music friend, Roberto Luz, through the Internet, on a Web site where international musicians can meet called evor.com. Luz, who has a music studio in the forest highlands, organized the now four-year-old festival. He invited his Maine friends down to participate in the eclectic mix.