Bright, beautiful Sunday afternoon, we parked among probably 60 vehicles along the road around the margins of the compound. When we came through the screen of trees, we were among at least that many people sitting on folding chairs or on the ground, all ages: mother feeding her newborn and some elderly getting around with canes. From the main stage came a heartfelt rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Road.”

We had arrived at the Country Folk Music Theatre at the foot of Morrison Hill on Route 2 in East Dixfield. Every Friday evening and every Sunday afternoon from Memorial Day to Labor Day, country folk and western musicians and fans get together. “It’s not a show,” Larry Bisbee stresses.

The theater gives musicians the opportunity to perform and country/western music buffs hours of pleasure.

You should hear these valley voices! Lillian Wright of Jay, the Dixfield Chicks, Jim Littlefield and Margaret Arsenault – was she the yodeler that day? – of Andover, among many others. Terrific back-up band for the acoustics, the Temple Stream. We heard everything from Nancy Sinatra’s old hit, “I’m going to Jackson” and “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” to “Kneel by the Cross.”

Like the audience, the musicians are all ages. Regulars like Wright and Theresa Bisson are definitely senior citizens, while Weld’s Kody Kreworuka was just 14 when he won the theater’s first scholarship.

The theater’s scholarship program has grown, too. Each year, thanks to donations, five or more $500 (or more) scholarships – no strings attached – are given “to encourage” young musicians.

Roughly 200 musicians – “Maine’s wonderful backyard artists,” photographer Leann LeFleur calls them – have been associated with the theater. Country Music Hall of Famer Ginger Mae Dyer is a frequent guest performer.

Larry Bisbee, whose summer home is the theater property he bought in 1987, emphasizes that from its beginning, volunteers, have made the Country Music Theatre possible and successful. Volunteers like Herb Guppy and Lloyd Latham constructed the Spectator Building, the main stage on a rise above it, and the museum and gift shop, all with donated materials, of course.

Lloyd’s wife, Linda, is, Bisbee said, “No. 1,” the volunteer of all trades, from brownie baking to writing news releases.

Larry Bisbee is the moving force in the Country Folk Music Theatre. He told me after a group of musicians came together to do a benefit for a Farmington family, “they’d enjoyed it so much they wanted to keep coming together to play.” The first happening, on a snowy Memorial Day weekend seven years ago, involved six musicians and an audience of 13.

Larry Bisbee, old enough to qualify for Social Security, exhibits the enthusiasm and energy of a much younger man. No musician himself, he is a performer: Larry Bisbee, Back Cowboy Poet and My Cousin Larry, Maine poetry and storytelling. He grew up in Paris and spent years staffing WKTJ, Farmington. He has also run a YMCA facility and served as business manager for a touring repertory theater company.

Before the snow flies, Bisbee will begin his annual sojourn to Arizona.

Meantime, the season will wind up at the Country Folk Music Theatre Friday and Sunday, Aug. 25 and 27,

I grew up with “Grand Ole Opry” and WCKY, so I have a place in my heart for country and western music. Not so my spouse; but when I looked his way that beautiful Sunday, he was tapping his toes and smiling.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives with her husband, Jim, in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and author of “Rumford Stories.” Contact her: [email protected]