LEWISTON – Musicians from Lewiston-Auburn’s past will get the rock star treatment next month, complete with jumbo TV screens, custom-made mini-movies and arena seating.

And Lewiston-Auburn area residents will get a musical show, the likes of which have never been presented in L-A, according to its producers.

The six-and-a-half-hour fundraiser titled “Echoes in Time” will take over the Colisee on May 30.

“The community needs something uplifting right now,” said Rachel Desgrosseilliers, the executive director of Museum L-A. “We thought about putting it off another year. It’s a tough economy. But it seems like people needed a fun event.”

Plans call for live big band music, a revue of popular music from the 1950s and 1960s and a concert with the Moon Dawgs, the Rockin’ Recons, Denny Breau and others.

Two 14-foot TV screens will be used to premiere three short documentaries by veteran Maine journalist Bill Maroldo. The movies will examine Museum L-A, the take-off of music in Lewiston-Auburn and the garage band era that debuted several local musicians who made regional or national tracks, including the Moon Dawgs, singer Nick Knowlton and late guitarist Lenny Breau.

There will also be a sit-down dinner by Davinci’s Eatery and the Green Ladle, staffed by students from Lewiston Regional Technical Center’s culinary arts program.

In all, the show will have room for 2,300 people in the arena seats and another 416 people at 52 floor tables.

Though advertising has yet to begin – the Colisee only began listing the event on its online calendar late last week – people are already scooping up tickets. By last Friday, 15 tables had been sold and the first customers for arena seats began showing up at the Colisee last Monday, even before tickets were printed, Desgrosseilliers said.

“We’re hoping this will be really big,” she said. After all, proceeds will go to the museum’s operating budget.

Desgrosseilliers also hopes to pay homage to the cultural history of the cities.

“We have been known mostly for preserving the industrial history,” Desgrosseilliers said. “But these people did something when they came home from the mills. That’s important, too.”

Desgrosseilliers came up with the idea for the event three years ago, but it stayed in her head until last year.

That’s when she began putting together a team to find the pieces for the show and assemble them.

Ultimately, well over 100 people – including a virtual who’s who in music, entertainment and the arts in L-A over the past 30 to 40 years – have become involved either in the production or the entertainment. Desgrosseilliers said about 75 percent of the performers are donating their time and talents.

Among those involved is Maroldo, a collector of old records who first became aware of the local musical history in the 1980s, when he began spotting locally produced records in yard sales. He later reported on that history for Maine Public TV.

There were so many different venues and acts – drum and bugle corps, orchestras and pit bands, he said.

There was a sense that millworkers were merely musicians with day jobs, Maroldo and Desgrosseilliers said.

“Everyone learned an instrument,” Desgrosseilliers said. When rock ‘n’ roll hit, the ethic morphed into a sudden burst of garage bands and the popularity of weekly events like the PAL hops, which were held in the former auditorium atop Lewiston City Hall.

That’s where the Moon Dawgs, Terry and the Telstars and the Royal Knights were stars, Maroldo said.

Plans for the May 30 event include the creation of a live DVD, aimed at preserving the performances.

Desgrosseilliers hopes it won’t be the last.

She envisions an annual event, perhaps focusing on sports another time.

“We’re finding history that is totally amazing to us,” she said.