KINGFIELD — Stormy weather gave way to sunshine late Saturday afternoon, just in time for a record crowd at the eighth annual Kingfield POPS.

Rain clouds ringed the venue at Jeff and Wendy Kennedy’s farm off Route 142 as the Western Mountain Trash Can Band performed lively steel drum tunes for a growing crowd estimated at 800 to 900 people of all ages by 5:30 p.m.

“There’s more people here than we had a couple hours from now at last year’s POPS,” POPS Vice President David Hart said. “I would not be surprised if we have a record year now that we know the weather will cooperate.”

As the crowd lounged and more streamed in, behind the huge stage atop which the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and other musicians and dancers would later perform, 16 members of the Pineland Fiddlers practiced their sets.

The group is a troupe of child violinists ages 6 to 16 who perform traditional Maine, French Canadian and Maritime fiddling. And then the children, all sporting white shirts, filed on stage behind teacher Ellen Gawler of Belgrade, one of Maine’s top fiddlers.

As they played a lively tune that enticed small children from the crowd to dance in the grass beside the stage, the sun emerged from behind clouds.

“We did it!” Gawler exclaimed after the set. “We brought out the sun!”

And off they went into a French waltz, while younger fiddlers in the troupe waited their turn to perform.

Sarah Charland of Fayette eagerly watched the group from an island of blankets strewn with children’s games. She came to see her 9-year-old daughter Mariah perform with the Pineland Fiddlers, and then to catch the rest of the show.

“Classical music is nice to listen to, especially when you see it right in front of you,” Charland said. “There’s a lot of action there.”

Following a medley of frenzied fiddling, modern dance performer Molly Gawler danced ballet-style onto the stage while mostly enveloped in a dark brown podlike costume that she soon shed, and then “conducted” the fiddlers through dance.

The performance, which included two large orange banner-type fans, both wowed and amused the crowd, which then took in performances by the Gawler Family Band and the Boardman Family, and Gene Nichols playing the musical saw with orchestral accompaniment. Later, as the evening wore on, the Bangor Symphony would take the stage.

The crowd was expected to swell to 1,500 people by the time the symphony orchestra took center stage, Hart said.

“Every indication is that with this sunshine, we’ll have record numbers in attendance,” he said. “It was an incredible feeling tonight to see a line of people more than 100 yards long waiting to come in here when the gates opened at 4:30.”

He attributes the event’s success to word of mouth, quality entertainment, and the fact that the POPS is in its eighth year.

“Every year there are people who say they’re not sure if they’ll like it, but once they come and discover they like it, they come back and always tend to bring someone with them,” Hart said.

“It’s contagious. It keeps getting better and better. There’s great satisfaction in that it’s sort of like that baseball movie ‘Field of Dreams’ — build it and they shall come.”

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