Last night was my inaugural gig in L.A. (Lewiston-Auburn, ME), and I must say, as first times go, this ranks right up there with the best out of town shows I’ve ever played. Usually it takes a few times in to get a feel for a town and its people. Not Lewiston. Its citizens put themselves right out there and look you in the eye when you speak in their direction. Lewiston reeks of New England, but it’s the smell of old New England, when people here came together to help roof their neighbors’ houses or play pond hockey in the woods together on Sundays.

She Doesn’t Like Guthrie’s is a true diamond in a city clothed in thick, blue collar fabric. It’s chiseled neatly into the corner of an old brick mill brick building, perhaps  once the home of shoemakers such as songster Ray Lamontagne, who worked and lived in this town before famously waking one morning (the last he’d spend heeling boots) to the sounds of Stephen Stills’ Treetop Flyer, only to walk off into musical history.