The arts agency for the cities of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine

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On September 24 Tri County Mental Health in collaboration with L/A Arts and Bates College will host a screening of the highly powerful documentary film, The Invisible War. The film, which has received critical acclaim and won the 2012 SunDance Film Festival Audience Award for U.S. Documentary, the Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Film Making, 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival and the Silver Heart Award, Dallas International Film Festival, reveals a shameful United States Military cover up. Featuring poignant interviews with victims both male and female and powerful dialogue with military personnel, The Invisible War will touch audiences deep in their hearts and evoke the powerful emotions necessary to change a flawed system of accountability and human rights standards. Currently showcased in Lewiston, Maine only, Tri County Mental Health, L/A Arts and Bates College are proud to host this influential film with guest speaker Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. Maine information resources for Military Sexual Trauma will be available at the theatre. Refreshments will be provided. The film is being shown for free at Schaeffer Theater, Bates College at 6:30 p.m. Audience members are encouraged to bring a non-perishable food donation for the Food Bank.

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About the Film
The Invisible War exposes the epidemic of sexual assault in the military – one of the most under-reported stories of our generation, a story the filmmakers are proud to be breaking to the nation and the world. They hope the film will help lead a national dialogue about the crime of rape perpetrated on the very people who have pledged to protect our country and are gratified to see the film is already making an impact. Since it premiered at Sundance, the film has been circulating through the highest levels of the Pentagon and the administration. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta watched The Invisible War on April 14. Two days later, he directed sexual assault investigations to military commanders of at least the rank of colonel. At the same time, Panetta announced that each branch of the armed forces would establish a Special Victims Unit. While these are promising first steps, much more needs to be done. To that end, The Invisible War is a call for our civilian and military leadership to listen. And to act.

For more information about the film, please visit invisiblewarmovie.com

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On Saturday September 8, Tri County Mental Health Services and L/A Arts are partnering to host Sound Stage: Four Songwriters in the Round, “A Benefit Concert in support of Counseling Services for Veterans and their Families.” The concert boasts an impressive line up of talented musicians including Kate Schrock, Shanna Underwood, Brain Patricks and Peter Alexander. These talented performers are generously donating their time in support of veterans and their families and what they have sacrificed for us all. The concert begins at 7:30PM in the Lewiston Middle School Auditorium, 75 Central Ave. General Admission Tickets are $20, for Veterans and Seniors tickets are $15.

About the Artists:

Kate Schrock

“As one songwriter to another, I’m amazed. There’s nothing to criticize. I love it all…. your maturity as a songwriter and your sensitivity and depth as a singer. Listening to Invocation, I am entertained, impressed, and touched. Way to go, Kate!” –Billy Edd Wheeler

Raised on the coast of Maine (father a fisherman-playwright, mother a grade-school teacher), Kate Schrock left home at 16, finished high school at the Putney School in Vermont, and then headed to New York City and Paris where she spent nearly 2 years working as a fashion model. Uncompelled, Kate began reading Dostoevsky and Nietzsche on park benches between go-sees in le Jardin Du Luxemburg, and sneaking into the back rooms of piano stores on Av du Maine to work on her secret life as a bad poet and budding songwriter. Inspired by the evocative work of independent filmmaker Wim Wenders, and a synchronistic day spent alone with Bill Murray walking the perimeter of Paris and swapping wild stories, Kate took a leap of fate and quit the ‘biz’, opting instead to immerse herself in the heady waters of philosophy and art back in the U.S.

Activating this new direction in her life at the University of Chicago, she fronted Sin Embargo, a Velvet Underground-like band in Hyde Park, and worked on and off quite happily for an unglamorous $6 an hour as maintenance person at the national headquarters for the Church of the Brethren. Kate’s next journey took her to Bennington College where she studied performance and jammed with the jazz students who attended there. After completing college, Kate moved into a burned-out apartment building in Times Square and began performing in small clubs in the East Village and Bleeker Street to audiences oftentimes consisting solely of her friend Bob. When the riots in Los Angeles caused her concern about safety in the NY urban jungle, Kate ventured back to Maine where she discovered a thriving music scene in Portland and began work on her first album, Refuge, which she released in 1994.

For more information about Kate Schrock and her wonderful music please visit her website at http://www.kateschrock.com/

Shanna Underwood

“Shanna Underwood’s rich deep voice is wonderfully appealing as she sings the nine songs that make up “Fieldnotes from a Caravan”. Acknowledging the similarity to her own peripatetic life makes these sound like leaves that have dropped from her private diary, documenting as they do the flickering and conflicting emotions as loves are joyfully taken up and later released with muted regret.” – Americana UK.com

Fieldnotes from a Caravan is a combination of years of songs written on the road. Shanna wrote her first song during her teaching office in Kanchanburi, Thailand. She started singing for expats on the beaches of Thailand, and from then on made a commitment of combining her love of the world and travel with singing for people. Shanna employs powerful Bonnie Raitt style vocals partnered with a Cowboy Junkies type feel inspired by Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch forms of crafting songs and telling stories.

After Thailand, Shanna moved back to her home state of Maine where she started a band and toured for two years. “I think we wrote some good songs, but we were also crude, drunk, and delusional about how good we were. So we moved to Nashville.”

She was the only one that stayed.

Shanna has a wandering heart and a meandering mind. She can’t stop traveling, but can’t stop singing either. Rich, intelligent folksy songs written with three minor chords and the truth and an ever-growing and changing perspective. To appease both aspects, she started combining work as a field technician in archaeology with playing music. Field work changes towns every couple of weeks to months, and she books gigs in every country and town she works in. This year she spent the spring in Mexico and put together a smoking band in Guadalajara that she is anxious to get back to.

Now, she is back in my hometown of Portland, ME, where she proved contrary to her own lyrics, that you can go home again. She has been playing regular gigs with a rotating cast of characters and together they are working on a new record at the Track Farm in Cape Elizabeth.

To learn more about Shanna and sample some of her music visit: http://www.sonicbids.com/2/EPK/?epk_id=243792

Brian Patricks

Brain Patricks is a lively singer/songwriter you won’t soon forget. Audiences warm up to him like a campfire on a cool autumn night. Patricks just has that certain ability to connect with his listeners.”
Barry Martin, Former Owner of Port City Blue Nightclub, Portland Maine

Brain Patricks emerged into the Maine singer/songwriter scene in the early spring of 2009 with a background of classical guitar and various folk, blues and rock projects under his belt. That coupled with a suitcase of experience in front of an audience, he set off with guitar in hand and a passion to perform as a solo artist.

Brian intertwines finger style rhythmic guitar with a hint of harmonica into his sets of originals and covers of folk, blues and rock. One minute he may be jammin’ an ol’ folk or rock tune then throw at you a fine flamenco piece breaking out into a smokey blues finger pickin’ number.

During a performance Patricks will cover artists such as: John Hiatt, Bob Dylan, John Mayall, Fast Ball, JohnPrice, Lightfoot, JJ Cale, Clapton, Skynyrd, James Taylor, Talking Heads, The Eagles, Jackson Brown, Peter Greene, Tom Petty and John Denver to name a few.

To learn more about Brian Patricks and sample some of his work: www.brianpatricks.com

Peter Alexander

Aside from messing around in boats on the waters of Casco Bay, Peter Alexander’s early years were filled with music. His mother was an accomplished pianist, and his father a concert cellist. He often went to sleep at night listening to them playing wonderful works by Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven. All of his siblings played various instruments, and Peter, the youngest of five, started piano lessons at the age of four, began singing in the choir of the Washington National Cathedral when he was eight, and got his first guitar (along with 7 years of classical guitar lessons) at the age of ten. Within a few months he had formed a folk group with a fellow choirboy, and by the 7th grade had formed his first rock band, Peter and the Wolves. At eighteen Peter started performing professionally with Claude Jones, a DC rock band he formed with classmates from St. Johns College in Annapolis. (Music and photos from those heady days are available at www.claudejonesarchive.org).

Peter has since lived in too many places and had too many vocations to mention, except that along the way he managed to get a Masters Degree in Environmental Studies. Throughout his life and travels, music has been a constant. In 2008 he and his wife, Johannah Harkness, moved to Portland where he began consulting with the Gulf of Maine Council and the Maine Coastal Program. Since then he has led the New England Coasts Restoration Initiative in creating a $20 billion needs assessment for ecosystem restoration in ME, NH, MA & RI, modeled after the hugely successful Great Lakes Restoration Strategy. He also serves as board president of Maine Songwriters Association where he takes great pleasure in helping other aspiring songwriters with their craft and their musical careers.

To learn more about Peter and his music please visit: http://peteralexander.us/?author=1

About Tri County Mental Health Services

Tri-County Mental Health Services is Maine’s most comprehensive agency dealing with the psychological and social well-being of children, adults, and elders, serving more than 11,000 people each year. This year the agency marks its 60th year of providing innovative programs and services addressing mental health, substance abuse, mental retardation/developmental disabilities, autism, and more. Its philosophy of building toward recovery and sensitivity to traumatic experiences of consumers gives hope to individuals, families, and communities in Androscoggin, Northern Cumberland, Franklin, Oxford and York counties. With the help of Vista Volunteer Jerry DeWitt, himself a Vietnam Era veteran, the agency is expanding its efforts beyond providing state-of-the-art treatment services for veterans by doing active outreach and building connections among veteran serving organizations. “Our goal is to remove barriers and strengthen the supports available to vets and family members across Maine,” says TCMHS Executive Director Catherine Ryder. For more information, visit www.tcmhs.org or call 1-888-304-HOPE(4673).

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Join acclaimed writing faculty Amy Bloom, Da Chen and Marie Howe in ACA’s distinctive natural setting for these exciting week long workshops in Florida.

Applicants may register now to work with one of the faculty on a first come, first served basis, with a limit of 13 positions available in each class. The free-flowing schedule will offer daily 2.5 hour morning workshops, with afternoons of open studio time for writing and craft discussion on a range of topics. Evenings will be set aside for readings by the faculty. On the final night there will be an open mic for participants to share their work with the group and the local community. For an additional cost, participants may also schedule 30-minute private sessions with faculty, or a manuscript consultation with Jill Bialosky, Executive Editor at W.W. Norton.

For more information or to register visit bfawwc.com