Hopefully, some of you have been taking advantage of the Waterville Rocks! concerts that have been happening in Castonguay Square because as the old saying goes: All good things must come to an end. Coming up next week, on Sept. 22, the final show of this inaugural season will feature Maine’s own Ghost of Paul Revere. To that end, I set up a phoner with Griffin Sherry of the band to find out what’s new with the quartet. He was reached on his cellphone as the group was on the road to a gig out of state.

Q: So, Griffin, you guys are heading up to the central Maine area again?

Sherry: Yup, for the Waterville Rocks! show in a couple of weeks, right? It’s hard to remember our schedule now we’re doing a lot of traveling.

Q: Is all this road work more than usual?

Sherry: No, not really, because that’s become the norm which is very exciting. We’re doing about 200 shows a year. Right now we’re on our way to Davenport to play a festival in the quad cities, and then we drive home next week, play a show for UMO, and then fly out to Chicago to play a festival south of Chicago, and then fly back for some New England dates the following week.

Q: Wow, I’d say the Ghost has made its appearance.

Sherry: Yeah, we’re starting to step out, and we’re definitely working hard trying to make ourselves known.

Q: Now it’s been a while since last we spoke, which was on Dec. 10, 2014. Do you have anything new out, musically speaking?

Sherry: Since the last time we talked we released an EP. That was last December and was called “Field Notes, Vol. 1.” Also on the EP is a bunch of live tracks which include songs featuring “The Fogcutters” and some other gems that we had recorded on the road the year prior that we really wanted to let the people have.

Q: I’m not familiar with The Fogcutters.

Sherry: They’re a big band from Portland. It’s a 19-piece horn band.

Q: Wow!

Sherry: Yeah, it’s incredible. There’s a version of “Ghostland” on the EP that is just amazing. We’ve played with them a couple of times, and it just blows me away to have that much sound behind us.

Q: Are you working on a new studio album, per chance?

Sherry: We are. We actually just finished tracking and mixing, and it’ll be going to mastering soon, so that should be released in early 2017. We don’t have a name for it yet, but we’re getting pretty excited. It really came together pretty incredibly, and it’s a little different from something we’ve ever done. All of our other stuff has pretty much been live performances in the studio in front of microphones, just the four of us. This time we took our time with it, and we really tried to orchestrate tracks. And we worked with Tony McNaboe on percussion, and it gave me a chance to play a little electric and play some piano, and we’ve got organs and we’ve got strings. It’s really cool.

Q: I guess!

Sherry: We kind of went into the studio with the idea that we wanted to make a record the four of us couldn’t perform live the way it was on the record, because we had all of our records previous were always direct statements like exactly how we played the songs live. We wanted it to be its own piece as one cohesive record. We’re currently trying to figure out how to play all these songs live in different ways.

Q: Well, that was what I was just about to ask: How would they translate to a live show?

Sherry: So far they are translating great. You know it definitely takes some adjustment, and it takes playing stuff a little differently, but so far we’re pulling it off, which is great.

Q: That’s a step in the right direction, for sure.

Sherry: Yeah, right?

Q: Do you play in Maine a lot?

Sherry: We do, yeah. We try to play all over the state because we can only play Portland every six months or so because the shows have gotten so large. We played there last on the Fourth of July with the Avett Brothers at Thompson’s Point. That was incredible with 5,000 people, and before that we sold out the State Theatre on New Year’s Eve. We had Ballroom Thieves and Lady Lamb supporting us for that show and it went incredible. We dressed to the nines and had a balloon drop and a lot of crazy stuff.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article?

Sherry: Well, certainly the information about the show in Waterville — I think that’s going to be a lot of fun — and that we have dates all around Maine for the fall. Also we’re making plans on when we’re going to release this new album and the party we’re going to throw in Portland for it. That will probably be late winter next year. That’s been the most exciting thing for us right now is that we’re gearing towards booking our 2017 schedule already: where we’re going to be and hopefully what festivals we’re going to play all around the country. We’re really going to try and push the new record real hard. and I think it’s going to have some legs underneath it, too.

Lucky Clark has spent more than 45 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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