Remembering Joel Raymond
A man who never stopped promoting music, people, and the power of being you
BAR HARBOR AND ELLSWORTH—For many, the loss of Joel Raymond to pancreatic cancer last week was a gut punch. That’s because Joel Raymond, by being enthusiastically himself, showed others that they could enthusiastically be themselves, too. That’s a life that leaves a lot of resonance.
If life had a superlative section like yearbooks do, Joel would’ve been voted “Most Likely To Be Cheering On a Band” or maybe “Most Exuberant about Music” or “Most Optimistic” or maybe just “Most Likely To Be a Concert Promoter.”
Or maybe…just maybe…he’d be voted “One of a Kind.”
Joel was all those things and more: promoter, enthusiast, entrepreneur, deejay, skier, rock music encyclopedia, owner of Video Video in Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, and Ellsworth. At WERU, the independent radio station in Orland, Joel deejayed “On the Wing” for thirty years, a commitment that had him influencing listeners for hours on Friday nights until this January.
Bar Harbor folks felt his influence when he was booking shows at the Criterion Theatre and when he and his wife, Anita, owned Video Video. Video Video sold and rented recorders, audio, equipment, records, and thousands of movie video-cassettes. He was also the Grand Theater in Ellsworth’s program director.
“Joel Raymond was a unique, iconic volunteer DJ at WERU, hosting Friday's ‘On the Wing’ program for over thirty years. He cared deeply about and loved sharing the music and musicians with his listeners,” said WERU General Manager Matt Murphy. “His influence on the local music scene, both as a concert promoter and WERU programmer, was tremendous. Finally, Joel's relationships with radio station people— volunteers, staff, and fans—were very special, and he will be greatly missed.”
Joel’s enthusiasm allowed people to blossom.
“Our crew members in Bar Harbor were the best. We hired local musicians, teachers, film nerds,” said his brother Jack Raymond. “I don't think anybody didn't fit in totally within a few months. Joel hired a lot of Bar Harbor teens over the years, too. The music and film nerds. They started with us as introverts, but, in most cases, Joel and the customers brought them out of their shells pretty quick. When they watched Joel spend a half hour with a customer discussing the Coen brothers’ first two or three films, they understood that it was OK to be outgoing with your nerdiness. And Joel was king nerd when it came to film or music.”
King Nerd, in Bar Harbor, that’s a proud thing to be.
That ability to hang with anyone, to make friends, to embrace the incongruity of life and humanity was part of what made Joel special.
“I can remember coming around the corner once and seeing Joel sitting with Mike Nesmith at his booth in lawn chairs together talking. An hour later, I came back and they are still laughing about something,” Jack said of a time they were at a convention in Las Vegas and Joel talked to a member of Monkees, an incredibly popular band that had its own TV show decades ago.
Joel was the youngest in his family. Jeff and Jack and Joel all were part of their parents’ greenhouse and wreath mail-order business M.A.Clark. But music lured Joel all his youth. That siren call became irresistible during a family trip to Europe. There, his brother said, “The first morning in London, he watched Jimi Hendrix’s body being loaded into an ambulance from the hotel across the street. A week later, he went to a Rolling Stones concert in Paris. The week after held a chance encounter on the Spanish Steps in Rome with the girlfriend of an electrician for the Stones. She gifted him a large white button with the silhouette of a Concorde aircraft. It made him part of the electrical crew. For a sixteen-year-old ultra-fan from Ellsworth, it was like finding a Wonka Bar golden ticket: he sat on top of one of Keith Richard's amplifiers for the stadium show. And his passion for music exploded even more.”
Even before that, Joel was producing bands at Ellsworth City Hall. The passion, the hope, the work, and drive never stopped.
“At 19 he produced a two-show concert with Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, and Bo Diddley at the Portland Armory,” Jack wrote. “In '78 I was living in the Bahamas and got a one-line telegram from Mom: ‘Todd Rundgren at Bangor?’ My telegram back was just as short: ‘Stop him before he kills again.’ The opener was an unknown band: Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers. The show still bombed big time.
Some shows and adventures were successful by standard metrics. Some weren’t. But they all combined to bring music and event to the area and to make Joel a bit of a legend throughout Maine. He’d burst into a newspaper office or a dinner or a house, sometimes still partially in skiing gear, and announce that Steve Earle was going to play and you had to be there, just had to, really, everyone had to come.
Bar Harbor Town Councilor Matt Hochman first met Joel when Hochman was growing up in Bar Harbor. Like a lot of people in Bar Harbor, that friendship helped shape his life.
“He worked at DeOrseys in Ellsworth and he and my folks would talk music. He and his brother Jack became friends of the family, and when he opened Video Video in Bar Harbor, I'd see him all the time, and we would chat about whatever movies were coming out,” Hochman recalled. “Years later, in the mid 90's when I needed a job after my folks sold their restaurant, Joel hired me to work in Bar Harbor and Ellsworth. Joel had an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and music. I learned a lot from him.”
After Hochman left Video Video, like many other people in Hancock County who loved the outdoors and loved music, he’d run into Joel often over the years, usually at a music event or out on the carriage roads in Acadia.
“I last saw him back in August when I was working sound for Patty Griffin at The Grand and we got to chat for a good twenty minutes about music and life. Joel was a champion of Maine music, but he also had a love of so many different kinds of music, I doubt I would even know what Zydeco is if it weren't for Joel bringing Terrance Simien and the Mallet Playboys to The Grand,” Hochman said. “He was a hell of a guy and I'm going to miss running into him at The Grand or at a concert at The Waterfront in Bangor.”
For years, Video Video was the only store in Bar Harbor. Joel worked with Jeff Dobbs creating multiple local video productions.
“The friends we made instantly down there by bringing Video Video to town was so much fun. We had a blast and got our feet totally soaked in ‘how to run a video store’ down there. It was a pleasure and adventure going to work each day,” Jack said.
“Being in on the ground floor of a fledgling industry was so much fun,” Jack said. “You had to make it up as you went along. He started with a couple hundred films on the shelves and in Bar Harbor probably had 4,000 from his library of 15,000 by the end. I know it came to the point where the store was totally packed with film or storage bins for albums by the end of a couple years. being rotated around every month between stores and outlets. Going with Joel to a video convention that was in Vegas every August was a total trip.”
Those conventions had 300 and 1000 people at them respectively.
“You'd be playing craps across the table from Francis Ford Coppola as The Police play beside the pool,” Jack remembered. Wild West motifs mixed with ice sculptures mixed with the crew of the Starship Enterprise: Joel, and Jack, loved the incongruity and wildness of it all.
Joel’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis came about five weeks ago when he was out in Colorado adventuring and being with family. He is the father of Faith and Josh, grandfather of Scarlett, Georgia, and Josephine. He managed the Beatroots, and according to a Bangor Daily News article, there will be a memorial concert for Joel later this year. He was 69.
His last “On the Wing” was December 8, and it features John Lennon, The Pogues, the Rolling Stones.
One of the last songs? John & Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” with the Harlem Community Choir.
The song begins:
So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you had fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young
Joel has done more than most humans. He embraced the old and the young, the near and the dear ones and he always, always, seemed to have fun, and his resonance, the sounds he made, the music he played, the friends he hung with and the dreams he shared, achieved, and created for others? Those will be held onto and needed, sound waves inside the souls of those who loved him for a very long time.
This story was updated with corrected information about the WERU playlist. Many thanks for the correction.
Joel was a many faceted fellow, and you have done a great job in capturing the man and his contributions to our wider community. Thank you.