Piscataquis River Festival will return on July 26

GUILFORD — Plans are well underway for the 2025 Piscataquis River Festival in Guilford. The event on Saturday, July 26 will feature events from breakfast through fireworks at dusk and this year’s theme is “Small Town, Big Spirit”.

Guilford Bed & Breakfast owners John and Lisa McNamara, who moved to town last summer from Atlanta after purchasing the Elm St. establishment, are co-chairing the festival along with a team of around a dozen other committee chairs. 

Sitting on the home’s enclosed porch, John McNamara said they were looking for ways to get involved in their new community. At the March annual town meeting, a warrant article on the festival generated a great deal of discussion and John and Lisa McNamara thought maybe they could help lead the event planning.

Soon they volunteered to head the marketing and sponsorship aspects and a team of various committee chairs was established. “My wife and I are sort of doing the marketing and sponsorships and then we have someone overseeing the parade, the music stage, overseeing the kids zone so suddenly we have this big group of people that are helping us,” John McNamara said, saying the group includes not just Guilford residents but other towns such as Abbot, Corinna and Dover-Foxcroft.

“It’s a wide group of people who wanted to make sure that Riverfest happened,” he said.

The Piscataquis River Festival began in 2003 and has been held annually with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.

The 2024 festival had a gap inbetween the final event of the day and the evening fireworks. 

“This year we have events from 7 a.m. all the way up to fireworks at 9 o’clock,” John McNamara said. “It’s going to be non-stop. We have nine hours of live music on the stage.”

The full schedule will be released in the near future at https://piscataquisriverfestival.org/ as well as through the festival Facebook page. Events include breakfast at the United Methodist Church, Friends of Community Fitness’ annual 5K road race and children’s fun run, the parade, numerous activities in the kids zone, storytime at the Guilford Memorial Library, the Guilford Historical Society museum being open and much more.

Six local bands are scheduled to perform as well as Julia Gagnon of Cumberland and “American Idol” who will serve as grand marshal of the morning parade and be the music headliner before the fireworks display.

“We are raising tens of thousands of dollars because we want it to be free in every possible way we can,” John McNamara said. “We are raising money to make sure this event is bigger, better and accessible to everybody.”

He and Lisa McNamara mentioned free pony rides and the possibility of subsidizing food items for sale as examples, saying how often it can be expensive for a family of five to go out and each get something to eat.

About $19,000 has been raised so far with many donors agreeing to contribute more this year than last.

Lisa McNamara compared the efforts to “kind of like a hug for the area that just really felt warm and a community coming together.” 

“The chairs of the event have been so enthusiastic and positive and the donors have just been so positive and receptive,” she said.

Around 140 volunteers will be needed for various tasks leading up to such as morning setup and assisting the various vendors as they prepare (about 50 have registered so far) and performers, many duties during the day of and cleanup the morning after the festival. So far around 50 have signed up.

Through the festival website there is a SignUpGenius link allowing interested volunteers to choose the task and times they would like to work. Once information has been entered, they can request a T-shirt size that will identify them as a Piscataquis River Festival volunteer.

“The big need for volunteers during the day is the kids zone because we need people stationed at the different activities just to sort of crowd manage and be the eyes and ears for any kind of mishap and just to keep it safe,” Lisa McNamara said. About 20 people will be needed in this area at all times.

Those helping out do not need to do so all day long as with enough volunteers everyone can assist for part of the festival and still have other time to enjoy the festivities. 

“That way it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of a couple of people who are out there all day, then it becomes a miserable experience and they don’t want to do it again,” Lisa McNamara said. “So if we share it and make everyone a part of it then it really is a community activity.”

The festival webpage is helping streamline everything, including signing up to take part in the parade. In previous years participants showed up the morning of and registering online, for free, is intended to help with planning, John McNamara said.

“If we can raise Riverfest just a little bit and raise just a little more economic growth then that’s what we want to do,” he said about the boost the festival would provide to town businesses from all the attendees coming to Guilford.

He added that organizers want “everybody to feel like this is their Riverfest and they had a role in it.”