Days Fourteen, Fifteen and Sixteen: Tuesday, August 18th -Thursday, August 20th, 2025 – The Barnacle (Monhegan Island, ME) with Hello Shark
For this series of articles, our writer Ty Maxwell will be documenting his tour of the Northeast, spanning from August 6th to September 8th. Maxwell will be writing reflections and insights into the process of booking and executing a DIY tour as an independent artist, the relationships that enable the whole enterprise, and the general day-to-day experience: the minutiae, difficulties and triumphs involved in touring as a solo musician.
The island attracts day-trippers, wealthy vacationers and retirees, expecting couples on a getaway, families renting cabins, old friends reconvening at The Island Inn. Every day different ferries arrive carrying tourists and supplies until the day’s last boat departure at 4:30 PM. “After that,” Jes tells me, “the island changes.”
There’s an underbelly everywhere. Here, the seasonal workers – the young people who work the hospitality gigs at the hotels and restaurants and cafes, who serve coffee or run supplies or maintain grounds – go out at night, just like anywhere else. And just like anywhere else, there’s hidden worlds you might only find out about if you’re really looking, if you’re paying close attention, if you’re hungry for it and uniquely attuned to the out of the ordinary.
Linc and Kelsey left for Monhegan on Tuesday; I stayed behind at their house to write and work on some projects (one of which I’m very excited about...). I left Wednesday morning, arriving in St. George with only minutes to spare before the day’s final ferry; I was greeted, after the hour-long ride, by my friends at the landing, right outside The Barnacle. It’s a simple, potent romantic gesture to be greeted on arrival like that.
We killed time by walking around and exploring, climbing rocks and the hull of the old D.T. Sheridan shipwreck, occasionally telling locals and visitors we passed to come by The Barnacle later; then, we ate dinner outside the Fish House, feasting on mussels and shrimp tacos and lobster bisque. An aside about food on tour: there are days and times and places to pinch pennies – to make a PB&J while stopped at a rest area – and there are times when you almost have to ball out and eat something fancy. I conducted an interview on Tuesday, which I’ll likely be sharing more about soon, with an artist I’ve been listening to for decades now, and he told me this about his approach to meals on tour:
It’s sort of evolved to the point where now, I’m booking tours based on the restaurants that are in that town. Because I want to eat somewhere special. Sometimes even making sure I have a day off on the day that the restaurant’s gonna be open. Or trying to book matinee shows so I’m free for dinner. Really prioritizing food. Yeah, it’s very sensory, and I think that’s why I still like touring. I hear from these bands that have this whole infrastructure and they travel on a bus and they only eat at the backstage catering, and it sounds awful. Non-DIY touring doesn’t allow you to prioritize eating at a restaurant or on a certain day, you know?
After dinner we split up for a bit, then Jes, Mariko (another worker at the cafe) and I climbed out on rocks on the island’s western edge to watch an especially glorious sunset. The sun on the swirling ocean water looked like a Chuck Close portrait, layers of color undulating. Before long, the dark would set in, the stars would light up the sky, and we’d re-open the cafe, unofficially, for our show.
Jes shifted things around, changing the layout, setting up lights and a makeshift stage, reorganizing the tables and chairs; Linc and I sat outside playing guitar, trying out some songs we might be able to perform together. By 8:30, a crowd had formed outside in the dark, mostly the seasonal workers who live together in a shared house behind the Inn. We filled the room virtually to the brim. The Barnacle serves coffee and ice cream during the day; now it felt, in the soft, warm light, like a secret place. I performed first, then Hello Shark. We played so quietly that the sound of the waves, the dark sea just outside, sometimes drowned us out. Everyone listening was whisper-quiet. Only ten miles from the shore, we might as well have been on another planet, in another century.
After, Jes led a group of us in the deep darkness along paths we’d strolled earlier in the daylight into wooded ones we’d yet to walk, up higher and higher in elevation and through thicker woods until we finally emerged at our destination: the Burnt Head cliff, at 150 feet above sea level. At that vertiginous height, the stars and the sea and the distant clouds all enshrouded in incredibly disorienting spatial darkness, we all had to lie on our backs clutching the ground to not feel like we’d fly off.
I slept in the workers’ house and woke to perfectly blue skies; I stayed on until the final ferry, passing the hours hiking with Jes, playing banjo on the cliffs, taking photos of everything, swimming in the frigid sea water, talking to people, to parents and their playing children. My skin is pink from so much sun. When I took the ferry in, I spoke to a man who asked if this was my first time, and when I said yes, he said he was jealous. It hasn’t been seven hours since I left and I’m already jealous of myself.
