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'Bert and I' Tell Timeless Tales in a New CD

September 10, 2008 - NEW GLOUCESTER -- The first impression listeners may get from “The Best of Bert and I” is, “So, that is where that came from.”

The CD, released last month by Islandport Press in New Gloucester, contains 34 stories written and told by Robert Bryan and the late Marshall Dodge in their appearances as the Maine storytellers Bert and I.

While not all are original stories, the pair landed sayings such as, “Can’t get theah from heah” into the vernacular of Maine popular culture.

The sketches were selected from five CDs and a DVD spanning 19 years of performances, beginning 50 years ago with “Bert and I.”

That the “Bert and I” stories have endured and influenced Maine humorists like Tim Sample, John McDonald, Susan Poulin and Gary Crocker – despite being created by two men not from Maine – is something Dean Lunt at Islandport Press attributed to the capacity both men had for listening carefully.

According to Sample, it is the innate humanity found in the stories that keep them popular.

“Marshall was a brilliant performer and Bob a wonderful writer,” said Lunt. He credited both with taking existing stories that were too off-color for the airwaves and revising them while writing fresh material to bolster the shows and recordings.


In Bryan’s case, his first exposure to Maine lore came from vacations on Tunk Lake in Hancock County. While attending the divinity school at Yale University in the late 1950s, Bryan met Marshall Dodge. Dorm room collaborations on Maine stories became a record the two made just for friends. The record was so popular it was recorded commercially in 1958.

Bryan and Dodge came to Maine for more material, and it was on a visit to a barbershop in Brooklin owned by Steven Graham that Graham’s nephew Sample first met Dodge.

By this time, Dodge was adopting Maine as his home and traveling throughout the state to gather more material. The third “Bert and I” album was recorded in the barbershop.

Meanwhile, Bryan was using the royalties from the records to establish the Quebec-Labrador Foundation, which helps preserve coastal communities and resources throughout Quebec and Labrador.

While Bryan remained involved with Bert and I as a recording company was formed, the foundation is his life’s work. Dodge performed throughout the 60s and 70s and established the now-defunct Maine Festival before he was killed in January 1982 in a hit-and-run accident.

Bryan and Dodge were not always treading new ground, and sometimes adapted stories to fit Maine roots. By adding their own material and avoiding observations that place the stories in any one era, the work remained fresh to Lunt as he listened and selected the material for the CD.

Sample, who met Dodge again almost 20 years after seeing him in the barbershop and went on to record with Dodge and Bryan, said the stories told by the pair kept a gentle, humane touch.

A Closer Look

"The Best of Bert and I," released by Islandport Press of New Gloucester, is a selection of 34 of the best stories written and told by Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan in their roles as "Bert and I."

The stories were taken from five recordings by the duo and a television appearance by Dodge.

An audio clip of "Which Way to Millinocket?" can be heard at www.islandportpress.com.

Copies of the CD can also be ordered at that Web site.

“Unlike what sometimes passes for humor now,” said Sample, “they are never mean-spirited, vicious or vulgar.”

They are also grounded in everyday life, even when it is unpleasant. Stories like “Body in the Kelp,” where two men try to identify a body they found while clamming "is a silly story where a listener does not forget about dangerous work," Sample said.

“The reason good stories endure whether it is Twain or Bert and I is that they speak to the human condition,” said Sample, who after his initial meeting with Marshall Dodge reunited with him again in Portland in the 70s.

“Marshall used to say, ‘The most dangerous thing you can do in a difficult circumstance is to take it seriously’,” Sample said.

While working as a graphic artist and moonlighting as a singer songwriter, Sample said it was around 1975 when he reconnected with Dodge. By the time Dodge had established the Maine Festival a year later, Sample was serving on the festival board. Approximately four years later, the two appeared onstage together for the first time, combining Sample’s stand up act with Dodge’s storytelling for an improvised show they decided could become an act to tour with.

“Tim said he would tell Marshall how to tell a joke if he taught Tim how to tell a story,” said Fred Dodge. “Marshall was a rotten stand up comic, though.”

Sample and Dodge toured the state in the summer of 1981. Just before Dodge flew to Hawaii for an extended family visit, the two were recording voice overs for a potential animated series based on Maine characters created by Dodge’s friend Gary Trudeau, author of the “Doonesbury” comic strip.

When Sample dropped Dodge off in Portland, it was the last he saw of him. At Dodge's funeral, Bryan invited Sample to visit, and when Sample stopped by about three months later, a second collaboration was born.

It was about when Sample and Marshall Dodge began working together that Susan Poulin, the South Berwick-based performer who has written monologues such as “Shutting Up Peggy Lee,” first met them and other humorists such as Kendall Morse.

Born in Jackman and raised in Westbrook before studying theater at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham, Poulin said she had not heard the Bert and I records and “thought it was something people from away listened to.”

But the genre drew her attention and she began creating characters and stories based in opposition to the old Maine men who filled the Bert and I canon. She was also able to imbue the characters and stories with her theatrical training.

That led to the creation of Ida LeClair, of the fictional Mahoosuc Mills, and star of “Ida: Woman Who Runs With the Moose,” and “Ida’s Havin’ a Yard Sale!”

“I thought the stories I was hearing did not reflect on the womens’ lives, “ said Poulin about the birth of Ida, but the relationships in a small town remain a constant in the storytelling genre for Poulin.

“I wanted to honor the women I grew up with,” Poulin said, making sure Ida’s world is imbued with the Franco-American culture that may not be as prevalent in the Down East towns providing fodder for Sample, Dodge and Bryan.

After Marshall Dodge’s death, Bryan and Sample recorded several CDs, including “How to Talk Yankee,” a takeoff on the Charles Berlitz-type language courses, while Fred Dodge began telling Bert and I stories at gatherings to help raise money for the memorial fund established in his brother’s name.

Beyond the impact Dodge and Bryan have had on other performers is the cultural impact Lunt is proud to reassert with the release of the CD. “I gained appreciation for the whole body of work, it is very iconic,” said Lunt.

Delighted that the stories has lasted 50 years, Fred Dodge hopes for another 50 based on a simple appeal.

“Everybody has a Bert and I story,” he said.

By David Harry
dharry@keepmecurrent.com


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