Bowl in the Pines wraps up its season with record numbers
Photo by Maizy Weirich
Written by Maizy Weirich
The Bowl in the Pines is a striking contrast to Sidney, the town it resides in. Despite being tucked away in a rural town with a population under 5,000 people, the 7,000-capacity music venue has attracted national touring acts including Gin Blossoms, Blues Traveler, Gov’t Mule, and many others.
The outdoor venue is cloaked within a forest of its namesake trees, sitting beside Lake Messalonskee. Bowl in the Pines is owned and operated by Snow Pond Center for the Arts, a nonprofit, multifaceted organization that hosts a variety of community events and music lessons. The campus is also home to the New England Music Camp, where aspiring young students from around the country can expand their musical skills.
While the original "bowl" (stage) was built in the 1930s, the venue has undergone a recent makeover, according to the venue’s website.
“In the last four years, we started doing national touring acts," said Dylan Abbott, director of concerts and events for Bowl in the Pines. “We redid the whole entire stage, and that’s when they [national acts] started coming in.”
This summer, the venue hosted big-name musicians like Andy Grammer, Elle King, and Ziggy Marley. However, getting to that point, Abbott said, was not easy.
“We’re not a Live Nation venue. We’re independently owned. If you know anything about the business, it’s tough to grow when you’re not a corporate giant. But we’ve done a really good job of that,” Abbott said.
He said 2025 was the first time he felt the venue grabbed hold of the industry, offering more than 10 shows and hosting around 19,000 concertgoers throughout the season.
“And then this year it just kind of took off,” Abbott said.
Bowl in the Pines hosted 12 shows during the 2026 season, with “three or four” of those selling out, Abbott said. Within those 12 shows, they practically doubled their attendance record and hosted more than seven times the town’s population.
Despite this unusual location for a popular concert venue, Abbott said Sidney is an ideal location.
“It’s accessible for really anybody. You’re about an hour away from Bangor, you’re an hour away from Portland, you’re 15 minutes from the capital [Augusta], and about 20 minutes away from Waterville,” Abbott said.
Not only is it an in-the-middle point for many areas of the state, but it also avoids major city traffic that Portland, or even Bangor, may face on a typical weekend concert night.
“I would like to think that our economic impact in here has been astronomical,” Abbott said.
On Sept. 11, Bowl in the Pines wrapped up its 12th and final concert of the season with Molly Tuttle and Lucas Nelson. This concert brought about 2,000 people to Sidney in the middle of September.
The season closer
The roads leading up to the venue are typical of a rural Maine town: windy, narrow, and misleadingly quiet. Not until about 50 meters from the Bowl’s entrance is there a sign that anything out of the ordinary is happening in the woods of Sidney.
At the concert on Sept. 11, hundreds of cars were parked in an orderly fashion across an enormous grassy lot, with a growing number waiting to be directed to the field. For an extra cost, concertgoers can park their cars closer to their seats.
The opening act, Molly Tuttle, didn’t start until 7 p.m., but fans and attendees flooded in as early as 5:30. Many were getting drinks from one of the two “bars,” or food from the five food trucks situated just outside the general seating.
Near the end of Tuttle's set, she played her original song “Crooked Tree.” She took off the wig she had been wearing for the majority of her time on stage. Later, she briefly shared a bit of her story about alopecia and how that song was born from her experience with hair loss.
About a third of the way through the concert, the sun had fallen behind the pines. The blue skies of day evolved into clear night. Stars twinkled, still visible above the flashy lights from the event.
Lucas Nelson followed Tuttle’s act with engaging Americana-country tunes. He sported a plain cowboy hat throughout his show, merging a Western vibe into his rocking set. The band's seamless harmonies and sliding guitar riffs brought the venue's final 2026 concert to a satisfying finish.
Leaving Bowl in the Pines felt like being transported into another world. What a strange feeling it is to go from watching thousands of people engaging with live music to suddenly being on the lookout for deer.
While Tuttle and Nelson marked the last Bowl in the Pines concert for the 2026 season, the Snow Pond Center for the Arts will continue to host indoor events throughout the year. To learn more about the center, visit the website.