No Mainer would assume that David Byrne — legendary frontman for the Talking Heads and endlessly inventive musician and artist — would be fascinated by the Penobscot River Restoration Project.
But one look at Reasons to be Cheerful, the nonprofit online magazine he founded in 2018, shows that curiosity about everything — not just music — is the driving force behind nearly everything Byrne does.
This Saturday he’ll be giving a talk and leading a panel discussion at the Waterville Opera House with local experts about the dam removal project in the lower Penobscot.
Reasons to be Cheerful publishes stories about people doing forward-thinking, helpful things in their communities, as an antidote to the negative news cycle, something Byrne felt himself painfully immersed in around 2017.
“I’m a little bit of a news junkie, and I just felt like reading all these awful things just wasn’t helping. It wasn’t good for my own mental health,” Byrne said, in an interview last week with the Bangor Daily News. “I began sharing good things on my blog, or good things that had happened to me. I just started doing little presentations, and saying ‘Look what I found. Things are maybe not as bad as we think they are.’”
Byrne has since led a series of talks all over the world about many of the stories the site has published, including his upcoming Waterville talk, which was inspired by a December 2023 article about the Penobscot River Restoration Project.
“Wherever we go, we try to do something local to that area,” Byrne said. “The Penobscot River Restoration Project is one of those things where you look at all the elements of the story, and you ask ‘Was this a good thing? Did this produce positive results in the community?’ And the answer, I think, is a resounding yes.”
The project began in 1999 as a collaborative effort between many Maine organizations and businesses to better balance hydropower needs with restoring native fisheries and getting the river closer to its natural, pre-industrial state. Between 2012 and 2016, the Veazie Dam and Great Works Dam in Old Town were removed, and a bypass was constructed on the Howland Dam.
“When you look at the positive impacts it has had, like fish populations rebounding, and better access for tribal people, and recreation opportunities, it shows that projects like these really help communities on a larger scale,” Byrne said. “It’s not something that happens overnight, but is the work of dedicated people with a vision.”
Byrne has a long history with Maine, starting during his childhood when he said he visited Acadia National Park with his family. He’s performed in Portland on numerous occasions, both with the Talking Heads and as a solo artist and with other musicians, including most recently in 2018, when his “American Utopia” tour stopped at the Merrill Auditorium before premiering as a Broadway show in 2019.
On this visit, however, he’s doing something different from his usual live music stops — something to be expected from a man who has also directed movies, written books, composed for stage and screen, collaborated with modern dance choreographers, and been a vocal advocate for using bicycles as a replacement for cars in cities.
“I was too shy early in my career to do any public speaking. And then, you have the protection of music when you’re on stage performing,” Byrne said. “This has come to me later in life. I don’t claim to be an expert, but we can bring in people who are, and facilitate discussions about these bigger topics. We can help tell those stories, and hopefully inspire people to think about things happening in their own communities.”
Among the experts set to share the stage with Byrne this weekend include Chief Kirk Francis of the Penobscot Nation and Laura Rose Day of the 7 Lakes Alliance and former director of the Penobscot River Restoration Trust. The talk, hosted by Waterville Creates, is sold out.
Byrne said that he’s talked to all kinds of people all over the country for Reason to be Cheerful, and he finds that while the issues they deal with are all very different, they all tend to share one crucial commonality.
“I’ve noticed that the people who are being active and trying to initiate change tend to come from outside the political system,” Byrne said. “Eventually they get involved in that world, but they start as citizens who want to make positive changes in their communities. I think that’s really encouraging. It means anyone can look at something and say ‘They did it. We can do it too.’”
