The Gawler Family
Doug Kolmar
Stan Davis
Carole Wise
UNION COFFEEHOUSE 2026 – OUR 20th YEAR
 
The Union Coffeehouse comes back this summer with a wonderful lineup of talent set for your listening pleasure. In addition to some of our favorite performers, we will be welcoming a singer/songwriter who tells stories of everyday struggles with warmth, empathy, and a touch of dark humor. The Coffeehouse is a part of Union Church’s community outreach program offering wholesome musical entertainment at a bargain price. We invite everyone to mark their calendars and plan to attend the following outstanding concerts:
 
Saturday, May 9 – Our season-opening Union Coffeehouse will feature a rousing concert by The Gawler Family! They will bring us an assortment of old and new sounds from many folk traditions. The Gawlers accompany interweaving harmonies with fiddles, banjo, wooden banjo, and guitar, as well as a few surprises. Whether they are crooning a poignant ballad or delivering a rollicking fiddle tune, their unique arrangements are especially engaging and often go along with anecdotes of historical or humorous content. Although the Gawlers may be best known for their extensive collection of dance tunes in the Scots-Irish and French-Canadian traditions, their repertoire may include a gutsy “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” an a capella work song, or an amusing ode to everyday life. With their infectious spirit and sparkling musicianship, the Gawler Family has earned a beloved place in the delighted hearts of varied audiences across the Northeast.
 
Saturday, June 13 – With a voice as warm and inviting as your favorite old flannel shirt,
the Union Coffeehouse welcomes singer/songwriter Doug Kolmar as he explores the light and dark of humanity through a lens of compassion, wit, and insightful observation. He writes songs for a world in which there is time. Time to attend to the nuance of a phrase, to get inside a character, or tease out layers of meaning. His decades-long musical journey has been a winding one, with detours through multiple modes of expression that continue to provide unique color to the contemporary folk songs he has been sharing with audiences for the past twenty-plus years. Originally from the NYC suburbs, Doug has been living the Maine life since 2002.
 
Saturday, July 11 – The Union Coffeehouse welcomes back Stan Davis, a talented singer/songwriter and story teller, who has been a favorite with Coffeehouse audiences
since he first joined us in 2023. He has performed for all ages throughout Maine including at One Longfellow Square, the  Pumpkin Fest, the Common Ground Fair, the Alewife Festival, and the Turner and Winthrop gazebo concert series. A life-long storyteller, Stan writes and sings quirky, heart-felt songs about real peoples’ lives across the human lifespan. His finger-style, slide, and electric lead guitar playing spans the blues, ragtime, jazz, and folk music spectra. A multi-instrumentalist, he also plays bowed psaltery, blues harmonica, autoharp, mountain dulcimer, and trichordo bouzouki. His performances mix storytelling, audience interaction, original songs, and reinterpreted classics.
 
Saturday, August 8 – The Union Coffeehouse is pleased to welcome back Carole Wise, a singer/songwriter from Brunswick, Maine. Her music is sweet and soulful, drawing on a lifelong passion for education, the beauty of the natural world, and the adventures of finding truth through life’s challenges. Her music is also organic – grown and nurtured from the seed of a feeling or a visual. Carole’s guitar and mandolin playing is both intricate and straight forward and her lyrics are nuanced, lyrical and both personal and universal. Every song offers us a chance to connect to something: a feeling, a thought, a fear, a hope. She evokes a certain familiarity - something we have felt, thought or worried about - as though she knew us. As listeners, we can recognize pieces of our own life’s journey.
 
Please show your support for this wonderful Union Church community outreach program by coming to the Union Coffeehouse concerts and bringing your friends. The concerts will start at 7 PM in Friendship Hall and the featured performers will start the show. They will be followed by the serendipitous group of performers who show up for the Open Mic time. We’ll offer the wonderful baked goods, and fresh coffee, tea, and lemonade that have become a hallmark of the Union Coffeehouse. We hope you will come and enjoy the wonderful concerts that we are able to offer this year. Suggested donation is $10 per person. Please direct any questions about the programs to Don Petersen. We look forward to seeing you there.