'Maine Cabin Masters' takes on Phish passion project, courtesy of UMPI

Courtesy / Anderson Giles The IT Men greeted Phish festival-goers in 2003 at the former Loring Air Force Base.

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"Maine Cabin Masters," the renovate-a-wreck reality TV show, is taking on an unusual project with the restoration of the “IT Men” — 20-foot-tall, lime-green wooden traffic control figures with light-up hands — as a long-term loaner from the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

The figures stood at the concert gates of a 2003 music festival held by the rock band Phish at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone.

Called the IT Festival — Phish was prone to whimsical names, including the earlier Great Went and Lemonwheel festivals, also held at Loring — the two figures were in the shape of an “I” and a “T,” as though holding air traffic signal wands up and out.

“To think that we have the honor of restoring these — it really blows my mind,” Ryan Eldridge, one of the three founding cabin masters, told Mainebiz.

Eldridge is an avid Phish fan.

“When I was in college, I really loved the Grateful Dead,” he said. “My buddy said, ‘You’ve got to hear this new band from Vermont.’ I said, ‘No, it seems weird.’ I fought Phish for a long time.”

But eventually he went to a concert and has been hooked ever since. He estimates he’s been to 250 to 300 Phish shows over the past 20 years.

Courtesy / Maine Cabin Masters

Ryan Eldridge

That included the IT Festival. Eldridge recalled driving under the IT Men, which loomed over traffic coming onto the festival grounds.

“So it’s come full circle,” he said.

Started in 2016, "Maine Cabin Masters" is a show that centers on Wayne contractor Chase Morrill, his designer sister Ashley Morrill, and her carpenter husband Ryan Eldridge. Distributed nationally on the DIY Network, the show typically takes on renovations and restorations of cabins and camps across Maine.

Recent project includes a 2020 partnership with Winthrop-based Kennebec Land Trust to renovate two cabins on in the trust’s Wakefield Wildlife Sanctuary, and this year’s teaming with Landry/French Construction to fix up Camp Sunshine’s activity center on Sebago Lake.

Saving Phish history

The IT Men came to the University of Maine at Presque Isle when an art faculty member at the time, Anderson Giles, worked with then-Loring Development Authority Director Brian Hamel to salvage them after the festival. The traffic controllers were moved to the UMPI campus with the intent of utilizing them as reminders of the Limestone Phish concerts.

Following a major restoration, they were installed on the western façade of UMPI’s Pullen Hall and unveiled in 2009. They were put up as a precursor to a Phish Retrospective that Giles helped organize to showcase the three Phish music festivals that took place at Loring in 1997, 1998 and 2003. But the IT Men were never intended to stay up as long as they did.

More than a decade later, exposure to the weather and safety concerns prompted campus leaders to take down the installation. It was determined that, even with another restoration, hanging them in the same spot would still create the potential for a safety risk.

So another faculty member and Phish fan, Larry Feinstein, asked UMPI officials if he could share information on a Phish Facebook fan page to gauge interest in the figures. He directed inquiries to UMPI Chief Business Officer Betsy Sawhill Espe, whose inbox immediately began filling up with stories from those who attended the concerts in Limestone.

There were also offers to rehome the IT Men as part of concert series, roadside attractions, music venues and business and fundraiser displays.

Courtesy / University of Maine at Presque Isle

University of Maine at Presque Isle last month passed the pieces of the IT Men — 20-foot-tall traffic control figures that once stood at the concert gates of a Phish music festival in Limestone and later became an outdoor art installation at the university — to the "Maine Cabin Masters" for restoration and display. From left are UMPI Chief Business Officer Betsy Sawhill Espe, Executive Director of University Advancement and External Affairs Deborah Roark, "Maine Cabin Masters" Ashley Morrill and Ryan Eldridge (holding one IT Man’s hand and yellow torch), UMPI President Ray Rice and Dean of the College of Professional Programs Barbara Blackstone.

One of those offers came from Eldridge, who agreed to a long-term loan that would include an extensive restoration followed by display of the figures — viewable to the public at no cost — at The Woodshed, the cabin masters’ bar and event venue in Manchester.

“We’re very appreciative that they’re willing to take on the cost and responsibility of transport, restoration, installation, and upkeep for years to come and have the resources to do it,” Espe said in a news release.

In addition, Eldridge and the "Maine Cabin Masters" crew intend to chronicle the process, from transport to restoration to re-installation, and share the story on social media.

Last month, university officials held a symbolic "passing of the torch" to Eldridge and Morrill.

The installation at the university worked well for a number of years, said Eldridge.

“The elements would hit them and they’d drain off and dry out,” he said. “There wasn’t a lot of rot. But a while ago they got taken down and stored on pallets in pieces. I think that’s where they took a beating. When we got them, they were in really rough shape. But there’s enough there that we can bring them back to life as good as when they were made. It will be a big jigsaw puzzle — a lot of patching, maybe use some pieces as a template. But they’ll come back in all their glory.”

The figures have central lumber frames with an inside conduit layer. At over 20 feet tall, the hands at the top of the I are about four feet apart, and the T stretch is about 8 feet wide. Eldridge said that, until last month, he never realized that the hands, made of color Plexiglas, were designed to light up.

“When you went into the festival, you didn’t leave, so you didn’t realize that the hands light up,” he said. “We’ll light them again, which will be pretty cool.”

The plan is to dig into the project over the coming winter.

“We want to have them done before next spring,” he said. “We’ll reveal them at our worldwide headquarters in Manchester.”

The "Maine Cabin Masters" headquarters” is at Kennebec Cabin Co. in Manchester, where the cabin masters have a retail store and a pub and music venue called the Woodshed. The Woodshed has a stage that will perfectly accommodate the figures, Eldridge said.

“They’re really iconic pieces in Phish history,” he added. “The project is pretty straightforward for us. We have the tools, the room and the knowledge of how to work with wood.”

The group recently started a Facebook page to chronicle the restoration; search “Restoration of the IT Men.”

“We’ll start updating it as we put more time into them,” said Eldridge.

In the meantime, the cabin masters last month surpassed their 100th episode and is working on three cabins that should be finished around December, with another round of renovation projects beginning after that.