For the past 13 years, The Saltwater Hillbilly has provided memorable experiences bringing old-school songs to new audiences.
The Saltwater Hillbilly is an entertainer who specializes in bringing back the old-school happy hour fun that used to happen back in the 1970s and 1980s with a focus on tourist destinations.
“The Saltwater Hillbilly was invented right here at Sebasco Harbor Resort,” said Dennis Doiran, the Phippsburg resident behind The Saltwater Hillbilly.
Dennis Doiran as The Saltwater Hillbilly performs live at Point Sebago in southern Maine. Courtesy of the Saltwater Hillbilly
Doiran created The Saltwater Hillbilly while he was working at Sebasco Harbor Resort as a beverage manager in 1996. When the resort changed ownership, they knew Doiran had been a performer in multiple bands in the past and asked him to help change the entertainment venue’s jacketed Poconos dinner theme.
Doiran held a focus group in 2012 with resort managers, restaurant and pub manager, and marketing professionals to ask what kind of entertainment locals wanted for an entertainment venue when they visited Maine, and out of that group came The Saltwater Hillbilly.
The Saltwater Hillbilly is a one-person show. The cover songs The Saltwater Hillbilly performs are a mixture of boat songs, island songs, country songs and cowboy songs.
Dorian played in multiple rock ‘n’ roll bands while growing up in Brunswick. He left the state to work in marketing and advertising before returning to Maine in 1996.
“My whole focus right from the first hello is to get [the audience] singing,” Doiran said. “Any performer’s purpose should be to get people to come back to the venue.”
The Saltwater Hillbilly focuses on fun and familiar entertainment that is family-friendly and engages with the audience during each performance by telling jokes and stories in between playing familiar cover songs like “Sweet Caroline” and Jimmy Buffet hits.
The Saltwater Hillbilly has played at venues up and down the Midcoast and throughout New England at events like The Big E, a combined state fair for all the New England states all at once, as Doiran describes it.
“It was designed specifically from the ground up as a tourist-friendly act,” Doiran said.
The Saltwater Hillbilly performs two to three shows per week, with an upcoming show at the Union Fair in July and the Topsham Fair in August. Next for The Saltwater Hillbilly is to maintain the venues that have been the most loyal, like Brady’s Booth Bay Harbor during the Windjammer Days.
There are two other acts that Doiran performs called Ranger D Singing Cowboy, a recreation of the singing cowboys from the 1930s to the 1950s, and The Saltwater Hillbilly’s Wicked Good Party, which is more reserved for private events and is a combination of The Saltwater Hillbilly act and then changes into a DJ to perform popular dance songs for the last part of the act.
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