Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

August 30, 2012

The Rush is on

A trio of hot-hot-hot concerts – Big Time Rush, Keith Urban and Jason Aldean – goes off in Bangor this weekend, with the boy band BTR leading things off.

By Ray Routhier rrouthier@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

It's going to be big-time music weekend in Bangor. In more ways than one.

It's a big-time weekend because Bangor Waterfront Pavilion is hosting three major outdoor concerts on three consecutive days, Friday through Sunday.

And it's going to be "big time" literally, because that super-hot boy band full of TV stars, Big Time Rush, is headlining the Friday show. Saturday's show will be headlined by Australian country star Keith Urban, while fellow country star Jason Aldean is set to do a sold-out show on Sunday.

The outdoor series at Bangor Waterfront Pavilion has been growing since it started three years ago, from seven shows the first year to 17 in each of the past two years.

But how did the series' promoters happen to book three of the 17 shows in one weekend? Was there some big plan to put together a really big music weekend?

"We worked at getting the two country shows back-to-back to create a weekend," said Alex Gray of Waterfront Concerts. "But Big Time Rush was just tour routing."

That's life in the concert business -- it's all about routing. But in this case, the miracle of tour routing is bringing Big Time Rush to Maine at a time when it's one of the top boy bands.

Big Time Rush -- or BTR, as the group is known to its fans -- has sold more than 1.25 million albums and 3.5 million singles in the U.S. in the past two years, and won the award for Best Music Group at this year's Kids' Choice Awards. It's also the star of a Nickelodeon TV show that's in the top 10 of all kids' TV programming.

Gray says Big Time Rush is "probably a close second" in the boy-band department right now to One Direction, a British-Irish group that has taken the 'tween music world by storm.

One of the reasons BTR is so big is that it follows The Monkees' old formula. (Not a coincidence, by the way -- the Nickelodeon show's creator Scott Fellows has said he was inspired by Davy, Peter, Mike and Micky to create BTR.) The four young men were all recruited to be in the show "Big Time Rush," which is about a band, Big Time Rush.

In the show, they are supposed to be four young hockey-playing Minnesotans who move to Los Angeles to be in the band.

In real life, the four members -- Kendall Schmidt, James Maslow, Carlos Pena Jr. and Logan Henderson -- are all actors who were among some 1,500 teens who auditioned for "Big Time Rush." And like The Monkees, what started as a fictional band for a TV show became a band in real life.

As the show heads into its fourth season, the stars are in their 20s and dealing with a busy filming and touring schedule, all while trying to figure out where this wild ride is taking them.

In an email interview with GO, each of the guys in Big Time Rush answered some questions about life as TV/music stars -- and the challenges that come with it.

"It feels like we eat, breathe and do everything Big Time Rush, but we are all committed to this project," Pena said. "I would say the biggest challenge of being so busy is not having a lot of free time to spend with my family and friends."

Henderson said in their free time, the band members like to do things most young men like to do, such as "play a lot of video games and try to get workouts in whenever we can."

(Continued on page 2)

Tweet