AUGUSTA – Le Festival est retourne.

Le Festival de la Bastille — the three-day Franco-American festival hosted by Augusta’s Le Club Calumet — is back, July 9-11 at Pete Gagne Memorial Field off Old Belgrade Road.

In contrast to 2008, this year’s festival won’t compete with Old Hallowell Day. That’s because Sue Murphy checked in advance.

Sue and Pat Murphy of Augusta are co-leaders of the festival, which is now held every other year.

“It’s a lot better having it every other year,” Sue Murphy said. Otherwise, “by the time you’re done, you have to start preparing again.”

The Murphys were on the steering committee on 2008, when Edna Doyon and Joyce Gagne served as co-chairwomen.

“We were kind of job-shadowing,” Pat Murphy said. “They asked us to consider doing it the next time.”

Organizers need recovery time because everyone is a volunteer. Initially, the subcommittees met monthly, but now it’s weekly.

Sue Murphy keeps all the documentation in two black bags she brought to an interview at the club on West River Road.

They’ve gathered sponsors — whose support is critical, Sue Murphy says — arranged to rent large tents, set up entertainers who specialize in French-Canadian music and even booked a Cajun band from Louisiana, the Lost Bayou Ramblers.

Sue Murphy, who is also the catering manager for the club, said attendees can expect familiar choices on the menus, including crepes all weekend long, tourtiere (pork pie), boudin (blood sausage), salmon pie and the traditional chicken barbecue Sunday.

“We’ve got everything,” she said, including hot dogs, hamburgers and french fries.

They also have their traditional Friday night fireworks.

A program geared specifically for children is set for that Saturday morning.

To promote the event, Pat Boucher, past Le Club Calumet president, is heading a group preparing a float for the city’s Fourth of July Parade.

Pat Murphy, who is president of Plummer Funeral Home, has been a club member since 1982, when the club voted to allow members whose mothers were of French ancestry. Murphy said three of his four grandparents were French, and that his grandfather Murphy grew up in Fort Kent and spoke the best French of the grandparents.

Sue Murphy, whose maiden name is Pare, joined the club in 2008.

The Franco-American festival ran from 1984 to 1997 and was restored through the efforts of Doyon and Gagne in 2006 after the club started admitting women as members. Gagne died in 2009.

Admission to the festival is $5 a day. A three-day pass is also available.

Festivalgoers can park at the club and ride a shuttle to the grounds.

Pat Murphy said the club also has made arrangements to use the parking lot at the nearby Harold Alfond Center for Cancer Care if the fields normally used for parking get muddy.