The Bollard Bulletin for Aug. 7, 2026

We recently got a note from Willie Audet, Jr., chairman of St. Peter’s Italian Bazaar, the summer street festival on Portland’s East End celebrating Italian-American culture. Willie read last month’s report in The Bollard about this summer’s Smokin’ Sausage Showdown, during which we tried to find a sweet Italian sausage as good as the one we used to get at Fresh Approach, and lamented that “meat maestro” Dickey Colucci, past owner of the corner store atop Munjoy Hill, is no longer selling his hot Italian links. Willie wrote to share the great news that Dickey is mixing, grinding, stuffing, searing and serving his legendary hot Italians during the Bazaar this weekend on Federal Street, tonight and tomorrow from 5 until 10 p.m. Don’t miss out! Free admission.

King Yellowman has duly earned that royal honorific. An orphaned albino child in Kingston, Jamaica, Yellow attained fame in the streets at dancehall parties and released a slew of records, including his major-label debut, before getting jaw cancer in 1986 and being told he had six months to live. By the end of ’87, he was back on wax with the album Yellow Like Cheese, and he’s been touring and recording ever since. Tonight he returns to Bayside Bowl (58 Alder St., Portland) with special guests Tough Like Iron at 8 p.m. Tix: $30-$35 (all ages).

The easygoing surf-folksinger Donavon Frankenreiter is spicing up his new tour by opening the floor to questions from the audience about “anything.” Bring your hippie-dancin’ sandals and your burning questions to Aura (121 Center St., Portland), where he’ll be joined by opener Iris and The Shade at 8 p.m. Tix: $39.50-$70 (18+).

I’ve got a burning question for zydeco bandleader Terrance Simien: “How cool was it to write the music for a Disney ride and then ride the ride and hear it?” Simien’s bio notes that he co-wrote the zydeco song in The Princess and the Frog with Randy Newman and was “thrilled to hear the word zydeco spoken on screen for the very first time in a Disney production.” The ride thing, though — Tiana’s Bayou Adventure — man, that’s somethin’ else! Together with his band The Zydeco Experience, Simien plays a rescheduled show at One Longfellow Square (181 State St., Portland) at 8 p.m. Tix: $45 (all ages).

We’ve all heard about the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s, but the New England Vampire Panic of the 1890s was news to me. Aaron Mahnke, host of popular podcast Lore, has a new book, Exhumed: Unearthing the History of the American Vampire, about the occasionally grisly mix of science, folklore and bullshit back then that drove one anguished father to dig up his daughter’s corpse and remove her heart. Get the whole story when Mahnke appears at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) at 8 p.m. Tix: $5.