Courtesy of Jay Giampetro

“I never went to college, so [Bowdoin] was my college,” Luke Rathborne said. “It was the college for the whole town.”

Rathborne is a musician and filmmaker that grew up in Brunswick. Throughout his career, he has been featured in a variety of magazines and radio channels in both the United States and the United Kingdom, including BBC Radio 6 Music, Interview Magazine and New Musical Express. Rathborne also opened for the Strokes in 2011 for the South by Southwest music festival.

His career had a unique beginning. As a 17-year-old high school student in Brunswick, he ran a nighttime show on WBOR, and using the radio station’s equipment, Rathborne recorded his first album, suitably named “After Dark.” Rathborne learned how to produce completely through trial and error, forgoing the use of a manual or instruction sheet.

“It’s kind of a cliché, but the limitations of a situation are extremely helpful,” Rathborne said.

Throughout the production of his album, Rathborne ran into some complications, but he found that his creativity in solving them only made the piece more special. For example, when it came time to record “Northern Shore,” the last song on the album, Rathborne was only able to use a small cassette tape that would record just one song. During this process, the cassette broke, and to transport it to the computer, he had to tape the reel back together again.

“It was one of these things where it was like lightning in a bottle,” Rathborne said. “I don’t know how I recorded this.… It was another block [of time] where I was just like, ‘I can’t redo it. I need to save [the song].’”

Rathborne described the labor required to produce music with older technology as invaluable to his artistic journey. He found that the combination of work and luck necessary to record on the cassette made him appreciate the song more.

“Some people complain about that [labor], but I think that it’s kind of a good thing,” Rathborne said. “I use a lot of that old equipment, and sometimes you plug it all together and it sounds bad. It really has to be working really well.”

Despite the difficulties of self-producing, Rathborne still appreciates the creative freedom recording and producing his own album gave him.

“I have some distance from [‘After Dark’] now. I think it sounds really cool,” Rathborne said. “To me, it’s the good side of self-recording and producing.… The years that have passed, [and] I’ve worked with people in engineering or producing. They’re notable people, but [‘After Dark’] is exactly what I wanted it to be.”

The album took a few years to produce, and after its production and Rathborne’s graduation from high school, he moved to New York City. While he worked at a radio station, singer-songwriter Joey Levine came across “After Dark.” Levine gave the record to several musicians and businessmen in the industry, and eventually, the Strokes got a hold of the album, leading to Rathborne opening for the band.

“[‘After Dark’] was kind of like the catalyst of everything,” Rathborne said. “To be honest, I didn’t really try that hard. I really had this feeling when I was doing it [that] I was just doing this for myself.”

Rathborne remains friends with many local names in Brunswick. His music has crossed paths with many of them, from Ben Gatchell—the owner of Dog Bar Jim—to singer-songwriter Aly Spaltro, better known under her stage name Lady Lamb.

“[Spaltro and I] were hanging out a lot as friends in [New York City],” Rathborne said. “Last year or two years ago, we recorded some music together.”

As of now, Rathborne works a variety of artistic jobs, from playing in different bands to recording documentaries to producing a new album, which is set to release this summer. Though Rathborne has not played in Maine since he moved away, he still admires the history of great Maine artists, especially in Brunswick and Bowdoin.

“I like New England,” Rathborne said. “It’s got this weird, old history to it that’s fascinating.… There’s something to that particular campus that is reminiscent of the 30s and 40s, and that look hasn’t changed. There’s some of that feeling like when you’re watching an old movie or something. It retains some of that character.”