WESTBROOK – A rock band from Freeport High School took top honors at the Off-Ramp: Exit 26 concert and awards presentation event Saturday at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center.

The Modest Proposal, a five-piece band made up of Freeport High School students, won the title of “Best Young Band in the State of Maine,” along with a cash prize of $1,000 for each band member.

Also participating in the Off-Ramp competition were Beware of Pedestrians and the Study of Wumbo, both of which have members from Scarborough High School. The Study of Wumbo consists of Scarborough and Kennebunk High students Zach Austin (rhythm guitar, backup vox), Alex Goodwin (lead guitar), Curran Lecomte (vocals), Dylan Lecomte (drums, backup vox) and Stuart Roeltse (bass). Beware of Pedestrians consists of Gorham and Scarborough students Ben Bergeron (lead guitar), Jacob Bergeron (bass), Greg Farrington (drums) and Nate Harvey (lead vocals/rhythm guitar).

The event marks the end of a six-month period of competition among 10 bands, later pared down to eight after two bands became disqualified or dropped out of the competition, according to Louis Philippe, Off-Ramp’s executive producer. The others included Crossed Out, with members from Gorham High School; Midnite Haze, with members from Telstar middle and high schools; Phantom Companion, with members from Falmouth High School and Waynflete School; Stuck In Neutral, with members from Boothbay Region High School; The Resistance, with members from Erskine Academy, Maine Central Institute and Warsaw Middle School; and Where’s Robert? with members from Mount Ararat, Morse and Brunswick high schools.

Philippe is also president of Reindeer Group Inc., a nonprofit geared toward encouraging musical talent in young people. The group has been working for 25 years promoting talent through Rock-Off, an annual event that resembled a more traditional “Battle of the Bands”-style contest.

This year, however, Philippe said he wanted to change the focus. Competitors spent the six months leading up to the event, he said, performing a series of tasks. All bands, Philippe said, had to write a song based on the title, “I Scream At Walls.” After writing the song, Philippe said, the bands had to create and shoot their own music video of their song, and submit it to the competition.

While it was a competition, complete with voting and a cash prize, Philippe said most of all he wanted the competitors to learn something about how to bring their ideas to life, an emphasis on what he called, “process versus product.”

“I think we’ve accomplished that through all the tasks,” he said. “That was the process we were looking for.”

Philippe said more than 200 people came to Saturday’s concert, to cheer on the competitors and hear the results of the contest. Philippe described the Modest Proposal as a “very strong and diverse alternative rock group.”

The band’s front man, Angus McDonald, has appeared, with different band members, in previous Rock-Off competitions, and always did well, Philippe said. This year, he said, McDonald and his band showed real talent throughout the process.

“They were strong on everything right across the board,” he said.

As to the future of the competition, Philippe said, he is already getting to work on next year’s event.

“A lot of the tasks will be looked at,” he said.

While Philippe didn’t know specifically what might change, the contest will undergo some “tweaking” before officially beginning again, toward the end of this summer.

Philippe said the bands in this year’s competition may return in some form, depending on how many band members graduate from high school between now and then.

“In general, many of the bands said, ‘Oh, we’re coming back next year,’” Philippe said. “They just got so much out of it.”

One band that has gotten something out of it is Crossed Out, a band made up of members from Gorham High School. Alex Verrill, the band’s front man, said the band has participated in the Rock-Off competition, but this year took their work to the next level, using the Off-Ramp event as motivation to finish the band’s first-ever music video.

“It opened a lot of doors to us to try new things,” he said.

This fall, Verrill plans to go to the University of Southern Maine, but he and his bandmates will still be in the area, and will continue playing. On Tuesday afternoon, Verrill said, he was in the middle of negotiating a recording contract with Reindeer Records, the record label associated with Philippe’s group.

“We all love music, and we all really work well together,” he said.

The ultimate goal, Philippe said, is to use the format of the competition as a template for a new school curriculum he is working on. Philippe said he wants to raise, through Reindeer Group, a total of $145,000 to hire a professional curriculum developer to help him create a music industry-focused series of class offerings, which he hopes will be accredited by the state so it can be taught statewide in schools.

Gorham High School students, from left, Mike Tracy, Alex Verrill, Justin Getchell and Mike Allen, comprise the band Crossed Out. The members won numerous individual and group awards in the Off-Ramp: Exit 26 statewide high school rock band competition produced by Westbrook-based Reindeer Records. (Staff photo by Jason Scott)