A Trip to the 50th Alaska Folk Festival

“How’s your folk fest?” people ask each other on the street. Nobody doesn’t know what you mean.

Community is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It doesn’t bother me. Community means lots of things. They can be small or big, tight or loose, in person or digital, and live on a million other spectrums. The Alaska Folk Festival, which I’m freshly back from, is dripping with community that doesn’t fit neatly onto these spectrums. It’s all ages, spans many mediums, and touches nearly every structure in town in some way. The Venn diagram of sub communities is a massive lattice.

Folk fest takes over the city of Juneau. Juneau is just 30,000 people nestled into the mountains-meet-the-sea grandeur of Southeast Alaska, built on beds of rock extracted from mines. Accessible only by plane or boat, the city feels cozy already. Even without Folk Fest, Juneau is quilted with community you can feel.

The MC from last night? Singing lead in a band the next. The guitar player you sat with yesterday? Playing fiddle in a different jam the next afternoon. The bartender who poured the special Czech lager they brewed just for folk fest? You see him, eyes glazed over, spilling out of the bar down the street after a metal band tore through a late night set. The guy who belted out Irish tunes you played with a few days ago? You run into him at lunch later and learn about his family on Kodiak. The MC from the next night? She’s owns the community theater and leads 13- piece band with a line around the block to get in.

By the time I was leaving, I recognized half the faces on every sidewalk and every room I walked into.

Community? Understatement.

Monday

I flew in on Monday, technically the first day of the festival. It was in the evening though, so things would have to folking wait. I was staying at my friend Justin’s, who has been president and general manager of KTOO, the local public media group. They do radio, TV, web news, social media, podcasts, etc., and were quite involved with Folk Fest. Not the least of which was live streaming every main stage performance the entire 6-day run.

I’m extremely pissed, to say the least, at Trump and his malicious gang of shitlords for all sorts of reasons, but the most recent is that this abrupt halting of federal funds (and rescinding already allocated funds) for public media is of immediate harm to KTOO and all public media like it. Boooooooo.

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As you leave the secure area at the airport there is a giant polar bear in a glass case, standing on two legs looking menacing. Rest assured, there are no polar bears in Juneau (although the other colors are available). A small plaque in the case reads:

ADDITIONAL DISPLAYS 
THROUGHOUT TERMINAL

Thanks, plaque. I’ll be on the lookout for those additional displays throughout terminal.

Tuesday

Folk Fest ramps up throughout the week so Tuesday is on the slower side, especially the mornings. Fortunately, I like my job. Laptop-ing, even on “vacation”, is of pleasure to me anywhere. Walking around Juneau and enjoying the coffeeshops and landscape is of extreme pleasure.

Justin and I grabbed a pastry and coffee at Coppa before he headed off to work and I spent my morning bopping around doing my thing.

Coppa is probably the nicest coffeeshop in town, but I found Sacred Grounds (lol) an easy second place. It’s native-owned and 100% staffed by tribal members. And it sells very badass merch that doesn’t tiptoe around what they want.

By early afternoon I made it over to Devil’s Club, which I already knew was my favorite brewery (named after the also badass super spiky plant that grows wild around Juneau). I was very pleased to see that they sectioned off an area just for open jams the entire week. ❤️

I sat there and jammed with musicians that came in and out for some 6 odd hours that first day and my little heart grew three sizes.

I’m sure I played with 20 different musicians that day. The Devil’s Club jams ended up being my favorite as they tended to be more intimate and varied. I probably played somewhat meaningfully with ~50 musicians throughout the week and surely 100’s in larger group jams and pop ins.

When Justin got off work we hit The Hangar for dinner, with a nice bar that looks directly out over the bay. It feels a bit touristy, but gets bonus points for being open year round, a distinction many downtown spots don’t get. I got the Pickled Rick, a chicken sandwich marinated in pickle brine, which I heartily recommend.

A thing to know about Juneau is that it’s a cruise ship port during the summer-ish months. An astonishing 1.68 million visitors last year, a 35-to-1 ratio to locals, at least. The very first ship of the year was due in later this week, so that news felt palpable all week. Some pushback, in the form of a “Ship-Free Saturday” initiative, was recently voted down, but was being rekindled in the form of visitor caps and other more basic restrictions. Tourism certainly helps support the town, but the yin yang is only achieved if there is some pushback against Big Tourism and the almighty dollar.

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We went over to Centennial Hall after dinner, the main building with much of the official programming including the main stage of bands. We caught a number of bands, most notably The Wool Pullers, a duet that was a two-guitar two-voice powerhouse.

This recording on Apple Music is good but doesn’t hold a candle to the live performance I saw.

On the drive home last night (back to “The Valley”, where a good chunk of the people of Juneau actually live) we listened to the rest of the bands on the radio — thanks, again, to KTOO. We flipped on the radio at home as well, and listened to a woman (Jane Roodenburg?) play an absolute banger diss track about a lady named Delores. She was like the Kendrick Lamar of mandolins. We laughed our asses off. I’ll likely never hear that song again and it reminds me I like a life full of beautiful fleeting moments.

Wednesday

I had largely the same morning all over again. I drove myself into town though as Justin biked in through the cold, rain, and wind. If you don’t buck up and just do things despite the weather in Juneau you’re going to be waiting a long time and, I’d worry, feel awfully claustrophobic. I overheard a man use that word on the plane ride home, who said he used to live in Juneau, but you couldn’t pay him to move back.

You could feel the town picking up a bit on Wednesday. I sat at Heritage coffee for a bit (fine… but didn’t feel as cared for as the other coffeeshops). I saw people I played with the day before. I saw musicians from the stage. I overheard musicians I hadn’t seen talking about how their sets went. I drank coffee.

By noon, I was itching to get back to Devil’s Club for another day of jamming. And jamming I did. Some of the same faces, but mostly new players! What a pleasure. There were loud Irish tunes. There were old time fiddle tunes. There were country B-sides. There were originals.

Another musician holding down the fort was Chaz from Dude Mountain on the double bass. Dude Mountain comes up from Ketchikan and are an absolute stable and favorite band in SE Alaska, deservedly so. Chaz brought an Oud as well, which I’d never seen before. He played a bunch of interesting stuff on it, notably an (Armenian?) lullaby. There were no chord changes. It was sort of a loose melody in C and, in a sort of free-jazz style, musicians vamped and played with the melody. Once we played it with a detour to C minor then back. That’s the kind of unusual mind-opening experience I treasure at events like this.

I like to think I have an open mind, which is reinforced in part because when I behave open mindedly, I get to have new experiences, which feel new and interesting and different, which makes me want to be even more open minded.

Another thing about jams is that they can be something of an emotional ocean. By and large, they are one of my favorite things to do in the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s pure elation. Play well on a song, feel great. Play poorly, feel embarrassed. Pick a perfect song to call, feel smart and cool. Can’t think of one and have to pass, feel like a dork noob. Sit in the center and feel foundational to the jam, welcoming others and making space, feel on top of the world. Stand on the edges of a jam, feeling like you’re just adding noise, feel down and useless. C’est la vie.

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We had a plan Wednesday night. Over at The Alaskan (probably the most iconic and awesome of all the Juneau bars) there were two bands band to back we wanted to see.

But first: we had a couple cocktails at The Triangle (perhaps our most home-base-y Bar) and dinner at The Imperial (Alaska’s oldest bar, they say). There is no Taco Bell in Juneau (whoa yikes right) but The Imperial does a decent impression of it, including a literal Crunch Wrap Supreme.

We skipped the folk this night instead opting for seeing The Psychotics, a very proper punk band that spawned a decent little mosh pit. A cute couple that looked 23 year old versions of Tom Green and Marisa Tomei hooked arms and spiraled around each other frantically. We sat at the same table and she told a joke about getting peed on that made me blush.

The band morphed into The Bards of Mendenhall, a rather epic metal band. I say morphed because both of those bands featured Alex Kotlarsz of The Wool Pullers, which is impressive musical range to say the least. The Bards of Mendenhall is such a perfect name (Mendenhall being the name of the famous glacier in town) and they nailed it with a recorded spoken word introduction of the band from, literally, Gandalf. Folking metal man.

We pretty much stumbled out of The Alaskan that night. One of those nights where it’s only like 10:30pm but feels like 1:00am.

I ran into my friend Wilbur (from Bend!) the next morning and he said they got a group of people to play that night on stage at The Alaskan after the Bards. It felt surreal to me.

Thursday

Thursday was another “work” day where I again spent the morning coffee-shopping and wandering, the found my way to Devil’s Club by early afternoon. Sat there all day just playing my little fingers off.

This time after the shift there, we hit The Narrows for a cocktail. It had a fancy vibe in there, like you temporarily are transported to Seattle. The bartender had recently won a local award for her cocktail “Smoke Break”, a mezcal-ladden adventure, so we tried that and then headed over to Centennial Hall for more main stage shows.

The big visiting artist this year (did I mention it was the 50th year? That was kind of a big deal) was Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell. I’m a fan of both and was cool to see them playing together. I was getting awfully sleepy though as we skipped dinner and it had been some long ass days, so we dipped out for food.

We ended up at Pel’meni, a little downtown restaurant that literally sells one thing: Russian Dumplings. Potato or Beef. There are drinks in the fridge. That’s it. I read the owner thinks part of their success (they’ve even expanded to Seattle) is that they never advertise. Word of mouth only. I absolutely loved the dumplings, particularly that they provided a vinegar dip that paired well, and it ended up being the perfect ending of the evening. We walked past a couple of bars, saw they were packed, and yawned our way back home.

Friday

Friday way a day for some fresh air and exploration. A morning hike out to Boyscout Beach was fun for friend and canine alike.

We stopped at Squirez on the way back down. This was way up in Auke Bay away from any Folk Fest bustle. A largely empty bar with a nice view of the bay. It was slow enough the bartender had a step ladder out and was vacuuming the dust out the fans. Then a couple of dudes came in and sat by us at the bar and one of them ripped a healthy fart. Killer ambiance, in other words. We did learn a couple of important facts while there:

1. The tapper for Alaskan Brewing Co’s big new beer, Wildness, looks like a vibrator.
2. TouchTunes, the phone app that controls jukeboxes across North America, does not require that you are physically at the bar to play songs there. Meaning you can, and should, play Wheels on the Bus at random bars.

We popped downtown after that and ended up bellied up at the Triangle for a while. Then we caught some band at The Alaskan, said hi at Imperial, then hit up The Crystal Saloon for a band we couldn’t possibly resist the name of: Fear Boner. It ended up being a fledgling all-female punk band (they read the lyrics from songs printed out on computer paper on a music stand), but they were actually kind of awesome and got something going on. We joked that maybe we were too scared to go and it made us aroused.

I couldn’t resist an Indian food dinner at Spice. It was great, but we were wiped out and headed home after that.

Saturday

There was a scheduled old-time jam at Almaga Distillery the next morning that this clawhammer dude was contractually obligated to go to. It was a bit packed, but I got a great seat early on and it ended up being great, as I felt like I was helping give the jam good energy. Somehow I was ready for cocktails at like 10:30am, and they were pouring this creamy orange pushpop cocktail thing (with Gin, somehow) and it was perfect.

We walked over to the Triangle after that and there were some eager bluegrass musicians there ready to jam so I did that for a bit. Another guy came in who recognized the fiddler and did a “Joe? Fiddlin’ Joe? Fiddlin’ Joe Perkins?” thing like Ned Ryerson lol. I do love bluegrass sometimes but I had so much old-time on my brain and this was so hard-drivin’ grass I ultimately couldn’t keep up.

I was on my own for the afternoon and kinda aimlessly wandered trying to find more jams and really was striking out. I learned later there was good jams at The Driftwood during that time, but even if I knew that then, it’s just a motel, so I would have had to been invited to some room anyway. It ended up being kind of a boring afternoon so I sadwatched some bands at the main stage. They book the rather small-fry stuff on weekend daytime slots, it seems. I watched a guy dressed up like a medieval serf play a solo mandolin show singing songs about the unrequited love of a goblin. It sounds better than it was.

But: we had a plan for the early evening.

We were invited to a Canadian Tuxedo party (uh, lots of denim) over on Douglas Island. I brought a denim shirt and jeans, but felt we could do better. We swung into a St. Vincent De Paul and I bought some children jeans which I then tried to make a shoddy denim neck tie out of. When that failed (shocking?), I went for a Rambo-style denim headband which: worked. A friend of Justin’s walked by as I was crafting it on the hood of the car, and after telling her my plan ask me “And you felt that was intuitive?”. “Yes”, I answered.

The party it was absolutely jam packed. It was difficult to even move around in. My brain wanted to bail at first, but I’m sure glad we didn’t because we ended up talking with a bunch of fun people and finding a great place to stand to watch the bands. The bands were absolutely great. A little old time from The White Hots (or… some configuration of local old time that includes Annie Bartholomew) . Then there was this kinda cajun/jug/bluesy/old-timey group with amazing harmonies and a fun tenor banjo which sounded like an 1920’s radio broadcast or something. Then Dude Mountain played — and like I mentioned before are massively popular around here and did great in this trimmed down acoustic setting.

A little 375ml bottle of cheap Canadian whiskey in my shirt pocket ended up being a better ice breaker and party trick than my sweet headband.

We rolled over to Island Pub for dinner after that, an extremely decent pizza bar.

Our goal was to go see Collette Costa’s band, the MC from Tuesday night, amazingly named High Costa Living at Red Dog Saloon. But the line was massive to get in and it just wasn’t happening. Another classic evening with a Triangle nightcap and saunter back home.

Sunday

Slow start on Sunday morning, appropriately. Justin had some important life errands to do which I joined him on, then we ended up at Sandbar for lunch. I’m not a seafood guy pretty much at all, but Sandbar is known for their fried Halibut fish & chips so we did that and I thought it was excellent. I didn’t even think I liked tartar sauce really, but it all worked on me. I’d get it again.

We bounced around downtown after that, but again a perfect plan formed.

We were invited to a thing they call the Bourbon Bash. We didn’t need tickets or anything, and they were a good number of people there (at the Yacht Club. I cannot spell that damn word without looking it up for the life of me. Yaht. Yajhct. Yahte. Jhakt.) But it felt kinda secret. Sorry if I’m spoiling it. Felt like if you know you know kinda thing where invites are only tell your cool friends. There is a theme to the party and it was Cosmic Truck Stop. I think people took it to mean kinda rustic old school aliens. It was pretty loose, but the last minute timing meant no costumes for us and we were definitely in the minority.

Like everything else Folk Fest, there was food and drinkin’ and jams. A+. Would food and drinkin’ and jams again.

Toward the end of the party, the jams stopped, and we were sheep herded into a sort of conga chute. Certain people danced their way down the tunnel carrying… handmade weird spaceman hats? Everyone had to go out and walk around the building. Then there was a sort of awards ceremony with much hooting and hollering and naming people who were to wear the weird spaceman hats.

Then a Loving Cup was also awarded for some reason (and the Rolling Stones song lodged itself in my head. GIMME LITTLE DRINK.) Nothing was explained. Again I think it was an if you know you know thing and I definitely didn’t know. But I certainly soaked up the experience.

Monday

Last full day in Juneau!

We drove out to the northern edge of Douglas island to walk the beach out there. A beautiful walk through the swampy woods out to the beach, only made possible by lots of wood plank walkways.

There is a sort of official non-official jam at the Imperial on Monday. This is somehow just known. They put on a cool slideshow of images from folk fest on the TVs and jams just fill the space. I think at peak there were four jams at once, which it’s big enough to support, but a little rough sounding if you’re standing in the middle. I bounced around in them having varied luck in each. In one last jam I had a good little run and decided to call that done. Go out on a high note probably literally.

A little farewell stop-in at a couple of joints, then a drive back to the valley for dinner at McGivney’s and an early turn-in for the early flight the next morning.

Tuesday

Home again. Until next time! Happy folk fest!