It’s Alaska Folk Festival week in Juneau, which means hundreds of musicians are showcasing their skills on the Main Stage at Centennial Hall and at other venues around town.
On the first night of Folk Fest on Monday, volunteers scrambled to get ready and shared what it takes to make the festival run.
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It’s Alaska Folk Festival President Josh Fortenbery’s first time in the role. He said he’s excited for the music to get underway.
“It’s really hard to think big picture, because you are doing so many little tasks, and all of a sudden the festival is just here,” he said. “But it’s like, this train that just runs away whether you’re ready for it or not, and all the volunteers show up, and it just tends to happen.”
Nearby, Jon Heifetz was trying to get into the merch store, as people lined up. He helped run that shift – selling t-shirts, hoodies and posters featuring a design by artist Savannah LeCornu – on its busiest night.
“A lot of the stuff comes off the shelf,” he said. “So if you want stuff, come down here the first or second day, because last year they ran out.”
His plan to manage the rush was simple.
“I’m just gonna do what I’m told,” he said. “I’m a helper.”
Heifetz is also a festival regular.
“I’ve been coming to the festival since probably ‘83, ‘84 when I first moved to Juneau,” he said.
But this year, he planned to pace himself.
“As everybody says, it’s a marathon,” Heifetz said. “I always got to remember ‘Don’t get burned out by Wednesday or Thursday night.”
“Classic mistake,” chimed in musician Annie Bartholomew.
Just after 6 p.m., the security gate guarding the merch rolled up and the line stayed civil as people moved in to get their t-shirts and hoodies.
Inside the auditorium and in front of rows of empty seats that would soon fill up, the stage crew and the night’s emcee, Grace Elliott, went over plans for the transitions between the sets.
Elliott has emceed at Folk Fest 19 times, but she’s still amazed at how the festival operates.
“I was just saying how remarkable this whole thing is,” she said. “On paper, it should not even work. It’s a free festival. It’s been going for over half a century. There’s so much joy, there’s so much willingness to show up and volunteer.”
Ben Hoffman signed up to volunteer with the stage crew when he was applying to play at the festival. The stage crew is in charge of setting up the equipment for each of the many acts. At 6:15 p.m., he said he was as ready as he was going to be for the festival to start.
“I think it’ll be kind of fun,” he said. “I like messing with microphones.”
He’s a part of the Juneau Sacred Harp group scheduled to play on the main stage Saturday. It’s his first time performing and volunteering.
“So we’ll see if it all comes together or if it all falls apart,” he said.
Luckily for Hoffman, and the 15 acts that performed on Monday, it all came together.
Hours later, at 10 p.m., as the last act took the stage, Hoffman was tired. He spoke quietly, almost whispered, because he didn’t want to be heard by the audience.
“It was a little bit overwhelming at first, but at the end, we could just kind of look at the sheet for a couple seconds before and know what to do,” he said. “Whereas at the beginning we had to have a 10 minute meeting to move, like, two microphones.”
Now that he knows what stage crew is like, he joked that he’ll expect more from them during his performance later this week.
“I’ll be tougher on the stage crew,” Hoffman said. “They’re no longer invisible to me.”
You can hear live broadcasts of main stage performances every night this week on KRNN 102.7 and 103.1 FM and ktoo.org/folkfest.
