Annie Bartholomew, KTOO

Dan Kirkwood and his Juneau band will perform songs off his third major release at this year’s Alaska Folk Festival.

His five-track EP “All Lovers, Animals” invites the listener in with bright guitars and alt-country hooks. His opening track, “On Fire,” explores a new confidence and a romantic side to Kirkwood’s songwriting. 

“Songs that are about people as animals, people as lovers, lovers as animals and the common themes that run through all of that life,” Kirkwood said. “The experiences that people have in their romantic relationships are at one moment animal and at one moment something incredibly higher and I don’t think there is any difference between the two.”

It’s a stark contrast to his dark and scenic 2014 album “Space Country,” that he said was written after a hard year.

The first two tracks of the new album were recorded in New York with his college buddy and professional musician Tommy Siegel who tours with the indie-pop band Jukebox the Ghost.

“Touch wood, every time we’ve gotten together one or two great things have happened,” said Kirkwood. 

Beginning with only a guitar riff and vocal melody from Kirkwood, they recorded the song “Manhattan, Montana” in just under a day in Siegel’s Brooklyn apartment. The song has a slinky, ‘70s vibe inspired by bands like Dire Straits and Steely Dan, and features banjo, vibraphone, backwards guitar loops and several acoustic guitars.

“We just threw the kitchen sink at it and hoped for the best,” Seigel said.

Siegel said they push each other and as a producer, he’s tasked with interpreting Kirkwood’s muse on the fly.

“He just kept saying like, ‘What if it sounded like wind on the prairie but through a tremolo effect and if there was a spooky organ?’ and I said, ‘OK, let’s try it.’ So I started downloading wind samples online and playing around with it,” Siegel said.

Even though he lives in New York, Siegel has been a great songwriting colleague, Kirkwood said. They send each other song samples on their phones.

“We have shared songs with each other that (we) both think are great songs. I’ve shared trash with Tommy, just trash songs and he’s been very supportive,” Kirkwood said. “He is far and away better at this than I am, and it is so cool to be doing anything with someone who is really good at it, in that they make you better at it. They bring out the best in you.”

The collection of songs featured on “All Lovers, Animals” combine Siegel’s pop sensibilities with the organic sounds of Kirkwood’s Juneau band, Goldwing. Local musicians Dan Desloover and Ben Higdon who play in Goldwing contribute bass and lead guitar on the tracks “Nomad” and “The Road Home.”

Kirkwood said there’s an element to Goldwing that will always be jazzier because of drummer Clay Good, sneakier because of guitarist Ben Higdon, and moody and melodic because of bassist Dan Desloover. Now with the addition of Juneau musician Steve Nelson on keyboards, Kirkwood expects the songs to take an even more dramatic turn for Folk Fest.

Goldwing plays at 10 p.m. Thursday at Centennial Hall and at 4 p.m Saturday at the Alaskan Bar for KXLL’s Showcase and Day Party. For a live stream, festival schedule and more coverage, visit our Folk Fest page here. 

The 42nd Alaska Folk Festival is underway in Juneau this week. The lineup has always been diverse, but this year, one band’s lead singer says she doesn’t even know what folk music is.

It’s rehearsal night at Alaska Music One, a music retailer in the valley. Cadence Ward is the 9-year-old front woman for 3, 2, 1 …, which includes Nicole Adams, 13, on keyboard and guitar, William Smoker, 14, on bass, Morgan Burd, 14, on lead guitar and Teilhard Buzzell, 14, on drums.

The band’s name comes from there being three boys, two girls and one band.

“I am kind of nervous ’cause it’s a big deal, and I remember saying when I was little, ‘I wanna be up there, and now my dream is coming true,” Cadence says of the band’s upcoming debut performance.

They may sound like just another teen garage band, but this group has help from local musicians Ward F. Ward and Paul McDermott. They direct the School of Rock Sessions and mentor the band, which was founded two years ago.

The band’s changed over time, and now has a fresh new guitar player and Cadence on lead vocals.

The kids’ ages and musical abilities vary. They rehearse every Saturday night as part of the program. Ward and McDermott used to only teach private lessons before starting Rock Camp and the School of Rock Sessions.

These kids are definitely rock and rollers. Nicole is into Journey and Styx, but Morgan favors Ed Sheeran and Slipknot. Teilhard digs Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Cadence’s influences are Taylor Swift and The Beatles.

“I don’t really know what folk music is,” Cadence says.

Bass player William goes for AC/DC and Metallica.

“It’s a language (William) understands,” says William’s dad, Andy Smoker. “He started out with the Juneau Youth Choir, and playing in the band at Harborview and Dzantik’i Heeni. But, of course, that’s school band — this is rock and roll.”

Smoker says the experience has been a labor of love for the adults.

“Paul and Ward have just been wonderful to these kids,” Smoker says. “They’ve really given them the instruction and support. I think it’s very inspirational.”

Ward’s background is in behavioral health and counseling, and he brings some of that perspective to the School of Rock.

“As a musician, what you’re really trying to create is memorable experiences for people,” Ward says. “That means you just accept people where they are and you assess their strengths and appreciate them for who they are — strengths and weaknesses. You work with their strengths and help them develop to the best they can be.”

But McDermott says it’s easy to be patient with his students.

“We’ve all made mistakes as musicians; we’ve all come from the same level they’ve come and so you can look back and see where you’ve been and you’ve progressed,” McDermott says. “I see them as just evolving into better musicians and with our help we can kind of guide them through so they don’t make the same mistakes we did.”

For Ward and McDermott, success just means getting out there — and leaving it all on the Centennial Hall stage.

As the practice goes on, some songs are strong — and some are becoming strong.

The group plays at 8:45 p.m. at Centennial Hall on Tuesday of Folk Fest.

It’s a rainy Saturday morning and Mercedes Muñoz is working over a crackling fire pit outside her Starr Hill home.

“I cut a bunch of 4-by-4 cubes and right now I’m torching them, putting them over a fire,” she says. “And then I’m going to go back and sand them down, get them all polished up and then cut a keyhole mount in the back so that each tumbler will have its own little pedestal to sit on, on the wall. It ended up being maybe just as big of a project as making the work.”

She mounts the custom blocks all over the gallery walls of The Canvas. There’s one to display each of her tumblers, bowls, mugs and tea pots. Over the past few months, she’s created more than 140 functional ceramics for her show “Good Continuation” at The Canvas, which opens tonight. It’s her second professional show after almost a year as the ceramics studio manager.

The entire project is four months in the making. It’s the product of evenings, lunch breaks and weekends throwing, firing, glazing and creating her intricate designs.

Her pottery features a technique called Mishima that allows her to etch fine dark lines onto the surface of her porcelain pieces, marrying her background in drawing and illustration with organic three-dimensional forms. The lines tangle and twist into repetitive geometric patterns, which break up her creamy pastel glazes. Metallic gold accents punctuate the designs.

One was inspired by her grandmother, the late Alaskan artist Rie Muñoz.

“On this teapot, I have a bit of cross-hatching that’s actually a technique that Rie used. If you look at the backgrounds of a lot of landscapes she had watercolor washes, but underneath it, she had pen drawings, and they had this exact cross-hatching technique,” she says.

Her exhibition isn’t the only deadline she’s working toward. She’s also making 90 handcrafted plates that The Canvas is giving to guests at its annual fundraising dinner.

Last year, Brandon Howard was sweating over the plates when he was in Mercedes’s role.

“Just to put this in perspective, each plate requires 6 pounds of clay to start with. That’s 500 pounds of clay that Mercedes manhandled into plates. And if you’ve ever meet Mercedes Muñoz she’s not this big, buff lady. She’s slight but she’s a powerhouse. She was in there and she was cranking out 25 plates a day like it was nothing,” said Howard.

Muñoz made the plates with a little help on the sepia-toned design reproduced on each one.

“The artist is Joanne Sam and she did a beautiful image of a bunch of little figures and they have these really expressive eyebrows and eyes, big smiles and it just covers the entire center of the plate,” says Muñoz.

She also teaches ceramics to adults with developmental disabilities, community wheel-throwing classes and home school students.

Brandon Howard, who is now the artistic coordinator at The Canvas, says she’s an amazing teacher.

“People learn a lot and they learn quickly taking a class from Mercedes. Those organizational skills lend themselves really well when it comes to handing out information in a clear, succinct way to her students,” Howard says.

Muñoz says her grandmother encouraged and inspired her to pursue the arts.

“From when I was a little kid and making horrible little drawings and she acted like it was the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. I see a lot of people who say that they can’t create anything. ‘Oh I can’t draw, I can’t paint, I can’t do this,’ and I think that’s a shame and I feel like that starts when kids are young and don’t have the encouragement. So that’s something I always try to do whether it’s adults I’m teaching or kids, I want everybody to feel like they can create, because they can. It’s just practice.”

With more than 200 new pieces, the practice shows.

As many of us sought to honor David Bowie‘s passing through Facebook posts, photographs and a very impromptu memorial at The Taqueria this afternoon, a group of folks from Juneau and Seattle had already reimagined one of our favorite singles.

Back in May, Alaska Robotics‘ Pat Race, Molly Lewis, Marian Call, and Seth Boyer were already working on a tribute,  composing a parody of the 1969 classic “Space Oddity” using only the 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language. But they didn’t stop there. The group filmed shot-for-shot a music video inspired by the original.

The video made internet rounds and eventually reached the man himself, earning a shout out on Bowie’s personal website.

Alaska Robotics will showcase some of Juneau’s youngest artists Friday at its 4th Annual Student Show of the Comic Arts. The gallery invites K-12 students to submit original comic art for display at their Front Street location.

If you were to browse through the comics of the Alaska Robotics Gallery shelves, you could expect to find more than just Marvel superheroes or Sunday funnies. The small store in downtown Juneau carries everything from the classic graphic novel series The Watchmen to an illustrated biography of Andre the Giant.

The diversity of the gallery’s stock reflects its clientele.

“I don’t’ think comics are just for kids.”

“Visual storytelling goes back to people drawing on the walls of caves,” says Alaska Robotics owner Pat Race. “Film is not that different from comics, and there are a lot of adults who read comics.”

The student show is an opportunity for young artists to see their work hung in a professional gallery space. They’ll be treated like professionals; they get to sell their pieces and the gallery will even take a small fee like it would from any other artist they host.

“It’s kind of an introduction to art as commerce,” Race said. “I really like the idea of a kid doing a drawing and being able to sell it and make a few bucks and realizing that, ‘I could do that for a living if I got better at it.’ Art has value and this is a way to affirm that.”

Race says “comic arts” is open to interpretation. It can mean anything from multipanel comic strips to Japanese Manga and anime fan art.

“The way kids can draw is so free of inhibition; it allows a lot of earnest personality to come through and you get to see what it is they’re thinking and feeling. A lot of their raw emotion translates into their lines. You can learn a lot about someone by what they draw.”

Each year the gallery receives dozens of submissions, with some artists working through Christmas break in anticipation of the show. I visited 13-year-old artist Ambrose Bucy who showed me some of his latest work and past entries in the show.

“That one over there, that’s an apocalypse. It was a story that one of my friends was thinking up about robots invading the world. (How does it end?) We don’t know yet,” said Bucy.

Bucy’s artwork is full of original creatures and demons, with clean penned lines and intricate graphite shading that he says sometimes carries onto his homework. His favorite tool is a simple Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil he modifies by sharpening or dulling down.

“I really get inspired by fiction stories and adventure (like) Kazu Kibuishi. I really like his books Amulet and Copper. There’s a lot of character in those stories and the illustrations are amazing,” said Bucy.

This spring Ambrose will get to meet Kibuishi when he comes to Juneau for Alaska Robotics Mini-Con, a brand-new comic convention and artist camp. The event will bring more than a dozen artists, musicians and creators to Juneau, including Ryan North, one of the writers behind the popular Adventure Time comics and television series.

Alaska Robotics is accepting ready-to-hang submissions until 6 p.m. Wednesday. For more information on the events, visit Alaska Robotics.com or stop by their gallery.