Juneau Chilkat weaver, performing artist and fashion designer Lily Hope performs “One Square Inch in Chilkat Weaving” as part of the Red Carpet Celebration Sessions, a video series featuring Alaska Native artists filmed during Celebration 2018 in Juneau.
U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith is making a stop in Juneau on Wednesday. It’s part of a national tour that’s bringing her to rural communities in Alaska, South Dakota, Maine and Louisiana.
She’s excited to take poetry to parts of the country where literary festivals don’t always go.
Smith won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poetry called “Life on Mars.” Here she is reading from her poem “The Weather in Space.”
Lead vocalist Alejandro Chavarria of the band Revilla performs at the KXLL Showcase during the 2018 Alaska Folk Festival at the Hangar Ballroom. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Alex Nelson of Juneau performs with Amish Robots, now known as Revilla, at the KXLL Showcase during the 2018 Alaska Folk Festival at the Hangar Ballroom. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Drummer Clae Good plays drums for a Juneau set with the Amish Robots, now known as Revilla at the KXLL Showcase during the 2018 Alaska Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Guitarist and songwriter Patrick Troll headlines the 2018 KXLL Showcase with the Amish Robots during the Alaska Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Amish Robots is a band with Southeast Alaska roots.
After their breakout set at this year’s Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau, they headlined a KXLL Showcase concert filling the Hangar Ballroom to capacity.
Now the band’s got a new EP and name change inspired by its members’ hometown of Ketchikan.
Hear guitarist and songwriter Patrick Troll talk about the band’s formation and latest release as Revilla:
Seattle’s Amish Robots began as Ketchikan teenagers Patrick Troll and Alejandro Chavarria’s musical duo.
The pair played under the names Baby Shower and Really Cool Guys before settling on Amish Robots.
After moving to Seattle and welcoming Juneau musician Alex Nelson into the fold, Troll said the group outgrew the Amish Robots sound.
“I’m kind of the sensitive one about the name change because I was the one who came up with Amish Robots,” Troll said. “Of course, once we changed it, it came out of the woodwork that people didn’t like the name Amish Robots — or not that they didn’t like it, they just thought it was too much of a gimmick.”
Their new name “Revilla” is inspired by Revillagigedo Island where Ketchikan is located on the Alexander Archipelago.
Their four-track EP is an homage to the trio’s first Alaska Folk Festival performance together in 2007, when they performed together as The North Sea.
Though based in Seattle, Revilla hasn’t forgotten their Southeast Alaska roots, calling on visual artist Matt Hamilton to create the group’s album artwork.
Listen to the North Sea EP and hear Patrick Troll Friday nights on KXLL as DJALTERNATIVE on his electronic music program Burger Church.
Cassie Parker collects spruce tips along the Gustavus beaches with her family on May 31, 2018. They pick as a group for bear safety. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Each spring in southeast Alaska the Sitka spruce tip harvest happens suddenly and only lasts about a week. With the flavor’s growing popularity and short harvest season, Alaska businesses have come to rely on a small town commercial operation to meet the growing demand.
On a blustery May afternoon, Molly Kelly and her family spread out along the Gustavus treeline near its sandy beaches. They’re picking spruce tips, the bright green nubs that grow on the branches of the coniferous Sitka spruce. The harvest has become an annual tradition in Gustavus that locals refer to as “spruce tipping.”
Molly Kelly collects a handful of spruce tips in Gustavus on May 31. This year pickers were paid $3 per pound of spruce tips. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
With a bucket hung around her neck, Kelly grips the branch with a gloved hand and slowly drags down the limb, pulling away a handful of spruce tips. Kelly and her sister Cassie Parker say it can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to collect a pound, depending on energy level and kid interruptions.
“I have not picked many at all, maybe 50 pounds,” said Kelly.
Parker says she’s only got maybe 75 pounds, nothing compared to their nephew Caleb who is nowhere in sight. He’s already already amassed a thousand pounds picking spruce tips both day and night.
Codi Kelly shows her bucket of spruce tips collected for Pep’s Packing on May 31, 2018. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
The Gustavus “spruce tipping” season all started back in 2000, when the Alaskan Brewing Company approached the family owned fish processing plant Pep’s Packing to provide the spruce tips.
The Juneau brewery’s inaugural order of 500 pounds eventually became their seasonal Winter Ale, an English Old Ale style honoring the history of Captain James Cook who brewed spruce beer on his voyages to prevent scurvy.
At Pep’s Packing, families unload garbage bags full of spruce tips into special vacuum sealing bags that owner Pep Scott weighs and records.
“One of the families that has been picking from us from the very beginning now has three generations that’s been picking and now they have this rivalry where grandpa tries to pick more than his son,” said Pep.
She says around 50 people partake in the annual harvest, from small children to their oldest picker at 75 years old who used his past earnings to go to Mexico to have dental work.
“Another kid bought a lawn mower a couple years ago with his spruce tip money and then he mowed lawns the rest of the summer,” said John Scott.
With the season beginning right after the school year gets out, the Scotts believe it brings an economic boost to the town.
Because of a cold spring, this year’s spruce tipping season ran extra long, allowing that nephew, Caleb Warren, to collect more than 3,000 pounds in two weeks at this year’s price of $3 a pound. He was this season’s top picker.
After weighing, the spruce tips are packed in 50-pound fish boxes stored in the freezer. When they have enough to fill orders, Pep’s Packing charters a Cessna aircraft to move the product to destinations around Southeast.
Owners Pep and John Scott weigh spruce tips at Pep’s packing in Gustavus on May 31, 2018. The family owned fish processing plant provides spruce tips to buyers across southeast Alaska and the Lower 48. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Pep’s largest customer is still the Alaskan Brewing Company, but the spruce tips go to smaller outfits like Coppa ice cream in Juneau, and as far as Rogue Ales in Oregon.
Amalga Distillery co-owner Maura Selenak uses spruce tips in syrups, spruce tip soda and Juneauper gin on July 13, 2018. She says the business has been using spruce tips from Pep’s Packing since it opened a little over a year ago. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
In Juneau, Amalga Distillery owner Maura Selenak says they’ve relied on Pep’s packing to provide the spruce tips for their syrups, spruce tip soda, and small-batch Juneauper gin that’s distributed across the state. She says the spruce tip taste is indescribable until you’ve tried it.
“People come in from out of town and they’re expecting a piney flavor, and it’s actually more of a bubble gum sweetness,” said Selenak. “A lot of times people will come in and say this gin tastes like Southeast Alaska or it tastes like the rainforest.”
The distillery could buy ingredients from growers in the Lower 48, but for them it’s a source of pride knowing their product was hand-foraged by Alaskans, creating economic opportunity in rural communities, and not to mention, a taste of Southeast in every glass.
Patrick Troll of the Amish Robots performs Friday at The KXLL Showcase happening at the Hangar Ballroom at 8:00. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Sergei Morosan plays Friday night at the Alaskan with the North Country Cajun Club. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
(Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Caleb and Reeb of the Foghorn String Band perform Thursday at the Rendezvous during the 2018 Alaska Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
It’s not hard to find something to do during the Alaska Folk Festival. Once again, your friends at KTOO tried to make it easy and list the downtown evening venue schedules all in one place. As these things go, we’ll be updating the schedule daily with changes, new events and start times as we learn more.
Taylor Vidic is hosting the “Hump Day Listening Room” at the Gold Town Nickelodeon Wednesday night of Folk Fest. Cameron Brockett and Taylor Vidic of The Quaintrelles perform their song “Rolling Stone” live at the Alaskan Hotel during the 2017 Alaska Folk Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Wednesday
Alaskan Hotel and Bar – Open Mic sign up at 9:00 p.m.
The Bowties perform Thursday night at the Red Dog Saloon at 9:30. Billy Moore and Yoseff Tucker perform a Red Carpet Concert at the Alaskan Hotel during the 2016 Alaska Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Thursday
Alaskan Hotel and Bar – Open Mic sign up at 9:00 p.m.
Red Dog Saloon – Alaska Bluegrass and The Bow Ties at 9:30 p.m.
Back in Juneau after moving to Wisconsin, guitarist Dara Rilatos performs at the Rendezvous Wednesday night and hosts Bad Babes and Bandanas at Rockwell Friday night. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Friday –The KXLL Showcase featuring: Amish Robots EP Release, Indian Agent, Avery Stewart, Christy NaMee Eriksen, QUEENS, Taylor Vidic & Cody Russell at 8:00 p.m.
Ray Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers perform at 7 pm. Thursday, Feb. 1, @360 and at 7 Friday, Feb. 2, at the JACC for the American Salmon Forest fundraiser. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
Ketchikan’s Ray Troll is known for his visual art seen on T-shirts like “Spawn Till You Die” and “Fish Worship.” But this week he plays two shows with his band The Ratfish Wranglers that have been together for more than 35 years.
Troll said the group started when we was a substitute art teacher at Ketchikan High School during the mid-1980s.
“I had a couple of snarky kids in this one class, Russell (Wodehouse) and Shauna (Lee), and they were giving me a lot of guff. But they also had a radio show and they were in their band and I really liked their music.”
Their band was called The Squawking Fish, and even though Troll was 12 years their senior, it marked the beginning of their sub-aquatic, fish-inspired rock ‘n’ roll.
Troll views his music as extension of his visual art, adapting the themes of his popular T-shirts to music form like in “Fish Worship” and the iconic “Spawn Till You Die.”
But his music also aims to teach. Subject matter includes plate tectonics, ammonites, trilobites, and of course, ratfish.
One of their most popular songs is a Beastie Boys-inspired track called “Rockfish Barotrauma” with a music video that demonstrates how to save a rockfish when you’re out fishing.
“When you catch a rockfish it’s suffered from barotrauma, their eyes pop out of their head,” Troll said. “These fish are 100 years old and you’re only supposed to catch one a day. What do you do with that fish? How do you save that fish? So that song actually teaches you how to save that fish.”
The band will be joined by Juneau’s own Bob Banghart, who has has played on their studio albums and will feature visualizations of Troll’s works.
Though known for their fishy costumes, Troll said they will save the outfits for their Friday night gig, and let the music speak for itself during their television broadcast show Thursday night on “Alaska Originals.”
See Ray Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers play a free show at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, @360 in the KTOO building. The group performs a fundraiser show at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 2, at the JACC, benefitting American Salmon Forest with support from Trout Unlimited and the Alaskan Brewing Company.
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