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What do you get when you pack 10 Alaska Folk Festival bands and all the audio/video gear and people to shoot and record them into a 12-by-12-foot room at the Alaskan Hotel?

You get a series of one-song videos with bands like The Carper Family, Harrison B, Foghorn Stringband, Kim Beggs and the Bowties. Over the next three weeks, we’re releasing a series of Red Carpet Concerts from Folk Fest, a collaboration between KTOO Public Media, Juneau filmmaker Ryan Cortes and audio engineer Justin Smith.

To start, here is the San Francisco-based Bowties with “Houston Blues.”

Here are some of our other Red Carpet Concerts with musicians like Sean Tracey and Nate May, Dara Rilatos, Cousin Curtiss and Sophia Street. Check in on Wednesday for the release of Whisky Class with Liz Snyder and Patrick Troll.

Juneau artist Devon Kasler’s premier EP Anger Machine is an even dose of teenage angst and fantasy. With his band Slim Grim & The Reaper Bros, Kasler evokes a familiar feeling of secretly listening to Black Sabbath or Danzig or Queens of the Stone Age, whatever your poison was. But for Kasler, it wasn’t just a phase. The blood, skulls and gore of musical past carry over to his day job as a tattoo artist at High Tide Tattoo.

His music is sinister, full of ghastly hooks, and it’s loud, as if Alice Cooper came of age in the early 2000s. The release is the result of a partnership between Kasler and high-school-friend-turned-producer Cole Paramore who mixed the EP and contributed percussion over the tracks Kasler recorded alone in his bedroom, many in a single take. 

You can hear collaboration on the single “Skeletal Ghoul,” which opens with brooding guitars that remain rooted in Paramore’s drumming, growing louder until it concludes with a ripping guitar solo from Kasler. Somehow, you can just guess this guy’s pedal board is bigger than yours.

The album artwork was created by fellow High Tide Tattoo employee Jolene Chup who goes by the handle Fakewitch, releasing her own series of visual art last September.

Get these bad boy vibes on Bandcamp or see the six-track EP performed live tonight at the Taqueria when Kasler debuts his new line of patches, T-shirts and lighters inspired by his collection of music. 

Perseverance Theatre’s production of “Annapurna” opens this Friday.

Anchorage-based actor Kevin T. Bennett says, “It’s like a symphony of missed opportunities for human beings.” Despite the gloomy description, he is quick to point out the play is also quite funny.

Bennett is one of two actors in the production and plays a recovering alcoholic who lives in a low-rent trailer park in Colorado.

“There’s this fella, by the name of Ulysses, who has had a remarkably checkered past. His health is failing and it looks grim for him. In through the door walks his estranged wife of 20 years,” says Bennett.

Enter Fairbanks-based Rebecca George who plays Emma. Readers may recognize her from her part as Dean Wreen in last spring’s Perseverance production of “Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England.”

“Over the course of the play we have an opportunity to explore the core of our humanity, and humor, the remnants of love, and rationale and substance abuse. In any case, the story unfolds in these two characters over the course of an hour and 40 minutes until we reach the conclusion—it’s a bit shocking,” Bennett says. He also played Ulysses in Perseverance’s productions of “Annapurna” in Anchorage.

“It’s very lyrical. There are sentiments shared by these two characters that are just so truthful that it’s impossible not to relate to,” says Bennett.

In researching the part, Bennett spoke with playwright Sharr White.

“He has a way with words. We discussed how he wrote the play, and how the words are almost musical. They’re orchestrated in such a way that they’re like movements, individual movements, of a fine piece of classical music,” says Bennett.

While “Annapurna” officially opens Friday at Perseverance Theatre, you can catch pay-as-you-can previews Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

The Carper Family of Austin, Texas, is the guest artist for the 42nd annual Alaska Folk Festival. The four-piece band debuts in Juneau on Thursday night at Centennial Hall.

Listen to this audio sampler with Beth Chrisman, who writes songs, sings and plays fiddle in the band.

The Carper Family’s first set is at 8 p.m. Thursday night. They’ll also lead workshops throughout the weekend, and will close the festival at 9 p.m. Sunday. For a live stream, festival schedule and more coverage, visit our Folk Fest page here.

Illuminated by a single light, a four-piece band sets up inside the wheelhouse of a fishing boat moored in Juneau’s Harris Harbor.

“We’re Goldwing, and this is a fisherman’s desk,” said Dan Kirkwood before the song begins.

Kirkwood fronts the band competing in NPR Music’s video competition to discover the next great performer to play the Tiny Desk.

“You end up with one light, the light just above the helm. You can see that it’s a gray day in Juneau. You can see the forward leaning windows of the wheelhouse and the actual helm,” said Kirkwood of the band’s submission. “It feels like Juneau.”

Goldwing was one of 25 Alaska bands who submitted videos of their original music to NPR’s Tiny Desk contest.

Today, NPR Music announced that Duluth, Minnesota’s Gaelynn Lea beat out 6,000 other contestants to become the winner of the second-ever Tiny Desk contest. Lea will tour the country, appear on the NPR program Ask Me Another, and of course, play a coveted Tiny Desk concert at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

What about Goldwing’s fisherman’s desk? That’s part of the contest rules. All videos must take place at a desk — any desk — emulating Bob Boilen’s in D.C. Since 2008, Boilen’s desk has been host to nearly 500 intimate performances from Yo-Yo Ma and Death Cab for Cutie to Adele.

From Bethel to Fairbanks, Anchorage to the Big Island of Hawaii, bands showcase their original songs written in and inspired by the Last Frontier.

For second-year contestants Emma Hill and Brian Daste, the contest was about overcoming geographic distance to create their video for their song “A Long Way to Run.” With Hill in Hawaii and Daste in Oregon during the submission period, recording together meant that Daste taught himself to use green screen technology to create the illusion of performing in the same place.

“No matter what we did it was probably going to come off as a little wacky, but just wanting to do it anyway just for fun. And honestly, mostly so that Brian could have fun playing around with green screen,” Hill said.

Anchorage-based musician Hannah Yoter saw the contest as an opportunity to make a video for one of her newer songs “A Million Tears.” Her five-piece ensemble recorded the song in a band member’s office with the help of a tech-savvy friend.

“It’s really nice to not only have audio but to actually have a video where you can watch the band and you can see them playing — just to have something more than just an iPhone video at a concert.”

With plans to record a full length album in April, the band’s already getting a response from NPR’s national audience.

“Right after we posted the video we were contacted by multiple people about multiple gigs, people we’ve never met before,” said Yoter. “The NPR tag on it makes it available to a broader spectrum of folks. It’s getting a lot of exposure to places we never thought it would. There’s only so far you can go in Alaska.”

Though the path from Alaska to the Tiny Desk in D.C. is still long, the contest brought 25 Alaska artists a little closer. You can watch all of their video submissions in this playlist.