Music

UPDATE Saturday 10 a.m.:

The remaining members of Lone Piñon and dance callers made it to town late Friday night and will perform Saturday and Sunday. See the Alaska Folk Festival schedule for updated times. 

Original story:

Alaska Folk Festival organizers scrambled to rearrange the mainstage lineup Friday as it became clear that headliners Lone Piñon and several other performers would not make their scheduled sets. 

Folk Fest brings artists from around the state and the Lower 48 to Juneau every year for a week of music and dancing, but this year’s event saw disruptions thanks to airborne ash from a volcanic eruption in Russia that impacted flights throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

Reached by phone in Seattle Friday, band members Santiago Romero, Karina Wilson and Jordan Wax said they were staying optimistic, but trying to be realistic too. 

“It sounds like a lot of ash cloud is still moving in,” Wax said from somewhere near the Space Needle. “And we’re just hoping that there is a, you know, a slight chance that the wind could shift and allow us to land.”

Lone Piñon’s travel woes began Wednesday when some of the band members tried to leave Phoenix but were delayed by mechanical problems. That brought them to Seattle just in time for the ash cloud to ground dozens of Alaska-bound flights. 

Lone Piñon describes their music as “orquesta típica”, a type of music traditional to northern New Mexico. Joining them in Seattle were Lucy Salazar and Alicia Gonzales, two dance callers who were set to lead a Saturday workshop on the style of dance that accompanies Lone Piñon’s music. 

For most of them, this would have been their first time in Alaska. Bandmate Tanya Nuñez actually managed to make it to town before the ash became an issue. Wax said they still hoped to make their Sunday mainstage appearance. 

“The best case scenario at this point is that we get there for the last day of the festival,” he said. “And it’d be awesome to spend 24 hours with everybody after so much work and planning.”

A lot of planning did go into getting them to Juneau. 

Folk Fest Board Member Miguel Rohrbacher has been trying to bring Lone Piñon to Juneau since seeing them play at a festival in Washington State five years ago. His mother’s side of the family is from northern New Mexico, so hearing them play in the style of that region was inspiring to him as a lover of folk music. He was determined to bring the band to town.

Then, the pandemic happened. Folk Fest was canceled in 2020 and 2021. He thought he had finally succeeded this week, but then …

“That volcano was not on my bingo card,” Rohrbacher admitted Friday. 

He added that this is the first time he’s aware of in Folk Fest’s 48 years that volcanic ash has caused travel delays. Luckily, there’s no shortage of talent already in town to fill in the holes. 

Friday’s mainstage acts were rearranged with local favorites. Organizers said they would continue to cover gaps as needed, with the hope that air travel would resume before the festival ends on Sunday. 

“If the dam breaks, and a bunch of people are here, the Sunday night concert might be one for the ages,” Rohrbacher said. 

And hey, he said, maybe next year’s official Folk Fest t-shirt will feature a volcano.

This post has been updated. 

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Lucy Salazar in the photo. 

Musicians from across Southeast Alaska will perform at the Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau this week. A Tuesday night event called “Unceded” will highlight artists of color.

On Juneau Afternoon last week, organizer Tripp Crouse said it’s been a long time coming.

“This was really a brainchild from 2017 — my first Folk Fest,” Crouse said. “Being a brown kid from the Midwest in a very white area, I didn’t understand why we weren’t highlighting the Indigenous musicians that were here.”

Crouse shared the idea for a side stage on Facebook in February. Local painter and poet Dita Devi jumped in as a co-organizer. She said the concept resonated with community members of all backgrounds.

“I think it’s something that people have been craving, they just didn’t verbalize it and start to put the movement into it,” she said.

Devi said it’s important to provide a dedicated space for artists of color during Folk Fest.

“There are so many different stages, there are so many side stages,” Devi said. “But often, I think that we are — not overtly — but we are encouraged to take up less space. And I want us to take up a whole lot of space.”

Admission to the event is free, but musicians will still get paid, thanks to support from local businesses.

“We wanted to make that music available to anyone who wanted to participate and listen,” Crouse said.

Qacung is one of the artists performing on Tuesday. He said events like Unceded, along with the Indigenous music festival Aak’w Rock, ensure that artists of color are heard and celebrated on their own terms.

“Creating venues and spaces like this for Indigenous voices, BIPOC voices, it’s rare,” he said. “I’ve been in this business for almost 30 years performing with my band, and we’ve often been that tokenized group. It’s basically a career filled with that. One of the things that became very apparent with my peers in the industry is that we need to just create those spaces ourselves.”

Other performers include Air Jazz, Daniel Firmin, Lisa Puananimōhala’ikalani Denny, Lester Joel Rodriguez, Sunny Porch, Rochelle Kaachgóon Smallwood, RRAINS, Sonia Kumar, Christian Jensen and Nicole Church.

Unceded begins at 8 p.m. at The Alaskan.

In the gymnasium at Sítʼ Eetí Shaanáx̱ Glacier Valley Elementary School on Friday, dozens of kids sang a song in Lingít at the top of their lungs. The song is about living through all four seasons as a tree, growing and losing leaves. 

The performance was part of a language and music program for kindergartners and first graders. Lorrie Heagy, who helps lead the program, said the violin lessons have been going for over a decade now, but the language part is in its second year.

“It’s not only a pedagogical tool,” Heagy said. “It’s a culturally responsive practice to be singing.”

Heagy said this program gives teachers an opportunity to make their curriculum more place-based and more reflective of Lingít culture. 

The older students play real instruments, but the kindergartners play model violins made of cardboard. For them, it’s a graduation of sorts. 

“That is a rite of passage to say you’re ready to hold the real one,” Heagy said. “Because they will drop it.”

Heagy is with Juneau Alaska Music Matters. She teaches the program as part of a team with musicians and language teachers. Her Lingít language teacher, Koolyéiḵ Roby Littlefield, contributes to the language plans and helps with the lessons over Zoom.

“When a teacher needs help with a phrase or something new or to correct their pronunciation, I’m right there,” Littlefield said. “And they just turn to the screen and say, “Koolyéik, a yax̱ ák.wé?’ is it like that?”

Yuxgitsiy George Holly is a teacher, musician and composer. Heagy asked him to help write the music.

“I didn’t have to think twice about that,” Holly said. “So I became part of that, started to write music to various poems and words of the various elders and (X̱ʼunei) Lance Twitchell. And it’s been a beautiful thing to see these children absorb it in such an easy and respectful and joyful way.”

Holly also conducts part of the performance. On command, the kindergartners raised their paper violins to their chins and bowed the imaginary strings with paper towel tubes. At the end of each song, the kids beamed at the applause. 

Next semester, these paper violinists will be fit for real violins and start learning to play. They already have a head start on the language.

When it comes to classic holiday songs, there are some that are impossible to top.

That’s why producer James Glaves said the Alaska artists on this year’s Bright Lights album aren’t trying to reinvent the classics. Each song on the compilation is a fresh take on holiday music.

“That’s what I think is really great about it,” he said. “It’s not about ‘Jingle bell, jingle bell rock.’ It’s about what people feel and what they think about the holidays and the fact that there’s dark songs, I think, is really cool.”

“Bright Lights Vol. 3” is a holiday music album featuring original music from Alaska artists— and a fundraiser for domestic violence shelters in the state’s rural communities.

The project is in its third year. Glaves, who lives in Anchorage, mastered this year’s album.

Glaves has roots in Soldotna and Kasilof, where he said he grew up in a house that loved music. He started jamming when he was a student at K-Beach Elementary School.

“Got my first drum set. Got my first guitar, even though I wanted a four-wheeler,” he said, laughing. “I was a peninsula kid. My life would’ve probably been much different if I had gotten that expensive four-wheeler instead of the little red guitar under the Christmas tree.”

Glaves said from there, he became more and more obsessed with making music. Today, he’s worked with artists in Alaska and beyond and put out solo and group projects of his own.

He was brought onto the Bright Lights project in its first year in 2020 by its founders, Chad Reynvaan and Ninilchik-raised musician Andy Tholberg. The group donated the proceeds from that first album to Hope Community Resources, an Anchorage-based nonprofit that works with Alaskans with disabilities.

The next year, they donated to a few smaller organizations — all of them women’s domestic violence shelters in remote communities like Bethel, Hooper Bay and Kotzebue.

Glaves said it was important to the group to bring attention to organizations in rural parts of the state, specifically, where the problem is magnified and where organizations fighting the problem might see less funding come in.

“Most Alaskans understand that there is an unbelievable [domestic violence] problem in our state,” he said. “But a lot of people don’t know that. At the very very least, there are a few people who are going to see this and think about it for a minute.”

He said the response so far has been somewhat small. He estimated they’ve raised between $1,000 to $2,000 a year. People donate what they can to buy each album on the site Bandcamp.

Glaves said they’re hoping for a bigger response this year.

“We beat the sophomore slump,” he said. “It’s the third year. It’s real now.”

Vol. 3 features songs from Strawberry Friend in Anchorage and the Casey Smith Project in Fairbanks. Glaves and Tholberg also put it together a track, called “End of Year Feeling.”

“It’s weird and dark, but we had a super fun time making it,” Glaves said.

Glaves said there was room for artists featured on the album to be creative with their sound, since they were making music for a different kind of project than they might usually work on.

“I think that gives people a hall pass to just have fun, let their hair down, do whatever they want,” Glaves said. “And I think that’s why the albums are turning out so awesome.”

You can find “Bright Lights Vol. 3” on Bandcamp.

Jillian Pollock says she’d follow Dude Mountain to the ends of the earth.

So far, that hasn’t been necessary. But Pollock did fly from Ketchikan to Juneau with a bunch of friends to catch their hometown band at the Crystal Saloon on Saturday night.

“We’ve been talking about how exciting it is to be in such a vibrant scene, because Ketchikan is amazing!” Pollock said. “But it’s a little bit sleepy.”

Pollock and friends were part of what the Juneau bar’s sign called a “Ketchikan takeover.” Stasha McCormick, the wife of frontman Cullen McCormick, had rallied their close friends and fans at bars and on Twitter before the show.

“I just started talking them into it,” Stasha said. “Dividend checks, air miles, end of season: everyone had a little extra money, and I said, ‘Let’s go!”

Dude Mountain say their music is a mix of psychedelic rock and blues. The trio formed two years ago, first playing the instrumental backing for open mic nights in Ketchikan, which they say helped them learn to improvise and communicate in the moment.

Their musical chemistry was immediate, said drummer Kalijah LeCornu.

“Right from the first jam. There were some songs we played at our show that were literally from the first time we played together at his house,” LeCornu said.

The Crystal Saloon show was just their second gig outside of Ketchikan. McCormick says it was easily their best.

“We went backstage, and we’re talking, and we’re like — we didn’t miss a note,” Cullen said. “Not one note was missed. Not one.”

Next, the band is planning to record an EP featuring songs they performed at the Crystal Saloon on Saturday night, including a tribute to their hometown called simply, “Ketchikan.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly described the band’s drummer as its bassist.

 

Multi-talented producer and musician Patrick Troll of Ketchikan is DJ AlterNative, the mastermind behind the BurgerChurch Sessions, and a founding member of Whiskey Class. Catch up with him on KXLL and hear him spin live tonight at the Crystal Saloon.

 

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