THE BULLETIN BOARD

POST 10/9/98:

I played both Alaska state fairs, 28 days of playing and it rained almost the whole time, but I enjoyed it. I've posted some journal entries from the State Fair in Palmer, and people seemed to enjoy them. I stayed in Alaska an extra 6 weeks after the Fairs as well. I followed the fairs with a round of community shows: bookstores, coffehouses, schools, churches, and senior centers all around Anchorage and Palmer. I was doing my best to serve the community, and camping out in a park strip in the center of town where a creek flows through. A local friend gave me access to his place for showers, very kind of him, and I almost settled into a routine. I found pianos to play around town, especially the local library which has an elctric piano in a practice room in the third floor music wing. I would go there every day I could and take music off the shelf and sit and play, looking out the windows at the snowcovered mountains to the east of the city, and storms moving down the valley. Billie Holiday and Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac and old show tunes, and the new songs I wrote while staying at the church in Palmer after the fair. I did a service there and a program for the local chapter of the state children's choir, and afterwards, the pastor invited me to stay a bit and rest up if I had nothing else to do, so I did. It was like heaven for me, a beautiful piano in a great room beneath a stained glass window, with nothing to do but play, and a great coffeeshop in the other wing of the building. I sat down to write again for the first time since I recorded the Gypsy Road CD.

A big event was the trip up to Eagle on the Yukon River. I had friends who'd moved up there from Fairbanks and had been inviting me to come up. Now I had a chance, and it worked out. They were coming to town for the Fall suply run, and I took a bus up from Anchorage to meet them on the highway near the turn-off to Eagle. I crammed myself in the pichup and we drove north on the gravel and dirt to Eagle. I only styed a few days, but I played everywhere I could, the local restaurant, the children's center, and one night I played in the general store for a local concert venue. It was really fine, down-home music at its best. Then I hitched a ride back out with a bunch of students from the University in town for cultural studies. Then the bus back to Anchorage again.

I took up an offer of free woodshop space in Anchorage that I got at the Fair to build two new acoustic dulcimers for myself, a cleaner looking, slightly improved copy of my present dulci and a "next generation" expanded model; and a third for the owner of the woodshop. I was camping out in a bit of woods and park that ran through the center of town. I could walk either north to downtown or south to the library, bookstores, and coffeehouses along the main east-west road. A friend who lived nearby gave me the key to his place so I could shower. The woodshop was a short walk to the otherside of the park. All told, it worked out well, even as the first snows fell and the geese flew south. The woodshop I worked in made saunas and hot tubs, and I was free to fire up the one in the parking lot any time I felt like it.

I spent a good bit of time exploring the Anchorage music scene, playing the local coffeehouses and open mikes and setting up jam sessions with local musicians. I'm considering Alaska as a place to set up a base of operations, so I wanted to see what it would be like there after season, if there was a good music scene to keep me playing while I worked on recording. I wasn't so concerned with making money so much as having musical outlets and stimulus while I was off tour. I found it pretty good, with pianos to play and a good music scene. It's a pretty small town, with the same social good and bad points, some folks are friendly, welcoming a newcomer, others are clannish and exclude outsiders. I experienced both sides in the local music scene. But I could see making a place there, or in Alaska somewhere.