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brother and sister from Portland that sing Welsh a capella folk songs. They start their songs with a penny whistle. Pat Henry, he's the reincarnation of Mance Lipscomb. I donate money, volunteer, emcee and perform for the Alaska Music Festival (Juneau's spring week-long folk festival), so they know I love them. But I'm going to perform some gospel this year, — last year I did some Aretha Franklin songs. In 30 years, there's been no gospel at the festival. I think folk music should be people music. And I like Aretha, so that's the kind of music I want to make. There's too much folk elitism.

An attempt to penetrate the folk music veil turned into a discussion of Alaska — mostly the question, how did you get here? Like in therapy, this topic comes up a lot when you live in Alaska.

Our mission at KBJZ is to break the folk, bluegrass and for some strange reason, Irish music stranglehold on Juneau, countering with the smackdown of blues, jazz and whatever else we dig up from trolling friends' collections. The next time you are in Juneau during drivetime, tune in my show on the commute back to your cabin back by the glacier and you might hear some Austin bands like Daniel Johnston, Trail of Dead, Monroe Mustang, Peenbeats, Paul Newman, or the Kiss-Offs tucked in like Cracker Jack prizes in the lineup.

The Alaska Folk Festival is one way to break onto the Juneau music scene due to the very trusting open-mike policy. It's five days of established bands, new songwriters, and the town children. So if you wanted to come and play 15 minutes of punk rock, you might harm the public trust and cause the open-mike policy to be revised next year. But then maybe they'd screen out some of the child acts, too, and that would be good for me because I really have to be related to a child to suffer through a whole song.

But you could also break into the music scene here without damaging the community's collective trust by calling some of the bar owners and lining up a gig for yourself, instead of crashing the Folk Festival's party. There have been ska acts, jazz reviews, and more onstage at the Folk Festival, so no one's going to be acting like the faculty in Rock and Roll High School, wringing their hands and waving their arms around when the music breaks out. And why do you always have to go around freaking out the squares, anyway?

Send your CDs to KBJZ and maybe we'll play some songs and you'll have some new fans in Juneau.

KBJZ
P.O. Box 20247
Juneau, AK 99802
superhappy@geeklife.com

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