Geek Weekly #10

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The Juneau Report

Last autumn, Geek Weekly sent Jenna Dickinson to Alaska to scope out Juneau's hot punk rock scene we'd been hearing so much about. She's been on the case for months, and it seems we've been grossly misinformed. So Jenna decided to see what would happen if she turned the town on to some real music. She got a show on the low-power community radio station, KBJZ. Knowing her and hearing from her about Alaska, I'd be willing to bet that she's turned on more folks than the music has, but hey, she digs spinnin' the wax!

Jenna recently sat down with rocker Collette Costa, talked about some crap, and submitted this report:

Juneau is a secluded place, not connected by road to another city. Instead of three escape options, land, water and air, you can only fly or ferry out of here. In the parallel universe of Juneau, some of the local cultural pursuits are potlucks, drinking, achiev-ing spectacular facial hair growth, outdoorsmanship and folk music. I will nowonly attempt to briefly touch on each of these topics.

Potlucks are an easy way to lure people out of their warm houses on a long, dark winter night, when instinct is compelling them to stay. They are great places to meet the excellent people of this town, the folks that you will definitely see tomor row at the grocery store, a garage sale and at the bar.

If you come drinking in Juneau, you should patronize the Alaskan Hotel and Bar, a former brothel back in the brawling gold mining days. I think this is the drinkingest town I've ever lived in. I have no way to prove anything, I've just been drunker here than anywhere else. It's not altitude - there are mountains all around, but we're at sea level here, so I don't know why this is, perhaps it's the salty air.

The well-dressed Alaskan tucks his pants into knee-high rubber Xtra-Tuff boots and cultivates a big wooly beard. Another look is the old-timey prospector, achieved by adding a leather vest and a walking stick adorned with the tails of animals you've apparently trapped. I cannot grow a beard, and don't condone the practice in general, for most people - unless they got the part in the new Grizzly Adams series.

I'm not comfortable with sports that require "gear," but I've ventured out often enough, keeping in mind the potential for death from bears, avalanches, or exposure, and my general lack of training on these topics I acquired during my former

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life in Austin. It's a spectacular place, so you have to go outside. There are glaciers and whales to look at, cabins in the forest to rent, monster fish to catch, and berries to pick. Berry-picking may sound like a lark, but bears really like berries. It can be unexpectedly extreme.

I have a lot of complicated feelings about folk music. Ignorance, some liking, more disliking. Music-wise, I prefer to rock. But I realize more must have happened in folk music since Woodie and Arlo Guthrie, the Weavers, and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, but what? So it is to Collette Costa that I turn for enlightenment on the subject of folk music and staying sane in Alaska. I have been to a potluck on Collette's boat, but mostly I run into her at the Alaskan Hotel bar and in the studio of the low-power community radio station we broadcast from, KBJZ.

Collette is the Morning Madam, waking the good people of Juneau, sometimes like a gentle mother, but sometimes with a verbal slap upside our heads. Collette is one of the founders of the Pelican Boardwalk Boogie, a long-weekend music festival in the remote fishing village of Pelican, population 120. She is a singer, the former lead vocalist for the now-defunct Pastor Lunchmeat and the Pimentos, of Haines, Alaska. Other Pimentos were Greg Bixby, a Haines fisherman (gillnetter) and bassist who has performed with Willie Nelson. She is also a cook on a summer charter boat, a veteran of the "slime line," a frequent emcee at local arts events, and general gadabout town.

Geek Weekly: Collette, how did you get here from Detroit? Collete Costa: I came to Pelican for the first time ten years ago on a flight from Detroit to Seattle. After my car had been stolen in Detroit, I'd had enough and had to get out. From Seattle we took a redeye to Juneau. We slept in a bathroom in the airport, on a couch we found in there. Then a charter plane to Pelican. I'd seen the "Make $10,000 a Season" ads for fishing operations in Alaska, so I came to work in a cold storage facility, processing fish on the "slime line". And 22 hours out of Detroit I was starting work processing fish. When the float plane landed at the Pelican dock, I felt I had literally stepped onto the set of Popeye. It was 300 people then, no roads or cars. It smelled. There was a man yelling obscenities who looked just like Bluto, who I worked for years later. I said to the friend that had come with me from Detroit - she was the person who got my car stolen, so I made her come, too - I said, 'Where the hell are we?'

And as we stood there on the dock, the float plane we came in on took off. We were met by a nice girl from the fish plant, who acts like we should be really happy right about now, a real snow job just like the ads that got us here, and she takes us to the company store to get rubber everything. Pants up to your chest, really stiff new, long rubber gloves, and lime green hats that we soon found out are the mark of the

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new guy, so they know who to fuck with. As soon as we walk into the plant with our hats on, guys yell "funoogie!" for Fucking New Guy.

GW: Did you make any money? CC: They pay was actually $6.25 an hour, for the first 400 hours, then up to a little over $8. The woman said, "Don't worry, you'll get that (400 hours) in a couple of months. And there's overtime." When I got my first paycheck, it was for a negative $30. I owed the store for all the rubber supplies, for room and board, the float plane, union dues. I couldn't move my hands from the processing, I'd been waking up with my hands fully clenched, they were puffy and the skin was peeling. I went back to my room, locked the door and cried. You couldn't complain though, or everyone would make fun of you. Fucking Carl, a guy there, has been working there 40 years as the header on the slime line, the header stands at the head of the line cutting off fish heads. He's working there today. He'd say, "That's alright, darlin'. The first 10 years is the hardest!" Carl has three greetings for everyone he sees as he rides through town on his Moped. If you're a guy, it's "Hey there!" If you're a woman, it's "Hey, darlin'!" and if you're a group, it's "Hey, gang!"

I made a couple of hundred bucks that summer. Then I begged a job as a nanny aboard a WWII landing craft being used as a fish-buying scow just so I wouldn't have to touch fish anymore. We would go out to coves at the mouth of the ocean and buy fish from the fishermen coming in, and every week the processor boat would come and buy from us. I didn't know at first that the ship we were on had been used for 10 years as a garbage scow, it had been garbage soaked for a decade. There was this smell, and slime seeping out of the walls. I'd mop everyday and each morning the sludge would be back. It was the haunted summer. The skipper was pregnant, and her morning sickness was worse than the smell. I was the nanny for her three-year old on the boat, trying to keep her from killing herself. Becca, another deck hand, had just returned from India with head lice, so we all got it. Well, not the skipper, which is lucky because she has this really long beautiful hair. In my photos from that summer, I have my hair shorn.

I also helped run a crab plant, buying them and filling 12-foot deep tanks with 15,000 pounds of crab, then trying not to get your fingers broken by the crabs. Dungeoness are really fast.

GW: How did the Boardwalk Boogie start? CC: Some friends in Pelican, Stewart Ely and Riley Woodford, from Juneau, had put together a pick-up band in a bar, the Starr Hillbillies. Fishermen would get together and play music around town, too. I was singing with the Pimentos, and we thought it would be great to bring them to Pelican. In 1998, we hired one boat to make two runs, bringing about 60 people to Pelican, about 75 miles from Juneau. We posted signs at the Alaska Folk Festival, it was mostly people we knew.

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There was a totem pole raising in Pelican, to raise the town's morale (due to the closure of the cold storage plant). The second year, we hired a bigger boat and had three official bands, and a pickup band, leaving room for anything spontaneous to happen. This year we'll have three boats, five bands, and a pickup band, two coffee house concerts and spontaneous music. We'll bring in 160 people or so, and some people come in on their own. We want to keep the festival to the scale of Pelican. It's now about 100 people. There's only one restaurant, the bars might serve some food, only bunkhouses and camping. There's a store, a couple of bars, a saw mill, a marine repair shop and the cold storage plant. No cars or roads.

GW: So you left Detroit, The Motor City, one of the country's largest cities, and went to Pelican. Were your parents long-time Detroit residents, and did they think you were somehow turning your back on your heritage? Was it like Survivor? CC: Our family had more cars than people -- four cars, three people. Pelican, it's a different scale of reality. The reality isn't any different, but it's a changed perspective. Pelican is a distilled Island of Misfit Toys. Everyone is just real, like -- off the fucking boat. Everyone fits in because everyone's wacked. There was a certain group that was the intelligentsia of the slime line.

"Everyone fits in because everyone's wacked. There was a certain group that was the intelligentsia of the slime line.

GW: What's the dirtiest song you've heard at the dirty song contest? CC: It's the Filthy Song and Slit Yer Wrist Contest. You can do one or the other. One woman does songs about food, about zucchini and things. The first year the totem pole was raised, and one guy did an epic poem called "Pole Raising." I also preformed a song called Eatin and Cheatin', and disputed the epic poem's first prize with the judges, since it was suppose to be a song. Now he does a new epic poem each year, with a drum and bass. Last year I covered a Bad Livers song, I'm Using My Bible For a Roadmap, remade as I'm Using My Penis For a Compass. It had a Tammy Faye and Jim Baker theme, with Jessica Hahn in a strap-on. Mostly it's about being there. It's not great art. GW: Remember the fight a year ago between two guys on a boat in the Juneau harbor, over which one of them was the real Alaskan, and one of them stabbed the other multiple times in the head and neck? When that happened, I thought, that's something that would happen in Texas. Is that something that would happen in Detroit? CC: That's not really a standard to live up to in Detroit. 'I'm more homeless than you', maybe?

GW: I don't hear you play folk music on your show. CC: Most folk music makes me want to choke. Not all... some is good. There's a

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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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