Lost Weekend

Folkfest, Fools.

Rockin' the comfy shorts, backpack full of beer, extra sets of strings, tuner, cheeseburgers, red bull, and gatorade, we're gonna go for it old-style. The boys from Fairbanks and Los Anchorage fly in tonight, so expect some mayhem into the wee hours.

We're particularly excited to see one Anchorage head in particular, partly 'cause he's a hell of a picker and a nice guy to boot, but mostly it's because we loaned him a wicked good mandolin last year and have regretted it for exactly 363 days, 18 hours and 23 minutes. We'll get our Hughes back in the fold, but we'll prolly hafta pry it outta Co-Mac's hands...with a few beers, of course.

Nothin' like a hallway dance at 5am, or a monster pickin' session in a 3rd floor laundry room. Laundry room? At a music fest?

Well, Folkfest is the event held every year in Juneau at the Centennial hall for 7 days, but the REAL folkfest goes on at...other venues. Costa's Diner, the Red Dog, the Alaskan Bar, the Triangle Club, and Paradise Cafe, to name a few. Great traditions are seen to, including the Cowgirls Keg, the Freudian Slips Brunch ("Brunching in fine undergarments since 1993" says the sticker), Friday and Saturday night all-nighters, and the new "Burgers, Bloody Marys, and Bluegrass" lunch, hosted by Juneau's own Great Alaskan Bluegrass Band. Now in it's 34th iteration, Folkfest is bigger than just 15 minutes on stage, it has outgrown the Hall and oozed out into all the dark corners of downtown.

The Folkfest is a thing of beauty when looked at in the dim light of a misty Juneau morning, squinting one-eyed through 13 beers and 15 hours of pickin' in cramped rooms, dark hallways, wherever a fella can stand and git it. Most of our weekend will be devoted to seeking out the like-minded and pickin' a few fiddle tunes here and there, with copious amounts of beer-drinking and a fair amount of good old-fashioned Bee-Essin' thrown in for good measure. We'll tote the camera along, to maybe capture a reasonable facsimile of what all the fuss is about.

Good thing this happens only one week a year...we need the other 51 to recuperate and prepare for next year.