The Folk Festival is one of the best things Juneau has going for it. It ranks right up there with the third and fourth of July. We’re not quite ready to sing Good Night Irene but the weekend romances and drum circles are breaking up and tender dancing feet are being looked after.

Work got in the way plenty but I managed to have a fun week anyway. Friday I ran into the banjo plucking woman from the Ferry and I asked her what she does when she isn’t plucking a Banjo. She paused for a while and smiled. That is what she does. She’s a musician. What an appropriate occupation. I bought one of her CD’s because I wanted to say thank you for the live music while leaving the Skagway ferry terminal. I got around to giving it a listen today, the introduction caught me a little off guard with the conversational lyrics and wandering themes but once I figured out what was going on I had to go back and listen again. It was a perfect introduction to this meandering walk through a town with more memories left than life. The CD “Lucky Burden” is full of songs inspired by Keno City and paints a picture of rusty trucks, sagging buildings, and crisp morning air.

Keno City was once a booming silver mine and in her heyday she was the second largest producer in North America and the fourth largest in the world. Now the population of the town has dwindled to around 20.

If you’ve spent any time in a small town with a history you’ll know the feeling this music evokes and what I’m trying to explain here. It’s a sad happiness. A melancholy that comes from the passing of time. It reminds me of when my sister and I went to visit Nyac, the Goldmine that my dad grew up in. All the buildings were still there, slipping a little farther into the ground with each spring melt. My sister and I crawled into the basement of the house my dad lived in and the stairs just disappeared into the a dirt floor that had risen nearly to the ceiling. We found an old baseball mitt. That’s the feeling right there and Kim Barlow’s music has an aged innocence that draws it right out.

You should pick up the CD and find your own favorites but the songs that really work for me are “Preamble,” “Slim Pickens,” “Butterflies and Drunk Men” and “Silver under the Ground.” Kim’s CD was put out by Caribou Records, an independent record label based in Whitehorse. Caribou apparently also has affiliations with local artists Rory Merritt Stitt and The Glacial Erratics.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 17th, 2005 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Juneauite, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.