The Alaska Folk Festival wrapped up earlier this month in Juneau. The festival was celebrating its 50th anniversary. Pickers and folk fanatics flocked from all over the state and country and packed into Centennial Hall and other bars and stages around the Capital City.
Andrew Heist, the president of the festival’s board of directors, told the crowd on closing night that they’d had a record-breaking week selling Alaska Folk Festival merchandise. And they weren’t the only ones that broke records during the festival.
Ketchikan band Dude Mtn headlined shows at the Crystal Saloon and the Alaskan bar. The shows, which also featured Juneau pop punk band the Rain Dogs, broke both bars’ all-time records for alcohol sales.
Its been a big year so far for the psychedelic rock trio. They have a live album in the works, recorded during a show at the Mean Queen pub in Sitka, and a headlining gig lined up at Southeast Alaska State Fair in Haines this summer.
Frontman Cullen McCormick, bassist Chazz Gist, and drummer Kalijah LeCornu sat down with KRBD’s Jack Darrell to talk about their run in Juneau and the ups and downs of trying to tour in Southeast Alaska.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jack Darrell: So you guys are fresh off of Folk Fest. How was it?
Cullen McCormick: Well, it was the 50th Folk Fest, and it was legendary. A lot of cool people. We got to hang out with all of our music homies from around Southeast Alaska and the Interior and all converge on one city. Everybody got to do their thing, and we got to watch people do their thing, and they got to watch us do our thing. It was super cool.
JD: So you guys broke a couple records with beer sales. What does that look like? Was it just tearing down the house?
CM: One would think it’s maybe “tearing down the house,” but I think a lot of it has to do with just the vibe that’s going on in the room. Normally, the vibe that’s going on in the room when we’re playing is like –
Kalijah LeCornu: ‘Let’s drink some beer.’
CM: Sure, people drink beers, you know, or people drink whatever. But at the same time, we don’t put up with any weirdness. We make sure that we cultivate a specific vibe in our shows where everybody feels comfortable.
JD: This isn’t your first Folk Fest. Obviously, you guys have played a lot of shows, and at this point, have gotten it down to a bit of a science. Have you noticed the Alaska Folk Festival scene change over recent years?
Chazz Gist: Obviously, there’s gonna be a lot of folk music in Juneau for Folk Fest. So, us coming up there and having just a vastly different kind of sound has always been part of the draw. It was just a couple years ago when we first – we’ve been breaking records pretty consistently at The Alaskan at the very least. This is the first year that we broke both our own sales record at the Alaskan and also broke the record at the Crystal Saloon, which is usually held by another band also at Folk Fest.
We’ve just been doing very good in Juneau for a long time. And this was a bigger Folk Fest – the 50th annual. And so I think numbers are just bigger all around for everybody.
JD: Do you guys feel like the broader music scene in Southeast Alaska is different than when you started?
KL: People are paying more attention to it now. Everyone has been so artsy in Southeast Alaska. I feel like forever it’s been such a rich environment for people to create and everyone consumes in in Southeast Alaska. I think we just are more of a part of it now, which is a blessing. But no, I think the scene has been growing regardless of if we’re all along for the ride or not.
CG: But interconnecting a lot more than it has in previous years.
CM: Oh, yeah. I think that has a lot to do with COVID. Like, back during COVID, everybody was kind of like, ‘Oh, dude, as soon as this is over, we’re gonna get out and we’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna do that.’ Then COVID ended, and everybody was like, ‘All right, yeah, we are getting out and doing this.’
That’s when this band started. During COVID, we would just lock ourselves in a garage and and literally jam for hours.
I think there’s been a big bloom of artists who have just been waiting. I know it’s 2025, now, but there’s been this bloom. You’re seeing it. The artists who are really starting to do the thing in Alaska have bloomed out of COVID and into this thing that they wanted to be. It’s phenomenal.
JD: So, you guys have said in the past that when you guys first started, the band was called the Dude Mountain Boys, right? And you changed that to kind of get away from the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?“-esque vibe.
CM: Yeah, it was a little novelty.
JD: Was part of that distancing at all from folk and Americana because it was outside of your sound? Obviously Alaska Folk Festival is kind of stepping back into that. Did you kind of change at all for Folk Fest?
CM: I think we dropped the “boys” because we wanted to take ourselves more seriously. At first, it was kind of a pet project. We’d wear overalls all the time and and then it was like, ‘Oh, let’s take it more seriously.’
And in regards to the folk thing – we don’t play folk, but we are a few folks that play music. That’s what we always say in Juneau.
KL: The first time we had to say something like that, because we really didn’t know what to expect. Its called “Folk Fest.” Well,
and we got in on a fluke too.
It was because there was that volcano that happened too, that really just kind of helped our little fan base in Juneau, mainly because there was no other bands that could make it. And it’s something I could have never imagined coming from a little COVID band, but man, it does warm my heart.
JD: How did your beer come about? Denali Brewing’s “Dude Mountain Hazy IPA”?
KL: It was Cullen’s fault.
CM: I was tweeting at Alaskan Brewing Company during our first Folk Fest because I was like, ‘Dude, name a band that has a beer. That would be sick.’ And Alaskan was like, ‘Haha.’ And they retweeted it, and they were toying with the idea but they were just fooling about.
And then the Denali rep, Tommy Vrabec, was at the show and heard about it, and was on Twitter and he hit us up, and asked if they can make us a beer and we said absolutely. It’s been this cool partnership.
CG: Up north, we’re still pretty unknown. Southeast Alaska is like a totally different country to people up north.
JD: Touring in Southeast Alaska must be an incredibly, uniquely difficult thing to do. How do you schedule a show when you can barely schedule a flight half the time?
CM: So, that’s the pain of it all. First of all, you gotta get that figured out on time. Then, you have gear, right? You want to travel with your gear. You know how it sounds and how it operates. A lot of times, if you borrow somebody else’s gear, it sounds wonky, you know, it’s like driving somebody else’s car for a week. You get used to it, but it’s still not your car. So, we’re traveling around with gear, and it can be a pain because a lot of it is overweight, and we have a lot of gear and a lot of road cases. And so Alaska Airlines is charging $100 for each overweight item, and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, we have all these bags.’
So that can be a hard part, especially for other bands who are just starting out, if they want to travel and play.
CG: I was born and raised here. I’ve never known any other way. But if you’re on the road system, it’s just nothing to pack up your gear in the van. So, it’s about trying to factor in those costs into our pricing.
CM: As a collective, we are not good at planning at all, and but we’re all figuring it out. My wife Stasha is helping us out, even our good friend, Austin Otos. If you’re gonna travel as a band, I would highly recommend bringing friends along, because it just makes everything so much easier with extra hands around and extra vibes.
KL: That is the key right there. Bring your friends on tour. Bring your homies on tour. That’s my advice. [Alaska Folk Festival] is the best thing in Alaska that they put on every year. I will stand by that.
JD: And are you guys writing music at all?
CM: Always trying. We actually did write a song about the milk run while we were at Folk Fest, because everybody hates the milk run. Hoping to record an album in the fall and put it out by next spring.
CG: We got a live album in the works from our December 7 show in Sitka, which is Cullen’s birthday.
JD: Do you guys have any favorite stages or audiences that you have played or play consistently?
KL: Personally, I think it’s the Alaskan. That one has my heart. The sound is – I can’t hear a thing up there, but it sounds like everyone else can. So it’s all right with me.
CM: Yeah, I think the Alaskan is probably my favorite too. But, you know what? Aside from travel gigs, throw me into the Arctic Bar in the corner with the boys and let us rip for three or four hours.
CG: I really like the Crystal Saloon up there. I like the tight ship. I like being able to hear everything. They just keep adding more lights. Now, they had lasers on top. So, between the fog and lasers, you have these sheets of light going above. And they just get tighter with the sound and tighter with the lights every show.
The Alaskan is can be very chaotic, and though there’s a lot to enjoy there, I have to give up on being able to hear everything. I have to give up on being able to control certain aspects of it. But the Crystal? I just like the tight ship.
Like we said, we broke sales records when we were the headliner. But in each of those shows, we had a few bands before us. Every time we go Juneau, we have our friends, the Rain Dogs.
JD: You guys brought the Rain Dogs to Ketchikan for the first time this summer, right?
CM: Yeah, I loved it. That was so much fun.
JD: That was a great time. It shut the electricity off.
KL: Rocking too hard!
JD: Any parting advice for a young band coming up in Southeast Alaska?
CM: Practice hard. Love your homies.
KL: Kiss your homies. They need it. They’ll definitely be kissing you back later, and it’s nice.
CM: Can we start that one over?
CG: Meet other bands. Whenever bands are coming through, try and hang out a little bit. See their show and talk about what you’re doing. Just make those connections.
KL: And pack light.
CM: Says the drummer.
JD: Okay, last question. Where do you feel like Dude Mtn is going to go from here?
KL: Hopefully stay together.
CM: I see Dude Mtn taking over the state of Alaska, and after that, taking over the rest of the U.S., and after that, travel all around. But my end goal for the band, and I think these boys too, is to literally just be able to travel and play music comfortably. If I can make music with my friends and make some money while doing it, that is a dream I could have never imagined.
