K300 Benefit Concert

Tonight we enjoyed a great evening of entertainment at the musical fundraising event for the K300. One cool thing about Bethel is people of the town with musical skills come out and play for everyone’s benefit quite often. Tonight was no exception. Some songs are unique to the YK Delta, like Donald Zanoff’s song “I’m sick of the cold” which is actually about the trials and tribulations of flying to bush villages. Genevieve related to that one quite well. All the performers peppered their appearances with stories of bush travel or dog mushing. Another guy named Vince Chimirielski sang an original song called “Tundra Love”, which was highly entertaining, and told several apt stories about mushers. I guess you kind of had to be there, but the entertainment value was high. Incidentally, that link is to a nice song by some Canadian band, but it's totally unrelated to Vince's comedic song.

I love Jacques Longpre's classic Bethel look... flannel shirt, carhart's, burly beard and bunny boots.

One person, “Frozen Chosen”, delivered an amazing reading of The Ballad of Hard Luck Henry from memory, as well as Rudyard Kipling’s “If”, which he qualified as relating to both genders. The reading was spectacular given his authentic bush accent and delivery.

Ron Kaiser sang a mysterious song about being on a chicken train and not getting off. He also sang the classic I'm going to miss her song about loving to fish.

Andy Angstman, one of the mushers in the race and the son of one of the most prominent attorneys in the bush, gave a nice performance of The Gambler. We even caught a little snippet of it for your viewing pleasure.

And finally, the night was capped off with some energetic bluegrass by Jesse, a bush pilot, Paul Basil and Katey, the only song I recognized being “More Pretty Girls Than One,” but all of which were tremendous crowd pleasers. Incidentally, I like to think of Jesse as Bethel Jamie Earle, because he looks much like our Michigan friend of that name. Any Michigan folks reading this may see this picture and say, hey, what is Jamie doing in the Alaskan bush picking a banjo and flying planes around? It’s an honest mistake given the similarity in appearance when Jamie is in beard mode.