SCENE REPORT: TALKEETNA

Previously unpublished

2022. Travel piece from the forthcoming Dueling Banjo fanzine which, Joe Preston assures me, is still in the works.

TALKEETNA IS A VILLAGE in lower central Alaska, not quite halfway up the AK-3 axis between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Its quaint charm supposedly inspired the hit television show Northern Exposure. According to the Talkeetna Chamber of Commerce, the Dghelay Teht’ana people inhabited this area thousands of years ago, naming the region K’dalkitnu, which somehow translates (according to the Chamber) as “food is stored river.”

I’d first come here in 1996, on a summer tour. My and Joe Preston’s bands were scheduled to perform on KTNA—one thousand watts of public radio for the northern Susitna Valley—but when we’d arrived at their twin-cabin station, we’d been told a bush plane had gone down on a nearby glacier and we’d need to wait. Loitering outside, we’d found what appeared to be the disembodied nose of a large dog, probably a husky. With quick treatment, a dog could perhaps survive such a wound. But it would’ve been a deeply fucked-up looking dog. The nose appeared fresh, and the thought of running into its owner gave me the willies. As did the idea of spending much time in a town apparently littered with body parts.

The day went downhill. The radio people eventually returned, seeming unamused to find us still there. The cabin used for broadcasting was too small to fit all of us at once. Joe’s band had the advantage of being just Joe, but when it was my band’s turn we had to send in our guitarist to do an experimental electronics set that seemed to visibly offend our hosts. Somehow, in a state full of weirdos, we were too weird. We departed the stodgy, animal-hating town in what felt a lot like defeat.

Just one year later, Talkeetna elected a cat named Stubbs as mayor. Which, you know, kind of chapped my ass. Them?