Homer Alaska (Interview)

I grew up in a little town called Homer, Alaska. um Alaska's quite different. You know, the seasons are a bit different. It's, uh, six months of darkness, kind of, if not more, really. And in the summer, it's daylight for twenty-four hours a day. I grew up singing with my parents. They had, uh, shows in hotels. They sang, like, for tourists. Cruise boats would kind of come in, like, say, to a town like Anchorage. and um They did a variety show where they'd sing and act and dance and show movies. My family were kind of famous homesteaders that helpеd settle Alaska. So I started yodеling at age six with them and um I would actually tour around through Alaska native villages. So we'd get dropped off in an airplane in the middle of just you know the Arctic and a dog sled would come pick us up and we'd get taken to a host's house and we'd sing in all these different villages. um We sang in a lot of bar rooms, so it was a lot of, you know, yeah, a lot of, you know, everything from Heartbreak Hotel to, you know, Elvis songs to, you know, you name it.  My dad and I became a duet when my parents got divorced. I was 8. And so I started kind of really, you know, having a full-time job at that when I was eight. We, uh, I did harmonies pretty much for the most part and then started singing more and more lead as I got older. um But it was great training. My dad's a great showman. You know, he really He would always really, uh, just read the crowd, never wrote a set list. He was really kind of an old school trainer that really trained me, you know, to be, uhm, very just impromptu and, you know, to show up, work hard, do your job, you know, don't whine. He kind of trained me to – and it really set the groundwork for me. I had read a lot since I was quite young, and writing always really fascinated me. I started writing poetry at quite a young age, essays, short stories. Um, I moved out of my house when I was fifteen years old. About a year later, I got a scholarship to a private art school in Michigan, so I ended up moving to Michigan and, uhm, studying classical voice and art. visual art. And uhm, it was there that I actually learned to play guitar when I was 16. Uhm, actually learned to play guitar so that I could hitchhike through Mexico for spring break like all parents hope that their children do one day. And uh, I learned four chords and I could only play like A minor, C, G, and D in that order. That's all I could do. I couldn't go out of order because I just didn't know how to play good enough and I couldn't read music. So I just thought it'd be really easy. I'd sung my whole life and I'd written poetry my whole life. I thought, I'll just make up lyrics as people walk by because, you know, as long as you sing good, nobody really cares what you're singing about necessarily. And I had enough money to get on the train in Detroit and make it to Chicago. And I got off the, the train in Chicago and then just street sang to get enough money to make it to the next city. Took me about three days. I did end up hitchhiking all through Mexico and got back to school after about two weeks. And I just wrote this one song with the same four chords over and over and it ended up being "Who Will Save Your Soul". And that ended up being the first single on my record when I was eighteen.