By Tristin Hopper
Prospectors flooded in from the gold fields. Volkswagen-loads of government workers drove in from Whitehorse and planeloads of guitar-toting musicians buzzed into Dawson’s gravel airport. The Dawson City Music Festival had begun.
This was not like the mega-festivals of Vancouver or Montreal – where you cram into a downtown park clutching a $3 bottle of water squinting at a stage-mounted jumbo-tron. Here, stray dogs share the streets with Juno-winning musicians. A vintage fire truck loaded down with the members of Ukrainia does an impromptu Sunday morning parade through downtown. On the river ferry, Dan Mangan is strumming over the screaming diesel engines. While sifting through sarongs at the merchant tents, you’ll look up to see a beige-jacketed Fred Penner signing autographs for a young mother and toddler (The autograph is for the mother, not the toddler). Dawson may be rough and it may be ugly, but for one weekend a year it morphs into a mythical paradise. Sort of like that town Spectre from Big Fish.
Backstage, the weekend plays out like a long-lost reunion. (TIP: If you’re carrying a stack of free Up Heres backstage security rarely thinks to inspect your name tag.) After multi-month tours encompassing dingy bars, lost baggage and cheap motels, Dawson is a touring musician’s refuge. Since hotel space is tight, musicians are billeted with locals. Rather than an unending gauntlet of professionally catered food, performers are served meals of stew and sushi prepared by locals. Flirty bartenders keep you supplied with $2 beers. Saturday night, a flamboyantly dressed Larry Bagnell serves up a strange mixture of sake and gin. Sunday morning, Yukon celebrity-architects Kobayashi and Zedda help you take the edge off with a cup of fresh coffee.
It’s Thursday now. The last bubble of champagne has burst. The tents are taken down and the Dawson City lawns are beginning their slow recovery. Musicians are thousands of miles away on the next leg of their unending summer tours. Wondering if, maybe, it was all a dream. JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound are normally a Chicago soul band. They play bars and they work often, but not full time. In fact, all of the members still have their day jobs (The bassist does legal work for Playboy Magazine). But in Dawson City they were Soul gods; bringing down the house with Friday and Saturday show-stopping sets. Their
