The adventure of this day took place at the end of a random, bizarre and almost unbelievable series of coincidences:
1. Darren wasn’t even a part of our trip until later on. If we hadn’t met up with him during Outdoor Center, he wouldn’t have come with us.
2. Nextly (Is that a word? Sure. Cram the red squiggles up your ass, Microsoft Word) we decided to go to Anchorage first rather than Fairbanks on our way into Alaska, despite the trajectory of the Alaska Highway.
3. In Anchorage, we just randomly ended up finding Nick on couchsurfing, and he was the only one who replied to us.
4. Nick and his housemates happened to be part of a band.
5. We happened to be staying right until they played a show in Kenai.
6. Lee, the drummer, who according to himself is extremely organized with his bookings, and has never before in his life double-booked himself, double-booked himself for that exact show.
7. Darren is also a drummer.
You see where this is going. He gladly accepted their pleas, Lee went to do his other show, and Darren practiced with the band for about a day to sit in for Lee for the full show. Early Saturday afternoon we headed down to Kenai behind Nick and Ivan. For some reason Ivan was wearing his Halloween costume again.
We drove down with them, stopping only for pizza along the way, despite the fact that we were already late for the show. As we drove, we wondered where exactly we were going. What sort of show was this? Where was the venue? We hadn’t bothered to ask them, so we had no idea if it was some sort of dive bar, or jazz club or fancy restaurant. Two hours later we pulled into the parking lot of Kenai Central High School. That was unexpected. It turns out the band was playing as part of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe festival that was happening that day in Kenai. We helped the band move their stuff backstage, and were greeted with the “parents getting ready for a school musical” vibe behind the high school stage as we moved stuff in. We met Ira, the keyboardist, and a cheery guy called Steve who was one of the singers in the band, and then Gordon, Bryan and I went to take our seats in the auditorium, while Darren prepared with the band. When we were picturing the band playing in some seedy bar, we did not expect this:
Nick, Ivan, Lee and Ira, and sometimes Darren (It’s like the band members are vowels and Darren is ‘Y’) play as the rhythm section for a well-known Native Alaskan funk band called Pamyua (BUM-yo-ah). The band, which consists of four singers including Steve and his brother, who you will meet later, does traditional Yup’ik song and dance and modern funk interpretations from their native roots. It’s really spectacular stuff, and the only drawback was that we had to sit through the bizarre Kenaitze ‘school-play’ caliber opening performance before we could watch Pamyua perform. This was supposed to be a history of the Kenaitze tribe, but consisted of vague, awkward vignettes where kids who didn’t say anything stared at each other on stage.
We really enjoyed a fur-hatted portrayal of a Russian Orthodox missionary too
Then there was a part where 10-year-old girls posing as white tourists came and threw litter all over the stage for like half an hour straight while awkward, badly sung music played in the background. We found out later that Steve was sitting like 2 rows behind us with his daughter, looking toward us periodically to see if we were as weirded out as he was. We were.
After the opening act ended, and there was a brief intermission, we finally got to see the band perform. It started with just the four singers, doing traditional Yup’ik songs and chants and dances, which were really incredible. Then they did some beautiful a cappella tribal songs, and then the rhythm section came out and, now that they’d shown the roots of their culture and music, they went into their main funk world music, with Darren banging away in the background. It was an awesome show. The singers, from left to right are Ossie, Steve, Karina, and Phillip, Steve’s brother.
The band was really random and high-energy and would just improv stuff or dance ridiculously whenever they wanted to. Toward the end of it, Steve leaned off the stage and basically forced Bryan and I to join them on stage. A group of child athletes was also on stage doing triple jumps. To be honest, I wasn’t totally sure what was going on at this point, I was suddenly on stage dancing and competing with 9-year-olds. Steve, in the middle of the performance, had Bryan and I doing these jumps where we started on our knees and landed on our feet. He then took me to the front of the stage and tried to show me how to do a triple jump from watching the kids do it. I had a lot of trouble understanding how it was done. Steve then pointed at this tiny girl who was about to go, and with the intensity of Rocky’s coach, said, “You have to beat her!” I looked at the tiny little girl with her big Bambi eyes, and looked questioningly back at Steve. The girl did her delicate little triple jump. Steve all but shoved me into the front of the line, and I kind of shut my eyes, and did the jump as best I could. I actually went pretty far, and I definitely beat that little girl! Yeeah! Try that again in ma house, Bitch!”
After that, the show wound down and ended after a fun bit where there were just like a hundred people on stage dancing. I spent that time as the only white guy on stage, standing behind Ossie trying to copy the traditional dance he was doing. Once the show ended, we realized that we’d lost Darren’s camera case when we were taking pictures of him drumming, although we still had his camera. After searching the auditorium without success, we finally just piled into the car, and went off to get dinner. The four of us, along with Ira, Nick, Ivan, Phillip and Steve, grabbed some beers for later that night and went out to eat at the only open restaurant in Kenai at that hour. Steve’s young daughter Anouk also accompanied us. We had a grand meal at Louie’s Restaurant, whose walls were absolutely covered with animal heads and skins, as well as some weird human face thing.
Steve’s daughter, Anouk, was hilarious. I think she was about 5. At one point when we were done eating, Ira said something about her having a heart on her shirt, because there was a picture of a heart on her shirt. Anouk then started saying that Ira had a heart on everything. “You have a heart on yooour legs!” and “You have a heart on youuur head!” The faster she said it, the more it started to sound like she was saying ‘hard-on’ rather than ‘heart on’, so everyone at the table was laughing hysterically, while Anouk, being egged on by Steve, was laughing and shouting “You have a heart on your face!” “You have a heart on- in your mouth!” Steve’s suggestions for where he should have a ‘heart-on’ got more lewd and funny, until we finally paid the check and headed to wherever we were spending the night.
Our little band caravan headed into the cold, dark Kenai night, into these random back roads toward some lodge where we were supposedly staying. The band had been there before apparently, but we had no idea where we were going. We arrived at this gorgeous house in the middle of the woods, that was near a bunch of other smaller cabins. The guy who ran this place, a guy called Ray who was possibly one of the friendliest, most hospitable people I’ve ever met, gave us several places to sleep, including a small lodge that the we, the four travelers, had all to ourselves. We drove to our cabin, which was the most incredible, luxurious place we stayed on the trip, and unloaded our stuff, then had everybody over. A couple of people went to bed, but when we got out the beers, it was us four, Ivan, Phillip and Steve. Ray had said something about there being two 21-year-old girls in the cabin next to ours. I think Ivan and Gordon went to go say hi, but Ivan’s strategy of saying ‘hii’ in a deep voice and asking the girls if they were ‘shy’ didn’t work. They did not come over.
We played a breakneck game of Quarters, a pretty famous drinking game I’ve never played before, which has many variations. Ours went that if you could bounce a quarter into an empty glass in front of you, it moved on to the next person, and if you got lapped, you drank. We started with two glasses. I was absolutely god-awful at this game at the beginning. I got lapped like 19 times in a row and was well on my way beyond anyone else by about 10 minutes into the game. Steve and Phillip thought this deficiency of mine was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I got better though, and started taking people by surprise and destroying others as the game went on. It turned into one of those great nights in life where everyone was so happy and having so much fun, that they just screamed ear-piercingly every time ANYTHING happened. Luckily Bryan took some photos during it:
After the game, things wound down a bit. Bryan fell asleep a little on the couch. Darren and I hung out on the porch with Steve and talked about Scandinavian Death Metal, Thanksgiving, and a myriad of other things. After a bit, we were back inside talking about things we should do on the Kenai peninsula. Steve and Phillip told us a million stories about their travels, about the time they banged up their rental car on the Alaska Highway, and all the things to do down south, including a beautiful Russian Orthodox church, and a drive you could do on the beach.
Finally, everybody left one by one as it got late. We said goodbye and got into our gorgeous beds of which we each had our own, and which were not air mattresses, tent floors or couches. It was a good day.
If you’re interested, check out the band at www.pamyua.com
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