Shawn Mullins, with his plaid flannel shirts, blue jeans, and acoustic guitar, is the quintessential country rocker. Born in Georgia, Mullins made a career for himself in Adult Top 40. His solo career has enjoyed modest success, most notably with the song "Lullaby" back in 1998. Personally, I think his best musical success was the 2003 collaboration with Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge: The Thorns. That is a fantastic album of vocal harmony masterpieces (Sweet's influence), whose tracks pop up on my playlists all the time. Unfortunately, The Thorns never made it further than a single release.

Chilkoot Charlie's, Anchorage

In 2006, back solo, Mullins released an album called 9th Ward Pickin' Parlor, the title a tribute to the studio in New Orleans where much of it was recorded before Hurricane Katrina washed it away. On it he included a song called "Talkin' Goin' To Alaska Blues," which tells the story of a man seeking a fresh start in the 49th state. The lyrics are filled with a cautious hope and optimism of this new place:

I'm headed to Alaska where a song is still a song
I'm goin' to Alaska where there's air still left to breathe
I'm goin' to Alaska to a good size little town

I mean, why else would someone want to go to Alaska? It's cold and dark (at least in the winter) and the most sparsely populated state in America. What does it have to offer other than fresh air, isolation, and the ability to commune with nature on a daily basis?

In 2017, my wife and I moved to Alaska. It is pure, untouched, and borderline holy. Alaska is the mountains, the rivers, the lakes, the forests, the glaciers, and the tundra. It's kayaking, camping, hiking, climbing, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, dogsledding, hunting, and ice fishing.

Most communities in Alaska are made up of 500 or fewer citizens, most of which are Native Americans (commonly referred to as Eskimos, but, more accurately, Yupik, Aleut, and Inupiat). The villages don't have paved roads. Why? Because there aren't any cars. You can't drive in and out of these towns. They are located in the "bush," which means that the only way in and out is on a small puddle-jumper airplane (like Cessnas). Sure, when the nearby rivers freeze over for the winter (usually in early December and not thawing out until March or April) one could snowmobile from village to village; however, rivers are hardly roads.

California transplants in Anchorage. Photo: Stephanie Pedersen

Village life is like traveling in time back into the 19th century. There are few modern conveniences: cell phone and wireless internet service is spotty and slow. Hot running water often comes into the house filled with dirt and muck. Yes, we have heat and electricity. Our town has a school and a post office. There's even a small general store featuring dry goods, food items, and assorted bric-a-brac (all of which is marked up between 300%-400% of their market value). Food shopping is done online; I spend $200 a shot and have to order from Alaska grocery stores or Amazon and have the goods shipped in. Getting mail is an event here, reminiscent of The Music Man's "Wells Fargo Wagon" tune:

O-ho the Bering Airline Shipment is-a comin' down the gravel runway
Please let it be for me...

The townsfolk use handheld VHF radios to communicate when the mail shipments are arriving, and then they line up their four-wheelers (locally called Hondas even if they're Toyotas, Nissans, or other brands) to pick up their eagerly awaited cargo.

When he wrote the song, Mullins hadn't set foot in Alaska, but was about to: He composed the lyric on his flight over. What he imagined synced pretty well with what he saw when he got there. "Anchorage was an especially wild place," he told Songfacts. "It seems like a lot of people are there because they're running from something in their past, and that's what I got from it."

Particularly wild was the first place he played there: Chilkoot Charlie's, known locally as Koot's. Established in 1970, it's a piano bar, a honky-tonk, a pick-up joint, and a dance club all in one, as Mullins discovered.

"It can get kind of rough in there at times," he said. "But during my show it became this cool listening room - I don't know how, but it did. People were seated and listened and it was nice. I remember the next night, I sat in with a cover band that plays there - I think I played Friday night and then they were playing Saturday night, so I sat in with them and sang some stuff with those guys. They were doing Bad Company covers and just getting the crowd going. It's a cool place - I've played there a couple of times since. It was a wilder venue than I typically play, but I liked it a lot."

~ Justin Novelli
August 31, 2021
Chilkoot Charlie's photos provided by the venue Talkin' Goin' To Alaska Blues Songfacts
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