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—October 4th, 2002—
Hookslide in Alaska!

Anchorage, AK

Alright, our second tour!! When we were offered the chance to go do a show in Alaska, we gave the only possible answer: "Let me find my winter jacket!" That was four months ago, and after we decided to do it, it became kind of unreal. We'd tell people: "We're going to Alaska in October!" and it was the kind of thing we didn't really believe, like when you tell people that your uncle was a direct descendent of Abraham Lincoln, or that you don't snore. But this time, it was true: We really were going to Alaska in October! (ba de ya...)

It was Thursday, October 3, and we were all incredibly exhausted. We had just had our 100th show the previous night at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, so we were nice and sleepy on Thursday. Luckily, we had a plan. The plan was to meet at the airport at 5:00 for our 7:15 flight, arrive in Anchorage at 12:15pm, and go to sleep to prepare for Friday's big show.

We all arrived separately, Paul and Mayank in one car, George in another, and Jon and his wife Ryan were dropped off by a third. This was perfect, as it created a classic Hookslidian coordination problem when at 4:30pm, on our way to the airport for the 7:15 flight, we received a phone message that (you guessed it) our flight had been cancelled, and that they wanted to put us on an earlier flight, that would get there just as obnoxiously late as the other flight. Sounds like a fair trade...but to make the 5:42 flight, including time to get re-ticketed and all that, we all had no choice but to park in short-term parking. For those of you wondering how airports make their money, other than those "airport tax" fees that appear on your plane ticket charges, short term parking is the answer.

Anyway, after much hustle we got on the plane. Back row...AGAIN!!! We're really trying to figure out why everyone always puts Hookslide in the back row of airplanes. I'm sure the flight attendants are all in on it: "Hey, guys, here comes a vocal band." "Is the back row open?" "Yeah, I'll stick them there." The seats don't recline; it's noisy; it's uncomfortable. Luckily that was only until Portland, where we ate and talked on cellphones until it was time to catch the flight to Anchorage. It was then that we discovered that there was a huge Barbershop competition in Anchorage the same weekend!! It was pretty difficult not to make this discovery at this point -- many more than 16 barbershop singers in an airport are pretty hard to miss, and when they all got on the same plane as us, well, at least if the wings were to fall off, we knew the overtones would keep us afloat!

And then, at 1:00am local time, we were in ALASKA. Alaska's one of those words that is in everyone's vocabulary and has a certain meaning, but when you begin to experience it first-hand, the meaning goes out the window -- like "cheesecake." We all know what a cheesecake is, and some of us even could describe how to make one, but it's all meaningless once that first bit of cheesecake is sitting on your tongue, melting slowly but richly....

But we digress. Alaska is not really like cheesecake, but it is clear at once that it is a truly incredible place, even in the big city of Anchorage. Hard to explain; just go there. Upon our arrival, we met our soundman David Anderson, and our contact from the University of Alaska at Anchorage (UAA), John. John ROCKED. Not only was he at the airport at 1:00am to pick us up, he was awake and HILARIOUS. He had the biggest van I've ever seen (the Funk Van?), and we packed ourselves and our sound equipment into it and John drove us to our hotel. He'd already checked us in, so we didn't even have to wait in line behind the throngs of barbershoppers making up tags to exemplify such activities as checking in....

That night was extraordinarily comfortable and much too short. To drum up publicity for our concert, we had decided to go to two morning radio shows and do interviews. This was a good idea, especially considering the fact that we were way outnumbered by the harmony-inducing barbershop crowd, who had their first round of competition on the same night as our concert (Friday). Also, our co-performers, Marcoux Corner (that's Mar-coo corner, and despite what they say, it does NOT mean "moose droppings") from Minnesota had worked a 14-hour day on Thursday drumming up publicity for the show, so we owed it to them to at least do something!! So, at 7:30am we headed to the first radio station, "Magic." There we met April and Marcus (who, despite the fact that he was wearing a football jersey that said "Allen" on the back, was NOT Marcus Allen), who were so incredibly friendly and...AWAKE!!!...that we were bound to have a great day, coffee or not! After that, we headed around the corner (literally -- there were a multitude of radio stations all in one building; it was wild!) to KGOT (which for you Bay Area people is French for KGO). There we met Scott and Stu, at their Morning Zoo! They were fun guys, though we were once again forced once again to lie about the origin of our name. Everyone, repeat after me: It's a TYPE OF MUSHROOM!

Then, off to the concert hall. While George and David worked on getting the sound set up, we met the guys from Marcoux Corner. What amazingly talented and nice people!! Some people just give that vibe of being really great people and comfortable to be around as soon as you meet them; that's how Kevin, Josh, Brent and Eric came off immediately. Unfortunately, because Josh's Brazilian/Minnesotan accent throo us for a looop, we couldn't understand anything he said all weekend, but I think we foooled him by smiling and nodding a lot.

After our sound checks, we had a promotional concert to try to convince a bunch of Jr. High and High School students to come to the big concert. We did a couple of songs, introduced ourselves, and then took a few questions and tried to answer them. Most of them were pointed at Jon and how he does his thing -- it's funny, no matter how many times the rest of us hear his explanation, and no matter how accurately he describes the phenomenon that is himself, it still doesn't really make sense. It's like cheesecake. And then, we tried something rather unique: We took their arrangement of Mustang Sally, and our arrangement of Mustang Sally, and put them together. And it WORKED -- the result was a ridiculously energetic WALL of sound, two great soloists, great bass, great percussion, and a house that was truly rocked.

After tweaking the sound some more and checking again, we finally had lunch at about 4:30pm, and slept for 1/2 hour before getting dressed and heading back to the concert hall. By the start of the show at 7:30pm, there were 800 people in the audience, who created a most deafening roar the moment we stepped on stage. It was just one of those moments: With an audience like that, every note you sing is perfect, every dance move you do is hot, every joke you make is hilarious. We flew through a 45 minute set in what seemed like about 7 minutes (we actually stuck to the set list, which was lucky since we had the awesome ASL interpreter Sue at our side), and then headed to the CD table when intermission started.

Ryan had volunteered to take care of our CD sales, but she had no idea what she was in for. When we got to the CD table, it was totally packed. Ten minutes into the intermission, we had to run and get our backup reserve of CDs because they were moving so fast. It was scary and very cool. And then, Marcoux Corner took the stage and the crowd once again went totally nuts. We were still in recovery mode, but we could hear the screaming and cheering from the crowd as we sat backstage, trying to return to some sort of reality. And then it was time for the encore: A huge, overwhelming rendition of Mustang Sally that we and the audience danced all the way through!

It was an absolutely incredible experience to sing with those guys, for that audience. For the rest of the weekend, we just relaxed. Some of us went camping, others went on a cruise among the fjords, and others hiked up to the snow and partway up the foot of a glacier. Kevin left us to go hang with his sister -- we were offended but we played it off. We're very talented actors. Everywhere we went, people recognized us; probably the funniest example of this was when Eric and Mayank had hiked ahead on their way to the base of a glacier, and came across two people who had set up tents and were clearly camping there. Eric joked, "Can we stay the night?" and their response was, "Only if you sing us a song!" Unbelievable. Like cheesecake. We, um, refrained, and instead went to explore the ice caves formed by the motion of the glacier. We then hiked up to a small peak, and formed what could be called an A Cappella Summit (heh heh). On the way down, Eric the low bass unfortunately suffered a broken leg, but his cries for help (which we couldn't hear) started an avalanche, so we had to leave him there with David, who had foolishly tried to help him.

The weekend culminated in a loud, raucous dinner at the Glacier Brewhouse, fortunately in their private room (where David and Eric miraculously reappeared!) We were really LOUD. After a bit of convincing (only a little bit, of course) we ended the evening by inviting the service staff in, and serenading our waitress with (one more time!!) a most kicking version of Mustang Karen!

And then we flew home. When we got to the Anchorage airport, there were the last of the remaining barbershop quartets heading out after their weekend of harmony, and we convinced them to let us take our picture with them as a keepsake. Another keepsake: A review of the concert!