As the Covid pandemic eases a bit, people are finding live music back at the clubs.
Tonight, Cousin Curtiss, a former high school teacher from Juneau, will be hitting Alice’s Champagne Restaurant with his “roots stomp” band.
“And then if they look at me with that curious dog look, when they don't really know what it is that I said, I try to describe it as though blues and bluegrass had a baby. And I think that's about as apt as I can get to it,” Curtiss said. “It is a bit of a genre on its own but it's a simplistic four on the floor, get people dancing and I'll make sure that everybody is having just as much fun as we are on stage. Really try to play music that's rooted in blues for the most part but played at bluegrass speed.”
You can hear a sample of his music linked above.
Curtiss once taught at the Tok School and Thunder Mountain High School in Juneau, but he’s now based in Colorado.
“Any chance that I can get to come back up to Alaska for a couple of weeks and play as many shows as humanly possible bouncing around the state, that's the chance that I'll seize,” he said. “So this current run, you know up for 10 days, playing eight shows more or less in a row, and just feeling so very fortunate to be back out on the road and doing what we love to do and sharing it with everybody we love.”
Curtiss says his band follows whatever Covid mitigation procedures each venue has in place, be it proof of vaccinations, masks or reduced capacity.
“If people want to come, they can come. If they’d rather not, I try to record all the live shows and make it available for free so that people can listen to it as though they were there,” he said. “But yeah, I think in this time, I think it's important just that everybody does what feels right by them and if we can just be a medium of the music in the corner, that’s a win-win in my book.”
Cousin Curtiss and his roots-stomp band will be performing at Alice’s Champagne Palace tonight only. Give the venue a call to get details.
