{"id":45605,"date":"2019-03-30T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/this-nashville-singer-songwriter-cant-stop-coming-to-alaska\/"},"modified":"2019-03-30T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T11:00:00","slug":"this-nashville-singer-songwriter-cant-stop-coming-to-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/this-nashville-singer-songwriter-cant-stop-coming-to-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"This Nashville singer-songwriter can&#8217;t stop coming to Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t<p>Tim Easton&rsquo;s music might make the most sense bouncing off boot-worn, whiskey-soaked wooden floors, but Wednesday it will feel at home among occasionally soda-speckled tile and an overstuffed sofa.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>The Nashville singer-songwriter will bring his lean and bluesy brand of roots music to the Gold Town Theater 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 3, for his first Juneau concert in about four years.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>While he hasn&rsquo;t been in the capital city for a while, Easton is a regular performer in Alaska. He has played eight straight Salmonfests in the Kenai Peninsula and in the past has performed at a handful of Alaska Folk Festivals, too.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jee3t3I4o7I\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to Alaska every year several years in a row now,&rdquo; Easton said during an interview with the Capital City Weekly. &ldquo;I am here now in the Southeast part of Alaska in order to teach a songwriting class in Ketchikan, and I figured while I was in the neighborhood I might as well come and play Juneau on my way north to continue a small tour. The shorter answer is (I&rsquo;m here) because I love it here. I would tour here three times a year if I could.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>&ldquo;The whole entire music business was looking at me when I was first working with record deals and what not, and they kept asking me why do you go to Alaska?&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;I just had a different plan, a different desire when it came to being a troubadour.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-attachment in-story\"><a href='https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1-.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" src=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1-.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"Tim Easton is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, but he&#146;s been performing in Southeast Alaska for years. Wednesday, April 3, he&#146;ll play a show at the Gold Town Theater. (Courtesy Photo | For Tim Easton)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1-.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1--300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1--1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1--640x427.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1--1200x800.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/16147228_web1_EastonPressPhoto--1--1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1199px) 98vw, 1200px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"p-exclude\">Tim Easton is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, but he&rsquo;s been performing in Southeast Alaska for years. Wednesday, April 3, he&rsquo;ll play a show at the Gold Town Theater. (Courtesy Photo | For Tim Easton)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t<p>Easton took some time ahead of his concert to talk to the Capital City Weekly about what it&rsquo;s like to be an independent singer-songwriter in the home of corporate country, why he keeps dependably schlepping out to musical outposts and what he listens to on sunny spring days.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>For people who haven&rsquo;t been to a Tim Easton show before, what can they expect?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>A good amount of variation and song styles, some stories and hopefully laughter and a way to escape the day-to-day doldrums of the news.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong> What&rsquo;s in like being an independent artist in what I think of the as the corporate headquarters of the music industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>I am an anomaly in Nashville, and nobody is going to accuse me of not straying from the beaten path. I tend to tour off the beaten path, and play in towns that people don&rsquo;t consider to be the main destinations for performing arts. I tend to gravitate closer to where the fishing is good, too.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>I&rsquo;ve lived in cities nobody would consider a destination, and when people &mdash; almost anybody &mdash; came through, people would turn out to support them. They&rsquo;re almost art-starved, so that makes sense to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>I&rsquo;ve lived in huge cities. I&rsquo;ve lived in LA, New York, Paris, London, Tokyo through my life and now today I prefer the towns in the country because that&rsquo;s where I believe real stories are happening. I love to read small town newspapers. I did my time in Hollywood, I prefer reality now.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>I&rsquo;m a record fiend, I couldn&rsquo;t help but notice you&rsquo;ve got records available through your website. What are the logistics of putting out physical media in that format as an independent artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Well, because of the vinyl resurgence, it&rsquo;s easier to get vinyl printed today. There are more manufacturers of vinyl today than there were 20 years ago. The difficulty comes in transporting it. I have a suitcase full of vinyl that&rsquo;s 50 pounds easy when I start the tour and hopefully doesn&rsquo;t weight anything when I finish the tour, which it usually is. I&rsquo;m not saying it&rsquo;s a big seller out there, but it&rsquo;s taken over for CDs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><ins>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/hit-records-vinyl-shop-sells-out-fast\/\" target=\"_blank\">Vinyl is resurgent but the pickings are slim and sporadic in Juneau<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>CDs have become more like business cards or beer coasters than actual pieces of art. There&rsquo;s still places like Alaska, Japan, Australia where CDs are still part of the deal, but you find out eventually you&rsquo;re kind of also in the merchandiser business, you&rsquo;re not just in the singer-songwriter business.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>I will say, and I&rsquo;d love you to write about this, for the first time ever I have my debut collection of poetry.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>What&rsquo;s the name of the collection?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>It&rsquo;s called&ldquo;Uncollected Until Now.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s brand new. You have to kind of add to your merch table. Music doesn&rsquo;t cut it anymore. You&rsquo;ve got to have schwag, and this is some highbrow schwag.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>What are you listening to?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>I listen to classical music or jazz, more or less stuff without music, and I read a lot of poetry.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><ins>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/north-pole-high-school-student-wins-state-poetry-contest\/\" target=\"_blank\">North Pole student advances to national poetry contest<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>Any reason in particular?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>I don&rsquo;t really need to hear any other troubadour&rsquo;s rumblings. You might as well put in parentheses P.S. I am old. I will scan the classic rock and low-on-the-dial NPR stations every place I go. I&rsquo;m a huge radio fan.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>You&rsquo;re coming up here at a pretty sun-kissed time, you have any favorite <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jHYYx0Ge3dc\" target=\"_blank\">warm weather tunes<\/a>?<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p>I really tend to listen to old, dead African-American guys. If I&rsquo;m reaching for lyrics, it tends to be old, dead blues guys. It&rsquo;s a way of saying, &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m not a millennial.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>Know &#38; Go<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>What: <\/strong>Tim Easton in concert.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>When: <\/strong>7 p.m., Wednesday, April 3. Doors open at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>Where: <\/strong>Gold Town Theater, 171 Shattuck Way.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><strong>Admission:<\/strong> $15 in advance or $20 at the door. Tickets are available at Rainy Retreat Books.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><hr \/><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><b>\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenHohenstatt.<\/b><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><hr \/><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Easton heads way west. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":45606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[73,555,175],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-45605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-ccw","tag-live-music","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45605"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=45605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}