{"id":94253,"date":"2023-01-03T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/gold-street-music-returns-home\/"},"modified":"2023-01-04T14:29:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T23:29:22","slug":"gold-street-music-returns-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/gold-street-music-returns-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold Street Music returns home"},"content":{"rendered":"
Gold Street Music concerts, a 20-year tradition, not only returns this month to Juneau, but it’s also returning to its original venue, the Church of Holy Trinity.<\/p>\n
Co-founder Mike Truax said that while working through the process of resurrecting the popular series from pre-pandemic times, the only thing that he’s noticed has changed is the amount of talented musicians around town.<\/p>\n
“Juneau in general, as far as musical talent, has really expanded,” Truax said. “There’s a lot of really talented musicians in Juneau, we have a much bigger crowd of talented people to choose from than we did when we first started.”<\/p>\n
With the last performance taking place in March 2020, Gold Street Music concerts are now returning at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday after a three-year hiatus during the pandemic. For roughly 20 years prior, once a month from October to March, a small group of volunteers put together showcases of local music the first Saturday each month with five acts each varying in notoriety and each performing 20-minute sets, a format that co-organizer Riley Woodford said they’ve intentionally stuck with.<\/p>\n
“We always wanted to have a mix of experienced people that will be a draw as well as some people that don’t get a lot of chances to play out, maybe they don’t play in bars or they write songs and they want a venue where they can go out and play some of their new original songs,” Woodford said. “So, we’ve always tried to have it be a mix of those two things and that’s what we tried to stay true to in bringing it back, as well.”<\/p>\n
Truax along with co-founder Debby Johnson, are joined by Mark Heard and Woodford for this most recent iteration. Truax, a musician in his own right, has been playing music in Juneau since 1975 and was good friends with well-known local folk musician Buddy Tabor, who Truax said, along with Elva Bontrager were the true brains behind the operation.<\/p>\n
“The main thing that started this was that Elva and Buddy decided they wanted some kind of venue where people like them could play and people who were just not professionals or performing publicly where they could get a chance to play in front of people because with folks music, you just can’t quite do that at a bar because everyone is there to talk or dance more than listen typically,” Truax said.<\/p>\n