EP 97 Telling Alaska’s story with Mr. Whitekeys

I don't have a legacy i mean i'm i'm just you know again just just a guy looking for a good time and you know and a cheap laugh and uh you know i mean but the legacy would be to tell alaska's story And, you know, whether that was through the fly-by nightclub and the whale fat follies, there was Alaska's story in all that.

There's Alaska's story in the voyage of the Alaska Union, the story of this, you know, Gold Rush expedition. I mean, it's, it's, that's it. It's, it's telling Alaska's story and, you know, trying to allow people to just have a good time. You know, there's really nothing wrong. More or less, you know, nothing planned, no, no, you know, evil scheme. It's just having a good time. And, you know, you get to do that. You should have a good time. That's why you're on earth.

That was Mr. White Keys. And for over 50 years, he's been entertaining Alaska with his music, his shows, and his books. He started playing music in Anchorage in the 1970s at Chilkoot Charlies. In those days, the bars didn't close until 5 a.m., so a band could play for as long as 7.5 hours, from 9 p.m. to 4.30 a.m. Keyes says that for a musician, it wasn't about the entertainment. It was an endurance contest.

From those years spent playing at Coots, he learned how to read an audience, to understand what entertains them. Then, in 1980, he opened the Fly-By-Night Club. It featured long-running shows that parodied Alaska, like the Whale Fat Follies and Christmas in Spenard. They had original songs, costumes, props, sets, and slideshows. You could even get a meal of spam there. The goal was to provide Anchorage with a cheap laugh, some infectious music, and a good time.

Alaska, as it existed in the 70s, continues to influence Keyes' idea of Alaska. There was a renegade spirit to it back then, he says, and there wasn't much influence from the outside. There were no food chains, no big box stores, and people lived how they wanted to live. That's why he came to Alaska, and he never left. It was unpretentious, just like Keyes. In fact, at one point, he had a rule that he would never go to any entertainment-related event if they didn't serve nachos.

So he laughs when asked what he thinks his legacy will be, because he's just a normal guy looking for a good time, not someone to be put on a pedestal. But he says if he did have one, if he did have a legacy, it would be that he spent his life telling Alaska's story. So here he is, Mr. White Keys. Welcome to Chatter Marks. A podcast of the Anchorage Museum. Dedicated to exploring Alaska and the circumpolar north. through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present, and future.

Music.

So, Keyes, you're currently working on a book about the fly-by-night. What's that been like, you know, to sit down and piece together all that time? Well, that project has been going on for many years. And it's just astounding because, you know, when you think about spending every night in a sleazy bar in Spenard.

For 25 years and every night was total insanity you never knew what was going to happen from one minute to the next and you know and and i can't remember 90 of it um you know so i've been talking to everybody that i knew and everybody that worked there and everybody i run into You know, I mean, what do you remember about this? And it's just astounding the stuff that happened in that building. But again, it was 25 years worth of craziness.

Yeah. And it was just, I mean, and it had a mind of its own. You couldn't control it. It was just, it was life in Spenard. And so it's just totally a treat to go into this and find stuff that I'd forgotten, stuff I never knew about that I'd hear from other people. I mean, it was just, yeah, it was just, it's incredible. Yeah. What kind of stories have come out in those interviews? Well, okay. For instance, I ran into this one lady who was a great waitress and she was with us for a long time.

But what I asked her was something I thought about and I'd been asking a lot of people. Okay, in every business, no matter what business it is, in every business, There are things that the staff knows that they will never, ever tell the boss. Okay. There's a dividing line, even up to, up to the general manager, there are things that he will never tell the boss. I mean, it's, there's a dividing line there.

So I asked this particular lady, I said, well, you know, I mean, you worked there for a long time and, you know, it's been over 20 years. The statute of limitations is gone.

So what was something that you guys all knew that you would never tell me? You would never tell the boss. She didn't bat an eye. She just immediately said, oh, you mean when the waitresses would sit around in the circle on the ladies' room floor and snort cocaine? I mean, you know, you don't tell the boss that. But, you know, they can do it now. Yeah. What did you think of that? Well, I mean, it's totally hilarious, you know? And I mean, I, of course, knew that that was happening.

I didn't know it was happening on the ladies' room floor with the waitresses sitting in a circle on the floor, you know? But, you know, it was, you know, we knew what was happening there. I mean, those were the days. Yeah. You know, there's a, there's a lady that I know who is an astounding artist. Okay. I mean, she's one of the greatest artists in Alaska and back in the seventies, uh, she in the early eighties, she got a commission from a bank, one of the big major banks in Anchorage.

To do a bunch of artwork for their lobby and their corporate offices and stuff. And so she worked on this and she did all the artwork. And then when she came in and presented it to them and they saw it and said, oh, this is fabulous. One of the vice presidents of the bank took her aside and said, would you like to be paid in cash or cocaine? I mean, that was the seventies. That was the eighties in Anchorage. I mean, that's, that was what was going on. Yeah. Yeah.

You said that every night was total insanity at the fly-by night. What did you mean by that from your perspective? Well, it was just that things were going on that, you know, you could never imagine. I mean, and it would just, stuff would come up out of the blue and you never had any idea what it was going to be.

Um, you know, they're, uh, I called a plumber, um, here just a couple of years ago, my furnace went out and I called this plumber and I had never had this plumber here before. And he came and he fixed it. And, uh, and, and he, and, and, and he said, you know, he says, I'm going to tell you that, you know, I just, uh. I had a night that I can't even believe in the fly-by-night club. I had met this woman.

And so I asked her out and it was our first date. And, uh, we went to the fly-by-night club and we sat right there on the, in a close to the front row, second row on the dance floor and a table. And he said, I, you know, I don't know what happened. You know, I, I hadn't eaten a lot that day and I'd, I'd been feeling a little ill, but not bad.

And, and, uh, you know, I, I didn't have a lot to drink. I mean, I had ordered a beer and drunk maybe a third of it and, uh, you know, I had some nachos and then just keeled over and passed out on the dance floor. And, and I remember that night, I, I, because that hadn't happened very many times, you know?

And so this guy passed out and we stopped the show and we called the paramedics and they came and got him and said, oh yeah, he's pretty good, but we'll take him to the hospital and get him, you know, checked out. Yeah. So, okay, so this is the first date that he had with this woman, and he never had a second date with her.

But then just, you know, it just so happened that I think I got charged triple for the plumbing bill when he fixed my furnace, because he'd been waiting 25 years to get back at me for passing out on his first date on the dance floor of the Fly By Nightclub.

How often does that happen you know where you encounter someone that you know recognizes you because you're a very recognizable person but then also connects you with the fly by night and you know they tell you a story about what happened to them there or what it meant to them oh it happens all the time you know it totally happens all the time and i'm never really sure whether any of it's true or not, you know, but, but, you know, that's how they remember it. yeah.

What stories, you know, as you're putting this book together, were you personally able to remember? Oh, I mean, I remember a million of them, but, you know, again, other people remember even more. So it's, you know, there is, you know, I can't even begin to tell you how many stories there were. There was one occasion where a, uh.

A certain musician who will remain nameless, um, in town was, uh, playing at the fly by nightclub and he, um, and he'd been fooling around with this gorgeous blonde woman who was also the girlfriend of a immensely huge Samoan bouncer. Okay. All right. So he went into the men's room, the musician went in the men's room one night and he came out of the men's room and he bumped into the bouncer who was on his way into the men's room who picked him up. I mean, it was like a cartoon.

The guy just grabbed his shirt around the collar and lifted the guy off the ground and held him up in the air. And, you know, I think, I don't know actually if he slapped him or, or just read him the riot act and put him down. And the musician then came out and told me that this was my fault because he was going to the bathroom so that he could empty his bladder and not have to leave the stage on a break. And he would be able to play longer sets without a break in order to help me out.

And it was my fault that he had gone to the bathroom and gotten beat up by the bouncer for fooling around with the guy's girlfriend. You know, that's the kind of reasoning that happens at sleazy bars. Was there ever a point where you, um, maybe weren't so proud or maybe hesitant about claiming the sleazy bar tagline? Oh, I don't think so. Okay. Okay. I mean, we called it the way we saw it.

I mean, that was one of the opening lines in advertising for the Fly-By-Night Club when we opened it in 1980 from the beginning. It was just what Anchorage needs, another sleazy bar in Spenard.

How often were you blamed for things that you felt weren't your fault or weren't your responsibility oh every day okay, yeah i mean i i don't you know have anything totally coming to mind here but uh but it did I mean, it, it, it just, you know, it, well, you know, that, that was something that, that happens when you're somewhat well known, you know, is that you find out all these stories. I mean, I, you know, I, um.

I've heard over the years, I've been told that, um, I had another bar in Hawaii, that I had another bar in Palm Springs, that I had one in Arizona, that, uh, I've had a, a, a, a, a house in Hawaii that I spend the entire winter in Hawaii. I mean, none of those are remotely true, but they, you know, they, they are out there and I get told that all the time. I mean. What's that like hearing those things about yourself where, you know, maybe they're blatantly untrue.

Do you feel like they're malicious or maybe that they're fitting with, you know, your brand of humor, the brand of humor that was seen at the fly by night? Well, yeah, no, I, it's, it's just, it's, it's always hilarious to me to hear these stories, you know? So I mean, so I wish all of them were true, but they're not. Okay.

Okay. So in 2006, when you sold the fly by night, did you expect the new owners to keep the menu and also keep the shows running? Oh, absolutely not. No, I, I didn't sell the fly by night club. Okay. Um, no, I didn't sell the fly by night club and, uh, you know, I, I didn't own the building. I mean, that, uh, you know, so they just, uh, they got to, uh, take that over from them. I, I, I believe I sold them the liquor license, um, which was in mortgage hock up to my ears anyway.

So I didn't get any money from that, but, but I just, I just sold them a bunch of used restaurant equipment and, uh, you know, they, they took over and, uh, there were some things We took anything that was remotely personal out of the place and a lot of stuff that was, you know, sort of our signature stuff, but they didn't get the menu. They didn't get the name. They didn't get anything. They took it over.

And it was, uh, it was sort of, I was sort of disappointed because, uh, they, the first guys that took it over who will remain nameless, um, you know, ran the worst bar on the face of the earth. You know, it was, it's, you know, in order to succeed at anything, um, and we'll, we'll, you know, take the bar business for instance. I mean, you've got to do something better than your competition. Okay. and there are only certain things you can do in the bar business.

I mean, you're selling drinks, you're selling beer, you're selling wine, you're selling food. You've got entertainment that might be a DJ, it might be karaoke, it might be bands. So there are only a certain number of things that you can do. And this place purported to be a sports bar, but they had three TV screens instead of the competition around town that has 20.

And they had a food menu that included hot dogs and frozen hamburgers from Costco that just got pulled out of the freezer and thrown on the grill. And the beer selection was exactly what happened to be on sale from the liquor distributors. Okay. And, you know, and even the karaoke, they had a karaoke night. And the karaoke night, they didn't even put on stage where you could put, you know, a red light on somebody.

They set up a karaoke machine, you know, sort of up between a couple of tables on the little balcony and, you know, somebody would just get up and go up there and stand next to a table and sing, you know, they weren't even on stage. I mean, so I was, I was sort of disappointed that, you know, what we had done had been, uh, and all of a sudden changed to the same building to the lowest possible common denominator of the bar and restaurant business.

It sounds like the, um, maybe monotonous or maybe that it was kind of homogenized to be just like any other, you know, chain restaurant, um. Stuck with you. You know, that was a point that you weren't happy with because you come from such a creative space, you know, this, this club, the fly by night, you made it into this very, you, you know, and all the people, other people that were involved made it into this very creative, specifically Alaskan thing. Does that sound about right?

Well, yeah, to some extent, let's see, the difference was that bars and nearly every bar anywhere, but especially in Alaska, are in the alcohol business. Their job is to sell drinks, okay? And they're using music and entertainment in order to sell more drinks. The only point of the entertainment is that it sells more drinks. If it doesn't sell more drinks, they're not going to do it. Okay.

Okay. Because I'm a musician, the Fly By Night Club was a place where we were in the music and entertainment business, and we were selling alcohol in order to pay for that. And so it was the opposite approach of what virtually anybody else has ever done, you know, in Alaska. There are maybe a couple of places over the years that have, uh, that have done that, but not very many. And, uh, yeah, and there, and there's a reason that people don't do that.

And that's because it's not as profitable as running a place where you're selling alcohol and using entertainment to boost the sales. Um, it it's, it's, uh, it's, it's the opposite approach. So yeah, I mean, that's, that's where I sort of come from. And, and the thing that was very cool about the fly by nightclub.

Was that, you know, before that I was playing music, uh, you know, in bars around town at night and I was working in the advertising business and, uh, during the daytime and, uh, you know, doing artwork and stuff. And all of a sudden I wound up by chance in a place where I got to do all that stuff, but it all applied to the end product, which was the fly by nightclub.

So, so all the things that I could do, you know, were all focused and zeroed in on making this, you know, a weird little sleazy bar in Spenard. And that was, you know, what the, what the fun part was. Yeah. Do you eat spam? Um, well, sure. I mean, you have to eat spam. I mean, I have to admit, I haven't had any in a little while. I haven't had any in a little while. And I actually have a can in my cupboard. Really? Okay. Still that I have had for quite a while. That's not spam.

I mean, there were also a lot of, you know, knockoffs. There were fake spam products by different companies. There was Treat and, you know, several different brands. But I found a brand of halal spam, uh, in, in a, uh, you know, the halal store here in Anchorage and I had to buy it. I mean, I, and, and, but I still have not, I have not eaten it. I have not cooked it. It's still in the can, in the cupboard. But one of these days, that's, that's the one I've got to try.

Did you have a favorite spam dish that was on the fly by night menu? Thank you. Oh, I don't think I had a favorite, uh, you know, and, and it was, you know, we, we, every time we had a dish that was, you know, really astounding that, uh, that came out of the kitchen, um, you know, then we, we asked ourselves, well, can we also do this with spam?

So, you know, we had coconut beer battered shrimp and this was way back, um, you know, I think in the eighties when, uh, before coconut beer battered shrimp was a thing. And it was just a coming out and, you know, we used a New Orleans recipe and Paul Prudhomme's dipping sauce and, you know, famous chefs. And we put this together. We had to hand bread it because it was new enough that nobody was making pre-programmed, pre-processed, frozen coconut beer batter shrimp like they do today.

You had to make your own. So when we made that, you know, we said, well, why don't we do coconut beer batter spam? I mean, we've got the powder, we got the coconut, we got the sauce. It's all right here. Instead of dipping shrimp in the sauce and what we can just dip chunks of spam. And so we always tried to do something, you know, with spam when we had a great recipe that, uh, that lent itself to that. There was also the spam version. Mm-hmm.

After you left the fly by night after that wasn't a thing anymore you continued to perform and do shows what was that like well it was great i mean it was really cool um because uh you know during that period, which lasted, uh, you know, eight or nine years, um, we had some incredible people that came through in the cast.

I mean, the final cast that we had with, uh, Cameron Morrison and, uh, Regina, um, was just, you know, I mean, it was an astounding combination of people and it It was, it was just great. And it was also extremely cool to be able to go and do the show and not have to worry about if the dishwasher was working or if we were, you know, if we were out of spam or if we were, you know, out of, out of sour cream and have to stop and run there or the ice machine broke down. None of that was my problem.

All we had to do was do the show. And that was the real treat. I mean, that was what was just, you know, just very cool. Yeah. Yeah, the plays you put together...

Feel to me you know provocative goofy satirical what's usually your intention, or your goal with a play oh we're just looking for a cheap laugh okay you know okay, i mean that's you know that that's that's just what it is i mean we're we're looking to have a good time ourselves and uh keep ourselves totally amused and uh you know laughing all the time and, have that spread to the audience.

But, you know, I mean, mainly it was just, you know, it was to keep ourselves, you know, keep ourselves laughing. And so that was why, you know, I mean, the show would, I mean, it was every show was pretty much standard, but it would change from night to night as, you know, anybody just happened to throw in a line or ad lib something that, you know, and anything could happen from there. And so it was always It's just, yeah, just a real treat to be able to do that.

Has anything from maybe your childhood or adulthood been an inspiration to you? You know, I think when I think back about it now, you know, after years and years, I'm really convinced that one of the biggest inspirations of the entire Fly By Night Club and everything I was doing before that. Although I never quite realized at the time, was this incredible kids show that was on TV in Phoenix, Arizona. And when I was a kid, I grew up in Phoenix as much as I have grown up.

And there was a TV show that was the longest running local show in television history. I mean, this thing ran for 30 or 35 years. It was called the Wallace and Ladmo show. And Wallace and Ladmo were two guys that had an afternoon kids show at four o'clock in the afternoon, every day of the week. And they'd play Popeye cartoons and Daffy Duck cartoons. But then in between, they would do bits.

And they had these two characters, Wallace and Ladmo. And then they had a third guy, Pat McMahon, who played various characters. He did a superhero, Captain Super, who wore leotards with football shoulder pads underneath them. And he did a little old lady, Aunt Maude, and a Wild West guy, Marshall Good. And he did Gerald, who was the spoiled brat son of the station owner. And so these guys would do these bits. And then they had a band that was...

Did parodies and uh of various things it was uh the mike candelo combo they weren't on every day but you know once or twice a week they'd be on and they did um within weeks of the beatles sergeant pepper release they released a thing in phoenix called commodore candelo salt river navy band okay and it was and and so these guys were doing this kid show that was sort of like bull Winkle in that it was a kid's show purportedly,

but really kids never got half the stuff because it was aimed for adults. Okay. So these guys were a staple in Phoenix. Now, if you look at what guys have taken rock and roll and added theater and comedy and parody and satire to it. You get Alice Cooper, who grew up in Phoenix watching Wallace and Ladmo. Okay. You have The Tubes, who grew up in Phoenix and were watching Wallace and Ladmo. Okay. And I was there watching Wallace and Ladmo. Steven Spielberg was there watching Wallace and Ladmo.

I mean, all these guys watched this show and diverged in their own way. I mean, they all took elements of this whole crazy thing that these guys were doing and modified them to what they were doing. And, you know, I did too. And, you know, so, I mean, these guys were a major force in sort of developing the idea of rock and roll theater around the country. Is that... What you feel like you were creating, rock and roll theater?

Well, yeah. I mean, we were rock and roll. We were a rock and roll band. You know, we played blues and rock and roll and dance music and everything else. But we always did that even before the Fly By Night Club, before the shows. We did that interspersed with just funny songs that we liked. You know, there were some old things going back to the 30s with Homer and Jethro and played by a rock and roll band. I mean, you know, we would, we would do all this.

So we were, we were basically a rock and roll band that was doing stuff that kept us laughing. Yeah. And we just expanded that, you know, I mean, to costumes and, uh, you know, and, uh, props and sets and the, uh, and the slideshow.

And, uh, yeah, we expanded that, but yeah, I mean, you said inspiration and it, it was interesting because everything i've ever done has you know just basically been chance i mean it's just something happens and you know you you just you roll with it and i mean that's what happened with this uh with the gold rush book that i wrote here uh you know in the last couple years and it was it was just total chance that i just happened to run into this guy that i knew who had his His grandfather

had been up here in the 1898 gold rush, and his grandfather carried a 40-pound camera with him everywhere he went for two years in the gold rush in 1898. Took all these photographs, and they'd been sitting for 120 years in my friend's basement. Nobody had ever seen them. And, you know, I, I saw, heard that, you know, I just, I'd known this guy for six years and, you know, he'd never mentioned that, you know, this, anything about his grandfather.

And then one day he did and I said, what, are you kidding me? You've got this stuff. And, you know, I, and I said, you know, he told me about the photographs. I said, oh, have you ever seen them? And he said, well, yeah, they're in a big old box in my basement. And, you know, so we went over there and looked at him and said, gee, this is a story of Alaska. because it's got to be preserved. I mean, this is part of our history. It's got to be preserved.

And just from that chance statement that he made about his grandfather. That led me on basically a four-year quest to write this up and publish the photographs and publish, find out about, research the history of this expedition, and now we've got a book. And do you go about writing a book in a similar way as you do doing a play? Well, it's, it's, yeah, it's very simple. It's very similar.

I mean, you know, I mean, you've got the, I mean, you start with the basic material that you've got and then you have to research it. I mean, we, we, we, we do that in the, at the fly by nightclub. I mean, you know, it's important if you're writing a song about moose nugget jewelry, okay? You're going to write a song about moose nugget jewelry. Well, in order to do that, you need to know how many moose there are in Alaska.

You need to find the biologist that has calculated how many times a day a moose poops and how many nuggets it poops each time. And then you need to multiply that out and find out how many nuggets there are per year in Alaska.

And then you multiply, you know, how many tourists come to Alaska and how many of them are going to buy a, you know, I mean, you got to do your research if you want to, if you want to be in the poop business. So, and that's the same thing with, you know, writing a book. And then you take that research and in, you know, in, in terms of the fly by night club and the whale fat follies, you got to make it rhyme, you know, so you got to set it to music.

You got to write the music, but you know, in terms of a book of gold rush photographs and gold rush history, you've got to get the whole history of the expedition. Then you've got to have the photographs and you've got to figure out how the photographs, which photographs match which parts of the, of the, of the story of the expedition. And you put it all together and just eventually you wind up with a book or a song. Yeah.

Yeah. And relating to plays, when did you get the idea to parody Alaska? Well, we've been, Alaska is, is, is parody central. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the, the place is nuts. I mean, they're, they're, it's, it's not operating by anybody else's standards or model. And it's just, you know, everybody here is totally crazy and, but we all know we're crazy. And that's the thing that makes Alaska so cool, is that everybody's in on the joke.

I mean, you know, everybody's up here. The only reason people are up here is either they're running from something, which might be the law or their family or their past, or because they can't make it anywhere else. And you can come up here and get a job knowing nothing about the job, no experience, no talent, you know, no education, and still make more money than you can anywhere else in the country.

And we all know that. And the thing that's cool about Alaskans is that more than any other place I've ever been, Alaskans are willing to laugh at themselves, you know, and, and that's what makes it real cool. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, you just sort of take that, and we always did that.

Even in the early days when we were just playing rock and roll in bars, we'd play, you know, a couple of blues songs and a dance song, and then we'd do some funny song that we had maybe changed the lyrics to and made it apply to Alaska. And so the basis for that was all there before we even started doing the shows at the Fly By Night Club. I mean, we had sort of a background in doing stuff because this is a funny place.

How do you decide if a show would be for tourists and if a show would be for locals? Well, you know, when it started out, it was not for tourists at all. I mean, we never really designed this for tourists. We designed it as an Alaskan show, and it became known well enough that the tourists heard about it and would come to it.

But the main thing that would happen, and the place that we really had, I don't know, the place that we really got on the map about was this idea of your house guests from hell. I mean, every summer, you know, every Alaskan has a house full of people that come up to visit them, you know, and they, you know, eat all your food and drink all your beer and they, you have to do something with them.

And all of a sudden we had something where people could bring their house guests from hell out on the town and not have to entertain them themselves. Okay. Okay. All they had to do was bring them in, sit them down, and we'd take care of it for them. And there was a huge amount of stuff in the show that tourists never got. They didn't understand. They had no idea what we were talking about.

But the people that brought them there that were from Anchorage or from Alaska are sitting there just falling off their chairs. But their house guests have no idea what's going on. Do you think your comedy or your satire has changed over the years? Oh, man. Well, you know, I mean, obviously everything changes. Everything changes. But, you know, it really didn't. You know, I think we got, you know, it was the subject matter always changed because we tried to stay current.

Um, and, uh, you know, and as I look back on, you know, a lot of stuff, I mean, it, it just, it changes so fast that, you know, you look back at stuff and you can't even remember who the people were that you were parodying, you know, 20 years ago. And, and the other thing is, I mean, and it, it has changed so much now that it's really amazing. I've, I've looked at a couple of our older shows here that were not that old, um, that, you know, that go back to maybe, you know, 2017 or 2019.

And I'm just amazed at the stuff that we did. Um, we had Cameron did one of the best Donald Trump's ever. I mean, he had Donald Trump, uh, did it, I think far better than even the guys on Saturday Night Live. I mean, Cameron just nailed it. But I look back at the number of, you can't not do songs about Donald Trump because, I mean, he's in the headlines every day with a whole new...

Take on something. And I look back at it and I mean, I've forgotten 90% of the stuff that Trump had said even, you know, five or six years ago, because he said 30,000 things since then that have knocked those things off the radar. And so you look back and now you go back even farther, you go back, you know, 30 or 40 years in, in the stuff that we were doing.

And again, I mean, And you just have no idea what we were talking about because those issues are gone and, uh, you know, they've been replaced by newer stuff. And so that's what, you know, that's what happens in this, in this sort of, uh, um, the idea of doing parody and comedy and satire is that, uh, you know, stuff just drops off and is totally forgotten. And, uh, you, but you gotta have new stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Is there a show that you're most proud of that you felt just fired on all cylinders? Oh boy. Now I, you know, I can't even begin to answer that. I mean, we did, you know, how many years did we do the, uh, the, the whale fat follies and Christmas in Spenard and, you know, springtime in Spenard and all those.

And, you know, every one of them had just absolutely stellar moments. Um you know i and it it got i mean i think the whole thing got better as as it went on, um because um we were you know we we were constantly learning from what we were doing and we were learning how to push the envelope further and further and uh. So it got the whole shows compared to the first Follies that we did to the last Follies that we did, which is, you know, over a course of 30 years or so, the show got tighter.

There was, you know, there was no rambling. There was no other, I mean, everything moved way faster and got way tighter by the end than it did at the beginning. But that's sort of also a reflection of what entertainment has. I mean, you know, things move faster now. I mean, when you look at the, you know, films that were made of, you know, rock and roll bands in the 60s or 70s or 80s, you know, it was one thing.

And then you looked after the MTV era and, uh, um, and the whole idea of, uh, music videos. And I mean, the, the, the cuts, the quick film cuts are just instantaneous now. I mean, it, it, it, it's just this barrage of very fast moving images and, uh, and the pace. And that didn't used to be in the old days because that was the way that, you know, film has developed.

And uh our show sort of developed on the same way i mean it it just got faster and more exciting and you know and and things were happening quicker and uh and uh so the pace was accelerated hugely by by the end, Thank you. Music. We'll be right back. Thank you.

You received a psychology degree from Duke University. Do you feel like you ever use that education in service of any of your plays, maybe to help you understand an audience better and know what entertains them? Well, in a word, no. That had nothing to do. You know, the psychology degree was just an excuse to get me through art and music classes. You know, but this is the thing.

I mean, you know, as we, even from the very first musical days here in Anchorage, when I was, you know, I played at Chilcoo Charlie's. I mean, okay, so a band in those days, the bars didn't close till five o'clock in the morning.

So a gig for a band was seven and a half hours long i mean it started at nine o'clock and it went to 4 30 and this wasn't an entertainment process it was an endurance contest you know i mean could you get through seven and a half hours of playing with you know and still have you know some semblance of vocal cords remaining you know somebody you know i mean guitar players Their fingers would be on fire, keyboard players, all your knuckles were hurt.

You know, I mean, it was, you were just sort of going through this, you know, in order to get through it. But on the other hand, if you spend basically 40 hours a week in front of an audience. And if you don't learn something during that period and do that for five years running, if you don't learn something from it, you haven't been paying attention. I mean, you learn what an audience likes. You learn what works.

And, you know, when you find something that works, even if it's by accident, you make sure you keep it in the next night, you know, and you just keep building on that and you've got to pay attention. And that's, you know, sort of what we did. We paid attention to what was happening around us, and we paid attention to what the big guys were doing. You know, you see what, you know, what is Taylor Swift doing? You know, she didn't get to be a billionaire by chance.

You know, she paid attention. She's paying attention, and she's, you know, finding what works and building on what people that came before her did. And there's tricks of show business, you know, that, you know, Every time you read about something, you read about Disneyland, for instance. I mean, what makes Disneyland click? And once you know that and you apply it to what you're doing, if you're paying any attention, it just makes what you're doing better.

And so that's what we did. I mean, it was just looking at everything that was happening around us within the entertainment business and somehow taking hints from that. In applying them to what we were already doing. Mm-hmm.

You know, so far in this conversation, I get this sense that you're most comfortable in the realm of maybe you would call it lowbrow entertainment or maybe pedestrian is a better word. How do you feel about what other people would consider highbrow? You know, maybe like a Broadway play. Oh God, that's, you know, show tunes give me the willies. No, I, I, I can't do that. I, you know, I, I'm just a guy, I'm just a sleazy guy looking for a good time.

You know, I'm looking for a cheap laugh and, uh, you know, and a funny song and a, and a, and, and, and, and an infectious groove that, you know, you can't, you can't ignore and you have to dance to. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what I'm looking for. And, you know, it's just plain old entertainment. That's, that's it. What do you think bothers you the most about, um, you know, highbrow entertainment? Oh, there's nothing that bothers me about it. I mean, you know,

I mean, it's totally fine. It's just, you know, I don't want to do it. Yeah. You know, I, I have, well, I, I had a rule at one time that, you know, I would never go to any. Thing that was entertainment if they didn't serve nachos. Okay. I like that. They don't serve nachos at the opera. I'm sorry. I don't have to eat the nachos. I'm certainly not going to eat nachos every night, but they have to have them. And if they've got nachos, then it's probably something I would like to see. Yeah.

How are you at reading people oh probably pretty terrible you know you know i don't know i mean you know sometimes sometimes you hit it right you know and sometimes you don't i mean that's that's just life, you know, I mean, it was, uh, you know, I, you know, I, I, I've found some, entertainers and some bands and stuff that came through the fly by nightclub that just happened in one night to jam and said, Holy, you got a job, you're hired tomorrow, you know?

Okay. And I mean, that would happen. And I, and I might be right. And I, um. 30 years ago, hired a roofer, you know, my house needed a new roof and I hired this roofer who turned out to be the ultimate scam artist of all time. And, and, and he'd been, he'd been convicted of taking roofing materials instead of the dump. He would charge you a dump fee to dispose of your roofing materials.

And he'd take them out to Kincaid park and dump them by the side of the road, you know, and, and the guy, and then he put on all the, um. All the roofing materials upside down on the house. And it started leaking the first winter. And, you know, we went up and got a guy to come out and look at it. Well, this stuff's on upside down. How did that happen? So, you know, we sued the guy and it took, you know, eight or nine months to get to court.

And I got a call the morning of the court case and got a call from the secretary of this roofing company. He said, well, I want to just tell you that, you know, you don't have to bother to go to court in the morning because, you know, the guy, I won't mention his name, but Louis died. Oh, wow. And so, you know, we won't be there. So you can save yourself some time and trouble and not have to go there.

Well, knowing this guy's record, I didn't believe that. I said, I want to see the death certificate. I'm going to go there because I'm not putting it past this guy to have somebody call me and tell me he was dead and I don't show up. And then the court case is dropped because I don't show up. So I've had guys that I've found that were really great. But in terms of judging people, you know, the roofer that did my house was one of my worst, worst choices of judging anybody.

Did you ever find out if this guy really died or. Oh yeah, he had died. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So it was real. Wow. Yeah. Oh no, it was real. Yeah.

When a politician is portrayed in one of your plays, or you sing about him, or they are saying about in one of your songs, how did you draw the line between creating political satire and just using these politicians as recognizable characters? Well, you know, oh man, it, well, it's both. I mean, you're doing both because see what, what the whale fat follies was really about was the star of the show was Alaska.

Okay. I mean, I almost consider myself a journalist, you know, more than even a performer. I mean, we were telling Alaska's story. And so you tell that, number one, by events that happen, but you also tell it by the personalities of the people who are shaping Alaska. And the politicians are a large part of that. They're guys that are shaping Alaska, and they're making more news than anybody else.

They are the celebrities in Alaska. I mean, you know, if you go to Los Angeles, you know, there are politicians, but there's also, you know, the Kardashians and, you know, everybody else that's in Los Angeles. Here, that's not that much the case. I mean, when you look at who are the recognized personalities, they're mostly the politicians.

So but the thing about political satire is that a lot of what passes for political satire these days is something that i i find really interesting and it's that one side of the aisle whether it's the republicans or the democrats or the liberals or the conservatives you know will consider it humor if they're just,

making fun of somebody on the other side. So all you have to do is, you know, if you're on the Republican side, you mentioned Biden and everybody laughs or groans and you do the same thing if you're a Democrat and somebody mentions Trump. So, you know, there is this thing that is tied to politics. But the real goal for me of political satire is humor. It's not that I like or don't like any of the guys that we're making fun of. It's that there's a cheap laugh in it.

And that laugh can happen no matter what side of the aisle they're on. And a lot of people will take offense if you're making fun of their guy, but our goal was not politics. Our goal was laughs. And that's something that, and there's a big distinction in that. So yeah, I mean, so that's, you know, yeah, I mean, you're, you're looking for political satire and you're looking for recognizable people, but you're looking for the humor in it, not the political attitude or game. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And how did you pick your talent? You know, the actors that, um, were in the plays? Well, you, you, you look for guys that can, I, I looked for guys that couldn't make me laugh. Okay. You know, I mean, there, there are a couple of things.

I mean, they've got to be able to, you know, if they're, if they're the musicians, they've got to be able to play the music and play all kinds of different music because we might be doing a country music satire back to back with a blues satire with a rap satire uh so they've got to be able to cover all those grounds and do it well um at that so they have to have the talent for the uh for the singers and dancers and actors they've got to be funny and uh you know

they've got to be able to sing and dance and be funny. And then the main thing is that, you know, in those days of the fly by nightclub, I mean, I'm working, you know, 16 hours a day. I'm there around the clock. And quite simply, I didn't want to be around people that I didn't want to be around. You know, I mean, if I want people to be around that are fun to be around. And, and so that was one of the, uh, another main, um, criteria that I had.

I mean, they, they, they, if, if they had the talent and they were fun to be around, then that's it. We're, we'll, we'll do it. Um, but that's, that's the important thing is you want to be around people. Are fun to be around and that are an inspiration to you. And, uh, you know, and you always want to be around guys that are better than you because that's how you learn. You know, you, you, you, you get, you get better at any craft.

If you train with guys that are better than you, that's, I mean, if you're an Olympic athlete, you don't go out and train with a bunch of high school guys. You train with other Olympic athletes that can kick your butt and eventually you catch up to them and that's how you get to that status. So earlier you mentioned the Wallace and Ladmo show. I wonder, you said it was an inspiration, but did that idea to, um, want to create what you were watching?

Did that, did that kind of flower that seed? Did that flower like immediately or did it take a while?

Well you know i mean like in in the wallace and ladmo instance i mean i was never trying to do what they did and i wasn't really even conscious of it but it somehow you know just uh had, deeply ingrained in my consciousness the fact that you know it was possible to just do music and be funny and uh you know these guys did and but we weren't you know trying to do that we weren't trying to replicate that or even be like them it was just you know the

stuff that you were exposed to those guys and old marx brothers movies and stuff i mean that stuff was funny and and it just sort of became part of of you know who we were and i and most of the people i knew or the most of the people i hung out with were sort of coming from the same place and it was a you know there were all these influences bubbling under the surface but we weren't trying to copy them We were just doing what we did, but, you know,

elements of what we'd seen other people do would always creep into it. You know, and I also find it interesting that you, that you refer to what we did as a play because, you know, I, I never considered it a play. Okay. It was, it's just, you know, it was, it was just a, I mean, it was sort of a review and a show, but, uh, yeah, I, I, I never really thought of it as a play. What did you consider it as? You said a review, but it does seem like it has some elements of plays.

Well, oh, it does. It does. But it was, you know, a play is, you know, you think of it as, you know, three acts or two acts, you know, and it's got, you know, a certain format. And ours was much more freewheeling. I mean, it was more like a Saturday Night Live thing, which is a collection of sketches, except that our version of it was all musical. And, you know, so we didn't do acting sketches like Saturday Night Live, but, you know, they were all put to music.

So it was, yeah, it was more of a reviewer show. But again, it was just a bunch of guys out doing these things that we're in, having a good time, and making ourselves laugh. And that was the criteria. I mean, that was the thing that we, if, you know, we didn't try to justify it. We didn't say, oh, we're going to do this, and it's going to be funny because it relates to this or it relates to that. It was, you know, if it didn't make us laugh when we were doing it and when

we first wrote it, if it didn't make us laugh out loud, we threw it out. Yeah. You know what I like about all this is that you really followed your interest and your passion and you created this thing that was different or, you know, it's not a play. It's not this. It's not that. It's this. And that thing, you know, that this really exists originally in the mind of Mr. White Keys. And then, you know, you put it together and people were like, oh, that's what's going on.

You know, that's what maybe he's been talking about or, you know, that's the thing. But then you made that thing your job. Well, that's the way it happened, but it happened in a way that was, again, totally by chance. I mean, it started, you know, we started the first show that we did of the whale fat follies in 1986 was totally, I mean, pretty crude compared to the final show we did in 2019.

Um, and, but it was as, as it went along, you know, again, we refined it and, and we, we didn't have any, any, uh. Great blueprint that we were attempting to reach this point. I mean, we started with something and we kept it. Um, uh, kept increasing the level of every aspect of it.

So, you know, we would start out with something and, you know, we had a song that had, uh, you know, 20 slides in it, but, you know, and, and so, you know, then the next season we did it, maybe that same song, if we repeat it, would have 40 slides. I mean, we would increase, you know, uh, you know, we'd up the ante and, you know, we would up the ante in costumes and we'd up the ante in timing and props and, and, and always trying to top ourselves.

And this whole thing came together from a whole lot of different aspects. I mean, there was the, there was the music and, and then there was the satire of, of writing the lyrics and there were the costumes and there was the slideshow.

And when all this was put together, we wound up with a format that nobody else has ever done yeah i mean it was just you know it was it was a live performance in a bar but it was moving so fast and there were so many things to look at between the you know there's the band and there's the singing and dancing and there's the costumes and there's a slideshow that you know you couldn't really get any of it on the first viewing.

I mean, in order to really get all the jokes that were in there, you had to see it a couple of times. But we didn't start out to do that, and we weren't planning on doing that. We were just upping the ante and trying to push ourselves to the limit every time we did a show, and we were trying to reach a limit that was greater than the limit we had on the last show. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So how much do you think Alaska in the seventies has continued to influence your idea of Alaska? Oh, well, those days were just insane. I mean, you know, and, you know, and it was, it was all, I mean, it was all Alaska because there wasn't that much influence of outside. I mean, there was, you know, in the early, early, in the very early seventies, there wasn't even a McDonald's here. You know, and it took a while for Taco Bell and all the food chains to get here.

And then the big box stores didn't happen until, you know, what, 20 years later or something like that. And so, you know, Alaska was Alaska and it was totally crazy. It was totally insane. There was just nothing like it anywhere. And it was totally a renegade country. I mean, people were doing stuff the way they wanted to do it. And it was, you know, the old bumper sticker. We don't give a damn how they do it outside. You know, we're going to do it the Alaskan way.

Yeah. And, uh, you know, so, I mean, those days are, are totally an inspiration, you know, to, uh, to me, the, um, um. It's, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's just, uh, It's completely, it's not like it was then now, obviously. And it were much more like the rest of the country now than we were in those days. But there are still remnants of the old Alaska around. And, you know, I was looking at a photograph earlier today. I mean.

Don Young had his headquarters, his Anchorage campaign headquarters, was over on Benson Boulevard. And it was in a building that formerly, before it was Don Young's campaign headquarters, it was the headquarters of Cindy's Massage Parlor. Okay. So, you know, and we used this in the show. We had a picture of Don Young's headquarters and we'd dissolve the photograph into Cindy's massage parlor and you could see it's exactly the same building. And, you know, that's what Alaska was, you know?

I mean, it was, it was, it was just this sleazy backwater place that was hilarious. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was just astounding. And, and I, you know, I think of that all the time. I mean, that's, that's why I came up here and never left. I mean, it was just, uh, this place was hilarious. It was outrageous. It was not like any place else. And, you know, telling Alaska story was something that just made sense to me. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if you credit the economic boom caused by the construction of the pipeline at all for your success. Oh, no, I think I was the only guy that missed out on that. Okay. I mean, you know, that was sort of the late 70s and it hung on a little bit to the early 80s.

But, but it was, uh, you know, I mean, guys were going up and working on the pipeline and, and the guys that had, you know, businesses were, you know, adjusting their business to deal with, uh, pipeline purchases and, you know, and the pipeline workers that came back. And, you know, I was still a musician, you know, playing in bars and, you know, I was, I was the only guy that, that really did not profit hugely from the pipeline.

My timing has never been right. You know, and we're talking about timing. Okay. My timing was totally wrong in the pipeline days, but, uh, my timing was actually right. The, uh, the, um, in 2019, we decided to do the farewell tour of the fly by nightclub by, uh, of the whale fat follies. By then we were doing it at the, um, hard rock cafe in downtown Anchorage. And, uh, so we were doing the, the big last year, the finale of that.

And that was one. And actually we also, we, we filmed the last shows of the fly by nightclub and that's a DVD. And then of course, my timing was totally wrong on that because by the time, you know, people had been demanding DVDs of this show for 20 years. And by the time we did it and spent a fortune on really good filmmakers and a really good production staff. And I mean, the DVD is totally astounding.

And that happened right at the time when people had all thrown away their DVD players and were only streaming. So, so we, you know, that was the worst, you know, terrible timing, but then we did the final show of the whale fat follies, um, in, in the summer of, uh, 2019 and we.

Four or five months later, this thing called COVID came along, which was made that the best timing I've ever had in my life, because getting out of the entertainment business and the bar and restaurant business and anything connected with bars and restaurants a month before the COVID epidemic hit was brilliant. I mean, that was a phenomenal piece of timing on my part that I, of course, I didn't know I was doing it, you know, I mean, it was totally chance.

And then right at right about that time was exactly the time when I discovered this gold rush, um, uh, a series of photographs and story and started writing on that at the beginning of COVID, which was good timing because I wasn't leaving the house anyway. So I might as well just sit here and write a book. And, uh, you know, so, you know, there's been some decent timing, but most of it hasn't worked out for me.

How did you come up with the character of Mr. White Keys? You know, that goes back so many years that I'm not quite sure. I know there were a number of factors that happened at the same time. I think the first mention of that was way back in my youth, before I came to Alaska. And a couple of friends of mine and I, we had a little advertising agency.

And to even call it an advertising agency is a gross misstatement because we had a little reel-to-reel tape recorder, you know, a little old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder and a microphone. And we discovered this model, which actually was an astounding model. There wasn't any money in it, but it was really good. And then we would listen to the radio and hear somebody who's got a commercial on the radio and say, God, that commercial sucked.

That was really bad. We can do better than that. So we had this advertising agency that was called the Illustrious Ones Advertising Agency after some Sinbad movie where he came in and saw that. The sultan sitting on his throne is, oh, yes, illustrious one. Oh, we'll be the illustrious one. So, you know, so we would sit down with this little tape recorder. We'd make these commercials, and then we'd take them out to the business and say, hey, we made this commercial for you.

You know, give us 30 bucks, and you can have it. And so, you know, we weren't going to get any money, but, you know, we had these commercials that were going on the air regularly because, you know, and I don't know that there was ever one that we made that they didn't buy, you know, and it was, uh, and we were making that, I remember we were making a commercial for a, like a, a hippie clothing store called rags limited that was in Phoenix.

And it was, uh, you know, it's the standard store selling bell bottoms and tie dye.

And so we made this thing and a, for rags limited and the opening line of the commercial was it's rag time and you know this mr natural was uh one of the one of the illustrious ones had a piano in his living room and we had this tape recorder so you know he turned to me you know just before it's rag time i said hey mr white keys play us some rag time and so you know and i and and that was the first mention of mr white keys that i remember okay Um,

and then, you know, several other things happened and it morphed and evolved and it sort of went from there. But, uh, that, uh, again, it was, uh, all this stuff happens by chance. It's all, it's all random. I do, you know, it's, it's not anything that, uh, that I've ever planned out and made happen. You know, I mean, it's, it was just stuff that, uh, that happened. Yeah. Pure chance.

What do you see as your legacy in alaska is it the shows is it your personality is it the nightclub. Well, I think I don't have a legacy. I'm just, you know, again, just a guy looking for a good time and a cheap laugh. And, you know, I mean, but the legacy would be to tell Alaska's story. And, you know, whether that was through the Flyby Nightclub and the Whale Fat

Follies, there was Alaska's story in all that. Uh, there's Alaska story and the voyage of the Alaska union, the story of this, uh, you know, gold rush expedition. I mean, it's, it's, that's it. It's, it's telling Alaska story and, you know, trying to allow people to just have a good time. You know, there's really nothing more or less, you know, uh, nothing planned, no, no, you know, evil scheme, you know, it's just having a good time.

And, you know, you get to do that. You should have a good time. That's, that's why you're on earth. I mean, it was like, it was like, I think Kurt Vonnegut said it, Kurt Vonnegut, one of the best things he ever said was, you know, He said, we were put on this earth by God to fart around, you know? I mean, that's, that's it. It's just as simple as that. I have one more question for you. You're the president of the Anchorage Audubon Society. Do you have a favorite bird?

Oh, man, do I have a favorite bird? I don't. I don't have a favorite bird. I just, you know, there's so many of them, you know? I mean, there's, you know, 950 or 1,000 birds in North America. You know, there's 500 birds in Alaska. There's, you know, 275 birds in Anchorage. And, you know, I can't whittle it down. I mean, you know, there is just so much diversity and so much, you know, just incredible stuff out there that you can see that you don't know

about. And you go out there and find something new. And it's totally cool. So, no, I don't really have a favorite bird. I think maybe, I take that back. Maybe Daffy Duck. Okay.

Well, Keys, those are all the questions I have for you. You know, this has been great. You know, I want to thank you for your time and all the entertainment you've given to Alaska over the years. Well, I want to thank you for inviting me on the podcast, and I want to thank everybody listening out there in podcast land. And the DVD of the Whale Fat Follies and the book The Voyage of the Alaska Union are all available at mrwhitekeys.com.

We'll send them to you, delivered to your door by a uniformed employee of the United States government. Music. For more information about the Anchorage Museum, visit anchoragemuseum.org. This podcast was produced by me, Cody Liska, for the Anchorage Museum. With additional help from Julie Decker. Chatter Marks Music is produced by Keys Open Doors. Music.