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Oftentimes, all you need is a spare room, a relatively unoccupied corner or the mere suggestion that someone would like to jam.
"One year they were done at Centennial Hall, and we were coming into our hotel (the valley Travelodge)," dulcimer player Linda Bogden said. "We came in dragging our instruments, and they asked what we were doing. I had written a song about airport security, and it so happened that the hotel was housing a bunch of people from (the Transportation Security Administration). So they said they wanted to hear the song, and they sat down in chairs. We did a song about security checkpoints. And the funny thing is, when we were leaving the next day, TSA earmarked us to have our bags examined. They tore our suitcases from end to end."
In the early days of the festival, the bars would stay open until 5 a.m.
"I can remember the Red Dog was the spot back when it was right next to the Alaskan," Joe Page said. "And the Lucky Lady had a lot going on back then."
"There was also an interesting tradition that started on Sunday nights in the late 1970s and lasted for three or four years," he said. "When the bars closed, everyone went into the streets and played. There were probably about 50, 60, 70 people. Everyone was out for a couple hours. The police would drive by, and everyone was relatively behaved and they wouldn't bother us. It was just a big street party."
The Fiddlehead Restaurant was a popular post-concert destination for years. So popular, in fact, that at one point the restaurant began issuing tickets for the event in the festival program. Of course, that did little to control the crowd.
"I'm usually a night person, but I'm one of the earliest to go to sleep at the Juneau festival," Fairbanks musician Robin Dale Ford said. "Everyone else is out until 6 a.m. I'm carrying a banjo and maybe a bass or a little gorilla amp, so I can fit in somehow."
"I always go to the songwriter's showcase both afternoons," Chugiak musician Robin Hopper said. "That used to be at the Fiddlehead. Now it's at the Silverbow. It's such a wonderful way to hear all the songwriters. And we always used to have a Saturday night songwriter's circle. Last year, it was in the lobby of the Goldbelt (Hotel)."
"Last year a few of us got together one night at the Goldbelt," Bellingham musician Vic Cano said. "And we just had an incredibly sweet time sharing music and listening to each other."
The open-mike scene at the Alaskan Bar has traditionally been a popular spot. When the mike finally turns off, the action often switches to the upstairs hotel, where guests and musicians play for hours.
"When they cut the drinking hours back from the first few years, that cut into jam sessions," Putman said. "Various organized parties started in places like the Silverbow and the Fiddlehead. And along the way, the real focus turned into the shenanigans of the Alaskan upstairs.
"I really like playing in small combinations of two to three people," he said. "And so many things at the Alaskan are huge mob scenes in the hallway, so it's a little hard to pull that off."
"The Alaskan Hotel at 4 in the morning on a Saturday can be pretty overwhelming in a good way," Dermody said. "There are some wonderful musicians and the energy of the jams that happened until 7 a.m. brought me back. I still go to play. I'll wander around and play old-time music with a group of folks and play blues with somebody, and Cajun music with somebody else."
   
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