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"Now I play music full time and teach in the cracks," he said.
In 1990, Dermody was living in Seattle and had been playing the electric blues for years. He was into something new: learning to play fiddle tunes on harmonica. Right around that time, a friend, musician Michael Gray, told him he needed to play at the Alaska Folk Festival.
Dermody was about to have his mind blown.
"I knew a lot of people before I went, and now I know a lot more," he said. "It isn't about the stage time. It's about reconnecting with people that you really grow to love and care about, and playing music all night long."
Dermody has been back every year but two since 1990. During that first trip - in which he played with Dermaphonics and the Resonants - Fairbanks musicians Pat Fitzgerald and Robin Dale Ford introduced him to guitarist Forrest Gibson and fiddler Scotty Meyer.
"I heard Forrest play at the jam over at the Fiddlehead," Dermody said. "That was where Soctty was doing a fiddle jam with this guy who was playing banjo with (guest artist) Ralph Blizard. I was just amazed at how good Scotty was, and then he was playing accordion in a cajun band. I was like, 'What can't this guy do?' I started jamming with them, doing old-time tunes and the Improbabillies started."
The Improbabillies, later a five-piece with bassist June Drucker and banjo player Richie Stearns, have become a well known old-time blues act at the folk festival and throughout the Northwest. But this year, Gibson and Meyer will help Dermody showcase his new compact disc, "Crossing That River." It includes even more folk festival connections. Blues guitarist John Cephas and harmonica player Phil Wiggins - the guest artists in 1991 - play on the disc. Dermody met them at the festival and has taught with them at blues camps in West Virginia and Seattle.
   
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