Martha Stey

"All my musician friends used to tell me, 'You have to come to Juneau for the festival.' Well, whatever, I was a musician, but I played a lot by myself. And the idea of playing with a whole gob of people who were better than I was, was scary. But I came, and I just had a blast. I knew three bluegrass songs, and I played them at all the jams. And I was a convert. The thing that happened to me was I thought it was a place for friends. It wasn't intimidating. People encouraged you, and they still do. Go ahead, try, nobody is looking for perfection or comparing. It's just good friends for a whole week, getting together to play music, eat food, dance and not sleep."

- Martha Stey, who lived in Bethel eight years before she visited the festival for the first time in 1991. She made the annual pilgrimage from Bethel to Juneau every year until 2000, when she relocated to the capital city.