Robin Dale Ford

"At first when the folk festival was calling itself the Alaska Folk Festival, I thought, 'What gives Juneau the right to call itself the ALASKA Folk Festival?' But soon, our hats were off to the way they organized it, and they could have the name. It gives us a chance go get out of town and destroy someone else's town.

"We spent a summer playing Canadian festivals. ... But what some of our friends from Whitehorse and points north enjoy about the folk festival is that they have access to the musicians, whereas at the Canadian festivals they go out of their way to cordon off the musicians. Here you can ... be a part of the music scene. I consider it a meeting of the tribes."

- Robin Dale Ford, Fairbanks musician, played in first festival in 1977 and has missed one since 1987