Heading to Southeast - Will Putman and Trudy Heffernan, pictured with their children, Liam and Molly, will play the folk festival Sunday evening. Courtesy of Will Putman

No one pays admission to the Alaska Folk Festival, and no one but the guest artists gets paid to play, so it must be a testament that Fairbanks couple Will Putman and Trudy Heffernan consider it a privilege to load up their car every April and hit the road for a week.

It takes 12 to 15 hours to make the 650-mile drive to Haines, where they catch the first ferry to Juneau.

"We did it originally because we had more time than money," Putman said. "One year, after our first child, we felt compelled to fly with the new baby, but it never felt appropriate to fly. The big fear is that one of these years we're going to get messed up with a snowstorm in the pass. It would be a drag to miss the ferry and get there four days later."

Putman went to his first festival in 1982, three weeks after moving to town. He worked 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the U.S. Forest Service at the Federal Building, won a stand-by spot on a Wednesday and spent most of the night out in the bars, "playing music until way too late." He moved to Fairbanks four months later and has made the pilgrimage every year since 1983. Heffernan joined him for the first time one year later.

"I was just kind of wandering around, enjoying the music," Heffernan said of her first festival. "It was kind of overwhelming, especially with Will being all excited and going off and playing music. But the longer you go, the more people you get to know, and then it becomes less like going to a new town and more like going to a family reunion. You just have this week where you're having a good time ... seeing people you don't see all year."

The festival inspired Heffernan to learn stand-up bass. Her first show on stage was in 1986, as Beer Break, a "funny animal song" band she formed with Jock Irons. Putman was a "basic enthusiastic guy with a guitar" when he started playing at the festival. He's since learned to fiddle and mandolin. He first met Chugiak musician Shonti Elder in Juneau. They've been playing together for years and formed a label, Wild Mountain Music, in 1987. Putman, Heffernan and Elder play at 7:45 Sunday evening.

"It's really that festival that broke (musicianship) into me," Putman said. "It may be that way for a lot of other people. It was a tremendous venue for someone trying to do that, not knowing whether you wanted to perform in front of hundreds of people or not. I was trying to be a songwriter and people always reacted very favorably. It was just an incredibly positive thing, and it still is."

Pretty much all that's changed is they've had two kids, 6 and 9.

"For a while we had sort of a schedule," Putman said. "We would tag team. Trudy would be with the kids in the early evening and I'd be over at the hall. I would come back at 9 or 10 o'clock, and Trudy would go over and catch the hall and do the after-hour party thing. She would come back to the room at 2 or 3 in the morning, and wake me up, and I'd go back out. Sometimes we still do that."