Mary DeSmet says she left behind an amazing public radio scene in San Francisco when in 1973, at the age of 22, she moved to Juneau where there were just a couple of AM radio stations. But a year later that changed with the debut of KTOO.
“Believe me within a couple years of living here and seeing the effort that was going into creating an FM station with community involvement, that was huge,” she said Thursday.
DeSmet and her husband, Greg Burger, are among 20 performers who will showcase the decades of community offerings Juneau’s public broadcasting station has provided during a six-hour celebration of KTOO’s 50th anniversary year on Saturday evening at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. The “50-Fest” features 10 performances by the musicians in two sets of concerts at the JACC and a “dinner break” show at the KTOO studio building next door.
DeSmet said she and Burger plan to play mostly folk songs from the 1960s during their 20-minute set, capturing one element of KTOO’s broadcasts that have endured throughout its history. The station provides live broadcasts of the annual Alaska Folk Festival, as well as numerous in-studio performances — which DeSmet said she’s been a part of for decades.
“It’s so amazing the many things KTOO offers even when you’re on the outskirts of it,” she said. “As a community member, as a music teacher for years in this town, I had used KTOO a lot to just showcase my students and have it be a teaching tool to get them interested in radio, see how the station works, all of that.”
KTOO made its official broadcast debut on Jan. 27, 1974, and the station has hosted a series of 50th-anniversary events this year, including an open house at the studio building and special broadcasts, said President and General Manager Justin Shoman. But he said “we needed a little more time to get our ducks in a row” for the large community celebration occurring Saturday.
“We figured, ‘Heck, 50 is a big milestone, right?’” he said. “So we can, even though the technical anniversary date is in January, we took a little liberty in stretching it.”
Also, while Saturday’s event is a celebration of KTOO Public Media, the entity has expanded over the decades from its namesake radio station to include a television station, music-oriented radio stations KRNN and KXLL, and Gavel Alaska. Shoman said previous celebrations this year have focused more on KTOO’s presence as a news and community information source, while Saturday’s show puts the emphasis on music.
“We really wanted to take this opportunity, as I mentioned, to have a community celebration, but also to sort of celebrate what KTOO represents in the arts and culture fabric of Juneau,” he said.
The show is being organized by Taylor Vidic, a longtime and prolific concert performer and promoter in Juneau. She said the station’s board of directors came up with the framework of what it wanted for a community celebration — including a focus on Juneau performers — and she worked to ensure a wide range covering the spectrum of the community’s musical presence during KTOO’s history are represented.
“Looking down the names you will see that it’s a lot of the more prominent bands in town,” she said. “It’s also mostly folks who are performing original music. There’s also an emphasis on the kind of stuff that you’ve maybe heard from these artists on the radio.”
“(The board) wanted to appeal to current KTOO members to say ‘Thank you for making this a successful radio station for the last 50 years,’” Vidic said. “And they also wanted to appeal to younger listeners to say, ‘Hey, this is your community radio station. Join us in continuing the legacy forward.’”
The event will feature three parts: an early “listening room” show with four performances from 5-7 p.m., a dinner break with a performance from 7-8 p.m., and a late show from 8:30-11 p.m. with five performances. Separate tickets are available for the early and late shows — which also provide admission to the dinner show — as well as for the entire evening.
Performing at the early show — besides DeSmet and Burger, as their group Full Circle — are the Yaaw Tei Yi Dancers, Marian Call, and FySH Houck. George Kuhar and Dan Kirkwood will perform during the dinner show, with food available from food trucks in the station’s parking lot.
The late show will feature dance music by bands alternating shows on two stages inside the JACC, Vidic said. The performers are The Muskeg Collective, The Rain Dogs, Radiophonic Jazz, Rrains and Wordplay.
Beer and wine sales will be available, with sales benefiting KTOO, and there will also be an “under-21 zone” for people.
While the performers and their music are multigenerational, there’s also overlapping experiences between them that are to be expected in a small community. DeSmet, for instance, was Vidic’s piano teacher starting at an early age.
“I marvel at what Taylor is doing,” DeSmet said. “She was my student from the time she was six years old until she graduated from high school. And it’s just such an honor for that generation to still look at Greg and I — we’ve taught many of them — but have them be respectful and honoring.”
For her part, Vidic said including DeSmet and Burger in the anniversary event was an obvious choice.
“They’ve been gigging in this town for close to 50 years, which is insane that they’ve been alive and adults that long, and still looking so good and sounding so good,” she said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
Know and Go
What: KTOO’s 50-Fest.
When: 5-11 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Juneau Arts and Culture Center, KTOO studios.
Who: Early show from 5–7 p.m. features the Yaaw Tei Yi Dancers, Marian Call, FySH Houck, and Full Circle with Mary DeSmet and Greg Burger. Dinner break from 7-8 p.m. features George Kuhar and Dan Kirkwood. Late show from 8:30 p.m.-11 p.m. features The Muskeg Collective, The Rain Dogs, Radiophonic Jazz, Rrains and Wordplay.
Tickets and more information: www.ktoo.org/50-fest.
