Alaska’s country music ‘Ambassador’ teaming up with Wasilla’s top bar band for possible USO tour and album

WASILLA — Long before he was Alaska’s official ‘Ambassador of Country Music’, Earl Hughes was Hawaii’s ‘Ambassador of Country Music’.

Playing, not so much on cruise ships, but entertaining cruise ship travelers while they ported, Hughes played for years with big names, including Mac Davis, Charley Pride and the Beach Boys.

“They told me, Earl, go play Hawaiian country music,” Hughes recalled. “I was Don Ho’s steel guitar player, so we were doing ‘Tiny Bubbles’, ‘Lookin’ for Love in All the Wrong Places’ because ‘Urban Cowboy’ was big then. Then Alaska (cruise lines) hired me because nobody could play at the level I was at on steel guitar.”

A triple-threat, armed with expertise on the banjo, the fiddle and the pedal steel, skills he picked up as a young child as part of his father Bernie Hughes’ band, which performed on the 1950s TV show ‘Saturday Night Jamboree”, Hughes transitioned easily to summer tourism seasons in Alaska.

In Alaska, he’s played with the likes of Alabama, Ricky Skaggs and Johnny Cash during his stay here in the 1980s.

It didn’t hurt that many of the cruise ship goers he met in Alaska, were the very same people he’d met in Hawaii.

“They’re great — they’re your age and older, they tip well and they’re maintenance free,” Hughes said. “And they love our Seventies and Eighties country, the Fifties stuff, Sixties stuff — The Eagles, Credence (Clearwater Revival), and that’s all what I do with these guys.”

‘These guys’ are Against the Grain, probably Wasilla’s best known bar band, splitting a majority of their time between gigs at the Four Corners Saloon off Palmer-Wasilla Highway and Trunk Road, and the Mugshot on Parks Highway.

Once Hughes, who owns the copyright to “The Alaska Opry”, which is essentially him, began jamming with them, he had an idea to put together a traveling act to perform at USO shows in Hawaii or Europe, and to perhaps record an album of some of his original songs, which tend to be heavily pro-soldier.

“In my opinion they’re the best band at what they do in the state,” Hughes said of Against the Grain. “Tyrone and Duane are the kingpins of this — they’re running everything. I’m on the team.”

Against the Grain has had so many members pass through in its seven years, rapid turnover and pick-up has become the band’s M.O.

The staple of the band is Duane Herd, who formed the original version in 2010 along with Mike Lashbrook, Murel Kidd, Bridgett Barry and Mike Collins. He, like Hughes, grew up performing in a family band early on.

“I played drums in my mother’s band at 11 years old,” Herd said. “I was in various metal bands throughout the 80s and in 1989 joined the band Majesty, before being booked in Alaska when the band split and half stayed.”

Herd said he’s able to make a full-time job of playing music, picking up musicians of different talents and abilities for bar night gigs to float until summer when weddings and special events fill the docket.

“No one’s going to get rich doing this, but I’ve managed to make a living — I play this gig on Wednesdays, the jam night, I have a house gig in Anchorage at the Blue Fox, and I’m out here Fridays and Saturdays, so I’m playing four days a week,” Herd said. “The music scene in the Valley, compared to Anchorage is doing really well. Anchorage is really hurting right now, most of the gigs are one-night gigs; there’s no consistent place… You really have to bust your butt, one night here, one night there.”

Of late, Herd’s steadiest bandmate has been drummer/vocalist Tyrone Palmer, who moved to the Valley in June to be a truck driver.

“I used to play a lot of casinos, was the opener for a lot of name acts, played a lot of fairs,” said Palmer, whose warm-up credentials include shows for Great White, Chris LeDoux, Confederate Railroad, Don Williams and The Box Tops. “I’d gotten away from music for a while to spend more time with my family, but they’re the ones who pushed me back out and said, get back into music.”

For Herd and Palmer, the opportunity to do something different with Alaska’s Ambassador of Country Music, was too good to pass up.

“It’s been an honor, the guy’s frickin’ amazing,” Herd said of Hughes. “He’s a super-nice guy, very humble and when it comes time to lay it down, he can freakin’ lay it down like no one’s business.”

Hughes is hoping these jam sessions will translate into a recording of some of his original songs including “I’m a Veteran”, “Desert Storm”, “Veterans to Alaska”, and “Brother’s Coming Home”, that would also play well on a two-to-three week USO tour.

“My tunes they’re going to be able to do real easy,” Hughes said. “I’m doing the complicated parts with the fiddle chops here and there. And the vocals, with their variety doing The Eagles, Credence, The Beatles, some slightly new country — it’s a lot of good stuff.”

Hughes is staying in the Valley until May when he heads back to his home in Fairbanks for the summer cruise season.

All winter he’s been jamming regularly with acts coming up from Anchorage that were part of the Anchorage Folk Festival last month, and he hopes by the time spring is over, plans will be solidified for a tour for the troops and maybe even an album to go with.

If nothing else, the Ambassador is certain to have some new friends to jam with.

“I’m looking forward to working with Earl on an original project and possibly a USO tour as an adventure, and a way to pay it forward with our men and women in the military,” Herd said.