Hobo Jim to perform benefit show at Knik Museum Saturday

PALMER — He steps away from his stool at the bar in Valley Hotel and signals with his index finger that the phone call he’s on will only take a moment.

Jim Varsos is the rare Alaska musician who has managed to leave behind his day jobs as a fisherman, cowboy and logger and earn his keep for the last 40 years writing songs and telling stories with his guitar.

He’s still an avid fisherman and hunter, but without his ubiquitous white straw cowboy hat with its rolled edges, he’d be just another guy in faded Wrangler’s sharing a drink and tall tales on a stool at the bar in one of the Mat-Su Valley’s oldest hotels.

He’s released six recordings since his first one — Thunderfoot — in 1982. And he’s booked and played thousands of shows around the world.

Before indie music was a thing, before iTunes, CDs, MP3s or AutoTune, before anyone knew what DIY music was, Hobo Jim was doing it.

“The last 30 years, all I’ve done is play music and write songs,” Varsos said. “It’s been an interesting ride for me.”

He estimated he played 400 to 450 shows this year, all of which he booked himself between flights, gigs, talking with fans and at Valley Hotel while sipping a cocktail Sunday.

That’s just one of the ways Hobo Jim, 58, is unique as a performer. His songs tell the story of this place, of Alaska present and past.

When he first started writing and performing songs about his life in Alaska, folks here thought it was hokey, he said. But Alaska songs have proven his mainstay since that first recording, which include his best-known and most lucrative work “The Iditarod Trail Song.”

These days his audiences are split pretty evenly between locals who’ve lived these same stories and tourists who want a taste of what Alaska was or what it is, he said.

“They are real songs I wrote about real things,” Varsos said. “Now there are fewer people around that live that lifestyle.”

Entertaining is an art

His music isn’t country and he scowls at the description “folk artist.” He says he doesn’t worry about being the best guitarist, the best vocalist or the best songwriter.

“I’ve always been driven to be the best entertainer,” Varsos said. “Entertaining is an art in itself, separate from singing and playing.”

Varsos is a quiet man until you give him a guitar and a mic and put him on stage. Then he’s an entertainer whose shows mix storytelling with high-energy, boot-stomping occasions that often result in him performing at least one song on the bar.

“I require the audience to get involved,” he said. “It’s half their fault.”

Varsos is well-read, a student of philosophy, religion, history and science, who speaks three languages, has a 6,000-volume library and who was enrolled and set to leave for a Zen monastery in Japan before he met a backwoods girl named Cyndi who married him 31 years ago.

“Most people are surprised that I can read,” he said.

For fans who wonder why Varsos hasn’t released a CD of his bawdy and oft-requested bar songs, he says the answers are 6 and 4.

“I want something I don’t mind my grandchildren listening to,” he said.

It was their son, Shaun, who inspired Varsos to record three children’s albums along with his six other CDs.

“I haven’t really looked for a job in a long time,” he said. “It’s just a matter of what I want to take and where I want to go.”

Hobo Jim at Knik Museum

Over the summer, Varsos said he played an average of 10 shows a week with regular gigs at Hooligans Sport Fishing Lodge N’ Saloon in Soldotna three nights a week during the summer, at AJ’s Tavern and Steakhouse in Homer one night a week, and Sundays for the past 30 years Varsos has performed at the Yukon Bar in Seward and now and then he’s at Schwabenhof Bavarian Restaurant and Beer Garden in Wasilla.

At the Alaska State Fair he plays every day from 4 to 6 p.m. on the Wood Lot stage and Saturday, Sunday and Monday he’ll be at the Sluicebox to close out the fair for the 30th year.

“I don’t feel that old,” Varsos said.

He’s working on his next CD, titled “My Wild and Wolfen Ways.” And Sunday at the Valley Hotel he said he was eager to play the song for the crowd at the Sluicebox. Varsos said it’s an audience participation piece that invites the crowd to “howl” along.

And folks can see Hobo Jim outdoors at 1 p.m., Saturday at the Knik Museum, at Mile 13.9, Knik-Goose Bay Road. It’s the second year he’s played a benefit concert for the Wasilla-Knik Historical Society.

Varsos said he plays a lot of benefit shows each year. Many of these benefit shows wouldn’t be possible without support from Alaska sponsors such as Matanuska Music, Kendall Ford and Era Aviation.

“For the last 10 to 15 years, Matanuska Music has given me everything,” he said. “I couldn’t do what I do without Hank and Ana.”

The truck he drives has his name on it as well as Kendall Ford’s. He said he drives about 50,000 miles a year going from gig to gig around Alaska. And for those places the road doesn’t go, Era Aviation helps, he said.

“When I go to these little villages and play, they couldn’t afford it if they had to pay the airfare, too,” Varsos said.

Official state balladeer

When oil prices plummeted in the ’80s, Varsos and many other Alaskans felt the impact personally. Where he had been able to make a good living performing in bars, he now needed another way to support his family.

He had friends in Nashville, Tenn., and eventually landed there with his family, where Cyndi worked for the school district and he worked as a songwriter.

Songs he wrote have been recorded by George Jones, Randy Travis, T. Graham Brown, Lee Roy Parnell, Michael Johnson, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, Janis Ian, Etta James and many more, he said.

His song “The Rock” is the one that has been recorded by the most big-name artists — including T. Graham Brown, Leroy Parnell, Etta James, George Jones and The Rhythm Aces, he said.

And while living and working in Nashville part-time for the past 25 years, Varsos performed with recording artists including Reba McEntire, Ricky Skaggs, Mark Chestnutt, Pat Flynn, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, John Cowan, Vassar Clements, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Tim Obrian, Hoyt Axton, Ricky Nelson, Janis Ian, Hal Ketchum, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Freddy Fender, Janie Frickie, Russell Smith, Ted Nugent, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Michael Johnson, Chubby Checker, Bryan Bowers and Rodney Crowell.

Though Varsos said they are mostly retired from that life now and spend most of their time in Alaska, they visit their son and grandchildren in Nashville often.

Varsos was named the official state balladeer by the governor and Legislature in 1994. He has performed across the Lower 48 and around the world in countries such as Germany, Japan, Israel and France.

When the fair ends, he leaves for a two-week series of shows in Germany before heading to Afghanistan to play for soldiers there. Back in the U.S., he performs in Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana before returning to Alaska for a few months. Then it’s back to France in December for a performance at Euro Disney.

“It just gets better and better,” Varsos said. “Life’s been remarkable. I’m looking forward to 10 more years of really good stuff.”