Iditarod offers extra opportunities for traveling musicians

NOME — A loud siren announcing each Iditarod musher’s arrival on Front Street in Nome wasn’t the only sound drawing race fans’ attention last week in the Bering Sea city.

The Bering Strait Jackets, a Nome favorite, entertained bar-goers from near and far during Iditarod week, and were joined by the likes of traveling musicians like Ben Balivet of The Acoustic Oosik and Justin Boot Rousseau, known by many simply as “Boot.”

Balivet, who grew up in Wasilla, now lives and does environmental work for a tribal organization in Bethel, traveling the state and the country to play music as time allows. Sometimes he performs alone, sometimes with drummer Bruno Zinno and bassist Jonathan Germann, and sometimes with whomever he can find for a gig — in one case, Kasilof musher Monica Zappa.

“I invited her up onstage to sing a song with us,” Balivet said, sitting with a guitar on his knee in Nome’s tiny Bering Tea Company café one afternoon last week. “Kinda cool to sing a song with a musher.”

“Cool” as it may be to sing with mushers during the Iditarod, Balivet said he’s not about to write any songs about the race.

“I let Hobo (Jim) do those kind of songs,” he said of the popular Alaska singer-songwriter.

With influences ranging from The Beatles to Frank Zappa to Pink Floyd, Balivet said his music and that of Acoustic Oosik is best suited to those who love 1960s rock’n’roll, which he grew up listening to.

“My parents were like flower children,” he explained.

Still, they tried to direct Balivet’s interests elsewhere, he said. Until he was in fifth or sixth grade, Balivet said his father still had high hopes that he and his sons would all play the bagpipes together in a kind of family band.

“I really had a struggle because I didn’t wanna disappoint him … (but) I just couldn’t do it,” Balivet said. “I just knew that my future wasn’t in the bagpipes.”

So he got a guitar and soon added strumming and finger-picking to his bagpipes and piano skills, pursuing his dreams of becoming a rock star.

Though his favorite songs — such as “The Water” and “Patagonia Condom” — haven’t made him rich and famous (yet), Balivet said he’s satisfied to be on the journey that is musical performance, and continue to learn.

“I wanna surround myself with musicians that are like 20 times as good as me,” he said.

But “good” doesn’t necessarily mean famous.

“It’s just so cool to meet people that are just doing it, you know what I mean? They’re not makin’ a lot of money but they just love music, and it’s inspiring.”

Boot is one such person, Balivet said.

Bouncing between Anchorage, Trapper Creek and Fairbanks on a regular basis, Boot said he makes anywhere from $60 to $100 an hour busking in front of grocery stores year round.

“I’ve just about got all the grocery stores trained, they used to run me off pretty quick,” he said.

As a tall, tanned 40-year-old with two long, black tendrils of beard, wearing a cowboy hat-head lamp-combo, Boot may come across as a curious character. But his honky-tonk and “workin’ folk” music rarely fails to bring a smile to a person’s face, he said.

“Everybody smiles … and the little kids love me,” he said.

Although not all of his songs are family friendly, Boot said he himself tries to be respectable. The words “beer only” tattooed across his fingers, for example, remind him to keep his hands off of hard alcohol and stay out of trouble, he said.

“It’s just generally good advice,” he said.

Boot keeps another reminder, a slip of paper given to him by a Fairbanks listener a few weeks ago, in his guitar case.

“A little bit of music makes the day a little better,” the note reads.

Balivet agreed wholeheartedly.

“If there was more people out on the street playing, I think the world’d be a happier place,” he said. “When I see a life musician I think, see? Life is good.”

“Unless they’re really crappy,” Balivet amended.

“But even then, they’re tryin’,” Boot pointed out.

Balivet’s latest solo album, “Boat of My Imagination,” is set for release March 30. For more music by Balivet and The Acoustic Oosik, visit www.benbalivet.com.

Boot can be found on Facebook through the Trapper Creek Bluegrass page, where he has posted a list of musicians to play at the annual festival he organizes at the end of May.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.