Out in the bog, the bull moose paused and swung its big head toward the train rollicking through the valley. It was a lopsided moose, missing half its antlers. Maybe it could actually hear the blues throbbing from the Tiki Railbar.
Just then the music kicked up a notch as the moose offered a panoramic view of its south end heading north. Guess it was more of a jazz-loving or easy-listening moose. Still, you rsquo;d think a moose with only half a rack would know something about the blues, about rough living and bad luck and the school of hard knocks.
By then, the Blues Train was about 70 miles, several glaciers, a couple of music sets, and a thousand light-years past Anchorage. The Alaska Railroad rsquo;s Grandview train usually carries cruise-ship passengers between Seward or Whittier to Anchorage, but today it chugged heroically through some alternate universe, where bull moose and John Lee Hooker shared the same terrain, where day-trippers and bar-hoppers co-existed without fear of fleece and leather exploding on contact like matter and antimatter. The Rebel Blues, a six-man band that bills itself as ldquo;Blues for the 21st Century, rdquo; had squeezed in beside the palm-draped bar.
Empty tracks unscrolled through the window behind drummer Brandon Cockburn. Every so often a musician peered through the glass at things most bluesmen don rsquo;t see on the job: Mountain ranges. Rainbows arcing above a lake.
Daylight. ldquo;We rsquo;re playing the songs, and you see a glacier come out of nowhere, or a goat up on a mountain, and you stop and actually forget you rsquo;re playing because it rsquo;s so beautiful, rdquo; said lead singer Donald Hill. ldquo;I rsquo;ve lived up here my whole life and I rsquo;ve never taken this ride before.
rdquo; Me neither. I rsquo;d assumed that riding between Anchorage and Seward would show off the same old stunning scenery as the road mdash;a generic array of breathtaking peaks, serene lakes, wilderness without end. Yawn.
I rsquo;d even brought a book. But riding a train changes everything. The gentle lurch that announces you rsquo;re embarking on a journey, not just going somewhere.
A gathering momentum of speed and spirits as you overtake all those unimaginative drivers mired at intersections. The silvered track stretching toward infinity. An unfolding landscape that invites contemplation, not a cursory, sidelong glimpse.
I might never have broken the meditative spell if we hadn rsquo;t abandoned the highway beside Turnagain Arm to enter the Placer River valley and rise through the Kenai Mountains on the way to Resurrection Bay. Unexpected vistas brought me to my feet to gawk through huge windows as we passed rivers slashing through gorges, gullies choked with snow, the Bartlett Glacier spilling within several hundred feet of our passage. The train rattled through tunnels and I-think-I-canned its way up alpine grades, swinging around turns so tight we could watch the entire train twisting like a caterpillar.
ldquo;This is one big sobriety test, rdquo; said a man lurching through the aisles. The band was experiencing its own mysterious terrain of three o rsquo;clock in the afternoon, an almost mythical time for keyboard player and singer Rob Woolsey. ldquo;I rsquo;m a night person, totally and completely, rdquo; he said.
ldquo;I have a limited window from three to five to interact with banks and grocery stores mdash;all of those people. I call them the Day People mdash;the nine to fivers, the real people. rdquo; A goodly number of Day People had signed up for this weekend getaway of a train ride and a hotel in Seward.
The night people you could identify by attitude: the hipster with a black cap flipped backward, the woman in leather coolly tapping her foot, the guy who elbowed some dancing room beside the piano. John Carleton, the kind of fan who talks about Janis Joplin in the present tense, said he loves Rebel Blues because of ldquo;the way they create with music, heart and soul. rdquo; He and the other Night People came for the sizzling passion of the band rsquo;s original tunes and tight covers, the smoky sheen of Donny Hill rsquo;s vocals, and the let rsquo;s-get-crazy compulsion of Rob Woolsey rsquo;s playing and patter.
ldquo;A band is a lot like a woman, rdquo; Woolsey insisted as some of the Night People hooted. ldquo;And when I say a band is a lot like a woman, when I walk in a room and see a band, the first thing I notice is the bottom end. rdquo; His hands laddered down the keys.
ldquo;So ladies and gentlemen, the bottom end on this band, the badonkadonk that makes us look so damn fine, from Midtown by way of Baton Rouge, Loueezeeana, this is Mr. Joe Eunice. Joe!
rdquo; Joe ripped a bass solo so hot he should have been tossed overboard for smoking on a nonsmoking train. Bruce Skolnick of Cooper Landing wailed on a harmonica plucked from a suitcase filled with blues harps. Cockburn rattled windows with syncopated fury, and Jesse ldquo;Funky Furnace rdquo; Ferman risked triggering avalanches with screaming guitar licks while he battled the train rsquo;s natural rock.
ldquo;I struck that freaking rock star pose just to keep my balance, rdquo; he admitted later. Not far from Seward, Woolsey started playing the Best Country and Western Song Ever Written, a tune by legendary songwriter Steve Goodman titled, ldquo;You Never Even Call Me By My Name. rdquo; (Some say he also wrote the Best Train Song Ever Written, ldquo;City of New Orleans.
rdquo;) Woolsey wrapped a few verses in the blues and then explained how he once told Goodman he rsquo;d omitted some important C W elements, like ldquo;getting drunk, going to prison, pickup trucks, the rain, and doggone it, he forgot to mention trains. rdquo; Woolsey said, ldquo;Well, he wrote me this here next verse, ladies and gentleman. You are about to bear witness to the perfect country and western song.
rdquo; He sang: Well, I was drunk the day my mama got out of prison. I went to pick her up in the rain. But before I could get to the station in my pickup, She got run over by the goddamned train!
The Rebel Blues rocked and rolled us into Seward with an homage to Johnny Cash, and to the raw elegance of the blues, and to the melancholy joy of trains everywhere: My mama told me ldquo;Son, Always be a good boy, But I shot a man in Seward, I hang my head and cry. And if you ask me, the only thing preventing that from becoming the Best Train Song Ever Written is that it doesn rsquo;t say a single word about something truly sad, and that, my friends, is a bull moose with a big old badonkadonk that rsquo;s missing half of its antlers. Sherry Simpson teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and is the author of The Way Winter Comes: Alaska Stories, published by Sasquatch Books.
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