If you’re a tourist, or new to town, you don’t really want to find yourself in Dalton City at dusk in early April. Not with wind howling off Ripinsky/Geisan, creaking old timbers and rattling windows in something so odd as an old, empty film set.

But if you were lucky to happen in on the right evening, you’d hear Justin Letson’s drumming keeping time in an unmarked room. Which, granted, might make the scene even more eerie – that is, until you saw the Subarus parked outside, and the friendly faces of Keep the Pool Open rehearsing around the glow of a propane heater.

If the outside of that rehearsal is more White Fang, the inside is more High School Musical mostly because of the High School Musical references Letson and singer/guitarist Lucy Nieboer like to toss quietly across the room as bandmates Joel Stuk and Henry Leasia work out some technical piece.

Before Keep the Pool Open made its debut at Holly Jolly Follies last year (“the Santa Claus thing,” said Letson), Nieboer and Letson were in the band Fort Seward Tie Tours, which played at a Southeast Alaska Independent Living barbecue. Leasia, Stuk, and Letson currently form the band Nalimu. Some of them were in 10-person supergroup Heavy Nettle, which played at Dalton City Limits. Many have collaborated with Ryan Irvin, who, along with Keep the Pool Open, rounded out the lineup for Tuesday’s “Haines Night” at the Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau.

These are not bands for life, or bands to compete with other bands; these are bands formed to be able to play. Some at events where the community comes together to make music, like the Holly Jolly Follies – Nieboer makes sure to note that particular event “ripped” (a good thing) – or just open mic nights at the Pioneer Bar, where many of them first met and played together.

“You have to find community,” Stuk said, describing coming to town as a transplant. “When you run into another player around here, you take advantage of it.”

So it was different for Ryan Irvin, and for Keep the Pool Open, to ferry four hours to a gig instead of four minutes down the street. Especially to play at the region’s preeminent Folk Festival.

“It’s the biggest thing we’ve done,” said Stuk. “We’ve been preparing since November.”

Irvin led off Tuesday night at the Crystal Saloon in Juneau. People were still filling in as he tuned backstage, shaking off the cold sodden air blowing down Front Street outside.

One of Irvin’s songs was a Kris Kristoferson cover with intricate phrasing. “I forget to breathe during that one,” Irvin said. It was Irvin’s first folk fest performing solo, and he’s only two years into playing for crowds, period.

“I have to try to get a sort of dissociation from the crowd,” he said. His lyrics are intricate and personal; to deliver them, he tries to look inwards while performing. “[Performing] can be terrifying,” he said. “But there’s something about it now that just keeps me coming back.”

It’s a week of bands, who, like the Haines performers, have spent the winter months in the quiet and the dark, preparing for this gig. It’s something you don’t often see in Haines, said Leasia: a massive coming together of people from across the region, or further, and particularly of young people.

So by the time Keep the Pool Open came on, the crowd looked quite different from one you might see at the Chilkat Center, where the band last played on stage. Mainly a whole lot louder and packed in like sardines. That made it easier, said Nieboer. “It’s more scary to play for your community than for strangers,” she said afterwards. Her bandmembers all agreed.

Maybe they were hiding whatever nerves they felt; it certainly didn’t show on stage. Leasia was rock solid on keys, and his technical song-writing shone through with Nalimu, which might have the title as folk fest’s greatest jam band locked up.

With Nalimu, Letson, who often plays restrained parts on dampened drum heads, was able to let loose.

Between him and Stuk, the two of them kept remarkably serene expressions while ripping through solos and fills that genuinely had the crowd hollering.

And Nieboer stood out with her vocals, but also between songs, drawing energy out of the crowd. At one point she leaned half into the audience to hold out a mic so an audience member could deliver impromptu testimony in favor of the Haines pool. That was certainly in the spirit of Haines night, bringing a sort of public comment to Juneau mirroring the assembly meeting that was happening at the same time, 90 miles away. Just with slightly less decorum.

Before they boarded the boat to Juneau, the Haines musicians had thrown out a few visions for a successful performance. “People throwing money and record deals at us,” Letson had said, with a laugh.

Even if he had been dead serious, it would’ve been reasonable; plenty of musicians dream, and have dreams. But it was a clear contrast between those laughs, and how they spoke about what they’d actually be thinking about as they stepped on stage. “Playing well enough to express yourself instead of thinking about the performance,” Stuk said quietly, just about summing it up for everyone. “That feeling – that’s why I’m still doing it.”

Sure enough, on Stuk’s solo on “Season of the Faun” he had his eyes pressed closed, head down over his guitar. Just like he plays in front of an audience of his bandmates in Dalton City.

And, even so many miles away from the bright lights of the Chilkat Center, Irvin, Stuk, Leasia, Nieboer, and Letson said they were looking for familiar faces in the crowd. They had to make sure the fans from home were dancing. “Liv and Brooke,” Nieboer said. “I’m looking for them when I’m up there.”

Nieboer was not disappointed. Liv and Brooke were dancing – and yelling song requests too. They fit right in with the rest of the packed crowd.

• This article was originally published by the Chilkat Valley News.