[Wade Hampton]

Mike, I’m sorry if I offended you by the tone of my posts; I had never heard of her before today. I’ve gotten not only the responses in the threads but quite a few offline emails from friends bringing me up to speed on this remarkable young woman.

(Edit: unnecessary reply to Mike deleted.)

Short version: yes, I was unaware of her prior to today, but it wasn’t out of maliciousness or condescension that I wrote about her. You folks in the Lower 48 sometimes don’t realize the distance and geographical isolation that we have to endure here on the Alaskan subcontinent, but the exposure that non-mainstream musical artists get up here is woefully inadequate. It costs more to fly to Alaska from the Lower 48 than it does to fly to Europe, and the nearest major city to us is Seattle.

Not many acoustic acts make it up here unless their airfare gets covered, and with the Alaskan economy in freefall there are fewer and fewer of those gigs.

Seattle’s a 3 hour flight away. By direct contrast, the flight I took from Anchorage to Magadan, Russian Far East when I played a music tour there in Magadan Oblast was a mere hour and a half.

So, yes, we’re considerably closer to Siberia than we are to Seattle.

You should count your blessings that you have constant exposure to touring musical artists where you live, because 99% of the time we do not.

We’re a world away from you, in more ways than one.

Hope that makes more sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

PS: If you think I’m being pretentious by calling Alaska a subcontinent, look at Alaska on a globe some time, rather than one of those flat little maps where they stick Alaska in a reduced size down in the lower left hand corner. You’ll see that I’m not exaggerating in the slightest about the distances involved.

Price air fare prices too, while you’re at it. You’ll find that if anything I under-emphasized the distances involved.