Music and radio

by Peter Twitchell

Doors open to you when you’re sober and when you sober up the world of opportunities opens up to you like it did for me.

I want to talk about people I’ve been in band with and a couple short stories.

In 1972 my wife and I moved into Anchorage so I could hear for myself radio stations in the big city and how they operated and how they sounded. I filled three notepads of notes I took every time I listened to a radio station and I listened to all of them including some of the commercial stations.

I liked like KFQD in Anchorage. I wanted to take this knowledge with me back to Bethel and apply it to my job at KYUK.

David Moore started broadcasting and put together KYUK at third road housing in Bethel. I was hired straight out of high school on May 22, 1970 the last day I went to school at Bethel Regional High School. Principal Maxwell Fancher and I saw each other at the Bethel post office, which was located at the end of the AC Store on front street where the Joe Lomack building currently sits.

I had just got out of school and Mr. Maxwell told me that I should go to work at the radio station that they were hiring people to work there.

When KYUK moved into their new location next to the Braund building Andrew Edge was the manager for KYUK. He hired me to work as radio operations manager and told me that I’d be fine and that I do a good job.

I didn’t know anything about operating radio equipment much less be the radio operations manager and so I told Andrew Edge I’d like to go to Anchorage for a year and learn about radio.

In Anchorage I met Michael Gravel, whose business at the time was teaching how to operate and manage radio stations. His business was called the Columbia School of Broadcasting.

I signed up and was accepted. After two months of studying radio operations I went to work for JCPenney’s at their warehouse on Arctic Boulevard. Occasionally I met people from all walks of life checking in inventory and bringing it down to their main store, J.C. Penny’s.

One day I was approached by a man who introduced himself as Johnny Waters. I told him I was from Bethel and I was raised in the Yup’ik Tribe of southwest Alaska. Johnny told me he was a Blackfoot Indian originally from Arkansas and that he was married to a lady from Port Hyden, an Aleut woman. Johnny told me he had a country and western band.

Johnny told me the band was Johnny Waters and Country Maverick, and they played frequently in the Anchorage area, the Kenai, Soldotna, and Glennallen, Alaska. I told Johnny about my Dad’s passing when I was 15 and how I started the band called Strange Tones in Bethel and we played exclusively instrumental, music by the Ventures, Bob Bogle, Mel Taylor, Dennis Wilson and the Cherokee cowboy Noki Edwards.

Johnny then asked me what instrument I played. I told him I played some lead guitar and played the bass from time to time. Johnny said, “Peter, I need a sober bass player. The bass player we have now gets so drunk that he can’t finish out the night.” Then he asked me, “Can you play the bass for us?”

Johnny told me that we get paid $200 each night we play. I gladly excepted his offer. A new door opened up to me and a world of opportunities was right in front of me.

I played one whole year with Johnny Waters and Jack Fisher on the drums who was from Afognak, near Kodiak.

He said the steel guitar player is Mike Young and that he played the lead guitar and sang.

It was one of the best things that I’ve ever done in my life. I was only 21 and these guys were in there early 40s – seasoned musicians. The drummer had a voice like Ray Price, smooth and pleasant to listen to, and Johnny sang as good as any country singer of the day.

Johny, who was a Blackfoot Indian, had jet black hair and blue eyes and these men sure could tell jokes and I never stopped laughing when I was around them.

I’ll finish with the story about being in the bands of my own through the years since I was 16 years old. I never regretted ever playing in the band because it was the easiest way to make money for me besides working 24 years at the radio station as KYUK radio operations manager.

I started “Geezer Rock” on KYUK for all the geezers with their ears on who really appreciated good rock ‘n’ roll!