Photo by Tom Berry
Chris Meurlott and Matt Delvoux play “Wagon Wheel” by the band Old Crow Medicine Show at the College Coffee House’s open mic night last Thursday.

A fresher musical roast, no cover required

“Just gimme a scene where the music is free/And beer is not the life of the party,” sang Nick Meurlott, sans mic or amp on an acoustic guitar he had only recently learned how to play. The lyrics are from “Reinventing Axl Rose” by Against Me! but the sentiment reverberated in every act that took the stage last Thursday at College Coffeehouse’s Open Mic Night.

The night’s offerings included a high school duo polishing their West Valley talent show act, a garage band belting out folk punk tunes, a pain-cured bluegrass guitarist/vocalist bringing the Ozarks to the Aurora, a spoken word poet channeling Langston Hughes’s to explain his own travails as a minority in Alaska, and well known local musicians Chris and Nick Meurlott (punk rock band Scurvies frontman and drummer respectively).

This melange of musical styling was reflected offstage as well. A heavy high school presence anchored the crowd early on with ringed groupings of adults ranging from college-age foot tappers to grayish haired head bobbers. As the night unfolded, the crowded thinned slightly, aging a bit, but the guitar cases remained, as an all ages crowd of musicians and music enthusiasts ordered another round of chai, sat back and basked in music for music’s sake.

By all accounts, this scene is standard fare for the coffeehouse’s well-attended monthly open mics, but this particular night seemed to frame in clearer-than-average terms why Fairbanks is such a music town, where chords and lyrics crafted in living rooms scattered across the Borough’s 2000 square miles emerge to find life in public spaces.

“I want to invite my friend Matt up to play with me,” said Chris Meurlott, addressing fiddle player Matthew Delvaux from the group of folk punkers. Together they summoned a richly organic version of “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show, despite having first met and played together only a week prior during a living room jam session at Delvaux’s house. The two took their instruments out the back door for an impromptu practice before hitting the stage. Muerlott finished his set with an original bluesy guitar solo.

Such a spirit of musical collaboration, improvisation and above all appreciation rung out in this small coffee shop in a manner it simply could not in a barroom where beer, those swaying “dancing with myself” beer patrons and the dimly-lit maneuvering of lovers or lovers to be often form the central dramas to which music is only a score. Granted, there are great musical adventures to be had in the smoky tavern lairs throughout Fairbanks, but sometimes it’s encouraging to see music a bit more out in the open, enriching no one but the player and the partaker, inviting both to hear further, no matter the age, the genre or the talent.

As the house lights went on and the emcee began breaking down sound equipment, Delvaux remained fiddling with piano player Walter Jones who had performed the night’s final set. The sight of another musical birth in progress summoned a line Nick Meurlott belted out only minutes earlier: “Our arena just basements and bookstores across an underground America.” Add College Coffeehouse to the list.