At the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel in early December, Jimmy Riordan stood behind tables piled with an odd assortment of weathered cassettes, VHS tapes, records, and recording equipment that comprise his pop-up digitization station. It is the last day of the Anchorage-based artist and educator’s visit to Bethel, where he has become a familiar face, coming into town at the invitation of the Kuskokwim Consortium Library to offer DIY workshops ranging from leather-tooling and animation, to storytelling and stuffed animal-making.
Cindy Andrecheck, who moved to Bethel in 1975, stopped by to check up on some old tapes containing radio sketches and promos from the early days of KYUK Radio that she dropped off for Riordan to digitize.
“In the 70s there was a fellow here named Jim Barker, and he and another fellow named Peter Twitchell put together these KYUK promos, and they're absolutely hysterical. One is a honey bucket dump contest,” Andrecheck said, referring to the style of toilet closely associated with rural Alaska homes lacking plumbing.
Riordan was ultimately able to capture the honey bucket sketch, featuring the production of a play-by-play sporting event, complete with cheering spectators and sound effects.
“A good quick dump takes a lot of skill, and these teams practice pretty hard to do it quickly,” the voice of Barker chimes in.
According to Barker, some listeners at the time were apparently fooled by the faux live broadcast.
“Some people quickly called the station and said, ‘Where is this going on?’” Barker said from his home in Fairbanks.
Joe Jim Paul Fan Club
As part of a First Friday event hosted by the Southwest Alaska Arts Group (SWAGG), Riordan set up an Alaska Listening Station in the hallway of the cultural center, DJing vinyl from his wide-ranging collection of Alaskana, and getting word out about the digitization station.
“When we were doing the listening station on Friday, I was playing a record by this group called PLP that in the late 80s were a hip-hop group out of Fairbanks,” Riordan said. “They were all in the military on base up there and they put out a 12-inch EP.”
For long-time Bethel resident Susan Taylor, hearing PLP sparked a memory of another rare Alaska hip-hop record collecting dust back at her home. It had been given to her by an old friend, the father of one of the members of a group called the Prohibited by Law Regiment.
“He gave it to me ‘cause his son and their friends came up with it. And we were good friends. The dad would come out and work on office equipment and stuff,” Taylor said.
Taylor offered to sell the Prohibited by Law Regiment record to Riordan, and he was more than happy to pay out of pocket for the early 90s Anchorage gem.
The record is destined to become part of a project Riordan calls the Joe Jim Paul Fan Club. It’s an audio digitizing and cataloging effort he launched in 2018 focused on Alaska records, especially from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, like those of the late Joe Jim Paul himself, born near the coastal village of Kipnuk.
“One of the reasons I call the project the Joe Jim Paul Fan Club is because at one point I came across Joe Jim Paul's ‘Eskimo Songs and Storys and Country Music,'” Riordan said. “It's a really spectacular recording, and I wanted to learn more about his music. And that sort of corresponded with a time that I had started to come out to Bethel a little bit more for some other work.”
Riordan grew up in Anchorage in a time before music streaming services, combing through thrift store record racks for whatever he could get his hands on.
“Then you start to notice things that are from Alaska popping up in those racks,” Riordan said. “At a certain point, I started just buying those if I saw them, just because it seemed like kind of a fun thing to do.”
The Joe Jim Paul Fan Club has grown steadily over the years to comprise more than 300 vinyl records. They include some of the first Western Alaska gospel recordings, like the Henry Shavings Family from Nunivak Island, the Southeast Alaska Lingít folk of Richard Dick, and the Nelson Island sounds of John Angaiak sung in Yup’ik.
“‘[I'm] Lost in the City’ (1971) by John Angaiak, which as far as distribution is probably one of the Alaskan recordings that's had the furthest distribution out of most anything,” Riordan said. “That record is really near and dear to me. I think it's a beautiful record.”
As he flipped through the stack of Alaska records he had brought along to Bethel, Riordan came upon some more contemporary cuts from the Anchorage music scene of the 70s and 80s.
“There's Windflower, which in the 70s was a psychedelic sort of folk band. All the members of the band were also members of the Anchorage Baháʼí Church,” Riordan said. “There's Snow White, which was a kind of hair metal band that put out an EP for their upcoming album that never happened, that had songs on one side, and then those same songs playing in reverse on the other side to take up space,” Riordan said.
On his last day in Bethel, Riordan said that he felt like his visit had been a success. He said that he was inspired to channel the support he receives as an artist into increased projects aimed at preserving the past.
“If we were able to go and show some people how to do it and bring the technology, which is not expensive technology, like all of a sudden those recordings wouldn't have to leave where they're from,” Riordan said.
Whether it be to continue his archival work, offer up various DIY workshops, or even unearth a rare Anchorage hip-hop record, Riordan is already busy setting plans for his next creative and educational endeavors in Bethel and across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Music Clips Featured in Audio Version (in order of appearance)
- “U Gets Nuthin’” by PLP from the “I Dare U” EP, released by Pipeline Productions (1989)
- “Call for Backup” by the Prohibited By Law Regiment from the “Armed and Dangerous” LP, released by Black Emerald Records (1990)
- “My Cane, My Slippers and You” by Joe Jim Paul from the “Eskimo Songs and Storys and Country Music” LP, released by Angelus Records (year not included on record)
- “Ak’a Tamaani” by John Angaiak from the “I’m Lost in the City” LP, released by the University of Alaska Eskimo Language Workshop (1971) and re-released by Future Days Records (2016)
- “Darkness Falling” by Snow White from the “New Messiah” promo EP, released by Desolation Unlimited Records (1985)
- “Children of the Loom” by Windflower from the “Windflower” LP, self-released (1974)
