The Night Two Troubadours Came to Town.

The Night Two Troubadours Came to Town.

Two singers drop into Fairbanks to kick off an Alaskan tour and they had to play for keeps.

When the audience filled the little white church, they were mostly quiet. In the back room, one of the singers drank white wine with the fiddle player, while the other talked with people at the doorway. The room was full, most of the people in the room knew each other. The college radio station had brought and promoted two singer/songwriters from Montana to Fairbanks.

That morning the small music community received horrible news, one of their friends, a woman, had committed suicide. Puffy faces and red eyes were in every row, people talked quietly with faces marked in pain. The singers, Izaak Opatz and Christy Hays, knew of the death. It could make for the toughest of all crowds, a disheartened crowd. They didn’t know the woman, but the people in front of the singers were the woman’s friends. All Opatz and Hays had were their voices and wooden instruments.

Opatz opened the set. He stood in front of the portrait of Jesus and tried not to swear giving his warm-up. I’ve known him for almost a decade but mostly as a salsa-loving trail worker. I’d only ever seen him play in bars with a band for friends or skinning a tree with a Pulaski. He’s tall, fit and has a habit of reading The New Yorker cover-to-cover. According to Opatz, he strikes out with women more often than not, but it’s hard to discern if that’s actually what happened, or if he’s using his self-deprecating charm to avoid a deeper probe.

As a soloist, he specializes in the “Dirt Wave” genre. It’s sort of a country, rock, folk and indie vibe. He started out as the front man of the Best Westerns, and still tours with the band when he gets a chance. He sings with Johnny Fritz and has been featured on TV and radio shows all across the country. He worked trail crew in the summer, and went to New York, Los Angeles and Nashville in the winters. In 2017, he gave up the steady income of trails and went full-time into the singer/songwriter. He makes custom leather goods on the side. (I’m getting a belt.)

When he started singing, his voice was quiet and deep. After two songs, he became a controlled barbarian. The church was filled with his voice. He sang with his eyes mostly closed, his neck veins popping, and he contorted his face to fit the note he sang. He cracked jokes between songs while he tuned the guitar and he told the stories behind his material.

Then he started again. Quiet at first, but midway through the song he’d grip the guitar like a pick-axe and push his energy into the crowd, out to people he’d never seen before. He gave them his goods. They ate it up, they cheered him when he cracked jokes and they listened to his tales.

Then he was done. He played for the folks and they’d listened. The crowd let their haunches down, there was cheerful chatter at the intermission. Folks bought all the cd’s he’d brought.

Next up, Christy Hays. She’s an Americana singer who tells other people’s stories. A littler taller than five feet, rocking denim on denim and black boots she stood up, lowered the microphone and played. Backing her with a fiddle was Beth Chrisman, a full-time musician who specializes in all the stringed instruments.

Hays’s voice soothed. I admit, it’s hard for me to describe a sound. It’s harder to describe a series of sounds strung together from another person’s vocal chords. When she decided to hold a word, her voice was thick like bourbon. When she upped the tempo, the room filled with light like sunrise on the prairie, everything gets hit.

Her set was filled with lonesome words and beautiful sounds. She sang a murder ballad about a woman whose life was cut short in the Bighorn Mountains. She sang about Montana. She’s a bit stage shy, sipping water when the crowd stares, but they couldn’t help it. She’d come just in time to soothe them. They watched her intently between sets. They wanted to absorb any comfort her voice could bring them. She let them.

No one rushed out of the double doors of the church at the end. A few people left for the restroom, a few out to the cars, but most people wanted to stay and chat with the singers who had come to town. They wanted to take photos and buy a cd. They wanted a hug. The two singers smiled and obliged, they had stood up and sang in a strange place during a hard time for gas money. Why wouldn’t they take a picture?