Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Around six p.m. people begin arriving for that evening's performance, and at seven-fif-
teen Keys pulls on a tailcoat over his aloha shirt and says, with the closest thing to a real
grin I've seen on his face since I got there, “Everything we've done today is so we can do
here what we're going to do now.”
And then he's behind the keyboard on stage, and a spot lights up the familiar pop eyes
and top hat, and with a drum roll and the now historic “Ladeeeeeeez and gentlemen, boys
and girls of all ages, sourdoughs and sourdettes!” it's the overture to the 2006 edition of
the Whale Fat Follies.
The show, according to Keys, embraced two popular art forms: stand-up and rock and
roll. “The entire point was to make people feel better when they left than when they came
in." There were the standards like the duct tape song, an homage to Bob Seger's “Old
Time Rock and Roll” ('Give me that long shiny silver roll!'), and the about to become
standards like “Spenargo,” a takeoff on “Chicago” ('And all that Spam!'). There was even
an
Alaska
magazine song, and of course that classic number during which you could kiss
your server goodbye for the duration, Keys on the harmonica playing the Orange Blossom
Special while serpentining and high-fiving through the audience, the servers forming a
train behind him armed with spoons, washboards and clapping hands.
After the finale the audience departs and the cast gathers around the bar to wind down.
“We're out of here between eleven-thirty and midnight most nights,” Keys says.
There is a relaxation of tension in his face, a sense of having survived another day. For
a few brief hours there was a house full of people eating great food and drinking [mostly]
great beer and laughing out loud and singing along and stuffing dollar bills in Kelley
Cameron's hip boot, and that's what matters.
“This place was not about business or making money,” Keys says. “It was about music
and having a good time. I'm a musician, I'm a piano player. No one else will give me a
place to do that.”
That may be the closest Keys will ever let anyone come to plucking out the heart of his
mystery. Is there anything else he'd rather do? Well, maybe. An annual event was the
Bluesapalooza, a weekend in April where it was basically open mike for every bluesman
in town and some who flew up from Outside. But only that weekend. “Getting all those
