Juneau Folk Fest is homegrown fun: in its 32nd year, this festival features music and lyric tales.

• Author: Pilkington, Steve

Music, song and lyric tales will break out in Juneau early this month as the 32nd Annual Alaska Folk Festival kicks into gear-bringing fledgling songsters and grizzled folk veterans (and plenty in between) together for an event that has grown stronger over time.

For more than three decades, artists and fans have gathered in Juneau each spring to celebrate a style of music steeped in American history and yet tenacious enough to keep its audience listening and tuned into change. A perfect example of the appeal is this year's guest performer, Nanci Griffith, whose beginnings reach back to her start in Austin, Texas.

"She learned to play the guitar from a Saturday morning PBS series hosted by Laura Weber and began writing her own songs because she found that easier than learning how to play those of other people," according to her Web site. "Her first professional gig was at Austin's Red Lion club on a Thanksgiving holiday evening when she was 14. Later that year, singer-songwriter Tom Russell heard her singing around a campfire at the Kerrville Folk Festival and became her earliest champion."

Her breakthrough finally came with her 1986 CD Last Of The True Believers. Featuring Griffith's signature songs "Love at the Five and Dime" and "The Wing and the Wheel," the album was Grammy-nominated.

Griffith's performances in New York's Carnegie Hall and Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, as well as her tours to Vietnam, Cambodia and Kosovo, are far away from her early stomping ground in Austin's Hole in the Wall bar. But her beginnings in folk and country are strong and she now has her own brand of "folkabilly." This month, Griffith will perform in Fairbanks and Anchorage before heading south to Juneau to take part in the Alaska Folk Festival, both with performances and by taking part in scheduled workshops.

The Alaska Folk Festival was born on a cold winter evening in 1975 when a small group of Juneau folk musicians decided to put on a performance in the Alaska State Museum and dubbed it as the...