Gold Dust Rising is a honkey-tonk bluegrass trio of far-flung musicians who met in Nome. They were invited to Petersburg as visiting artists by the Petersburg Arts Council.
“I grew up in Southeastern Virginia,” says Laura Davis Collins, “going to church and singing harmonies on hymns with my sister. My favorite thing to do is to sing harmonies because of that, I think. I played in band in Middle School and in high school, I played bassoon and really loved it. I like playing an orchestra with other people. And then I didn’t really do a lot after that. I only really started playing in front of people when I moved to Nome in 2007.”
Collins sings and plays bass with the trio. She lives in Nome, where they all met.
Guitarist Matthew Johnson is a bit nomadic but spends time regularly in Nome.
“I started playing music pretty young,” says Johnson, “not young enough in my opinion. I think I was pretty obsessed with music at a young age and started driving mom and dad crazy with it… and here we are thirty years later now and in love with playing with these two folks.”
Lorne Carroll met the other musicians when he was living in Nome. But he’s since moved to Homer.
“I grew up South of Kansas City, Missouri, out in the country,” says Carroll. “I didn’t pick up an instrument until 2007 when I bought this 1996 flat iron, so I started playing more. But it’s really when I got off the jet, moved to Nome in 2009. I played more music with folks in my first week there than I ever had before. There was a lot of music going on and still is.”
Carroll says the music scene in Nome encourages experimentation.
“In Nome, it’s a small, tight community,” says Carroll, “and so that makes me more comfortable getting out there and to experiment with dissonant tones or do something that’s not quite conventional.”
“The area brought us together,” says Johnson, “and it continues to inspire our music. We’ve gotten to play while there were some amazing storms going on around us.”
Johnson says they played together the first night of Typhoon Merbok which hit Nome in September of 2022.
The three have only played as a trio twice before. But they say it was such a magical combination, they’ve been hoping to recreate it.
Carroll describes how they chose their name. They were playing a gig at the Gold Dust Saloon in Nome.
“I was like, ‘Man, this is like, where I want to be the kind of music I want to play,'” says Carroll. “And Matt, blew me away. I was more familiar with Laura’s music at the time. It was really, really long gig. … And we stopped, we’re facing north, you know, so the seawall is behind us, the sea is behind us. We stop for a second and the sun was shining in, and this dust was in the air, twirling and sparkling like dust, and we’re in the gold dust saloon. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, that must be why they call this place the gold dust saloon.'”
After a restaurant fire, the building where they once played in Nome is boarded up. But Johnson shares a recording of the performance.
“I do have some audio of the three of us playing at the Gold Dust in Nome, which is pretty sacred these days considering the gold dust is probably no longer with us.”
The three musicians may no longer be able to visit their namesake saloon. They might not all live in the same place anymore. But in Petersburg, they’ll play together again.
Gold Dust Rising will play three shows in Petersburg. Their shows are at Kito’s Kave Friday evening, Elks Lodge Saturday evening, and Harbor Bar late night Saturday. They will also play a live set on air for KFSK at 3 pm Friday.
