Known for its high-energy shows, Blackwater Railroad Company will perform Saturday at Mulligans on the Blue. Courtesy photo

Blackwater Railroad Company’s lead singer Tyson T. Davis was at home in Seward, Alaska, recently where the outside temperature hovered around 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s warmed up,” Davis said. “It’s been record setting cold for a while. It’s been zero degrees when a wind chill that feels like negative 20. You can get used to it.”

Used to frigid winters, the Blackwater Railroad Company musicians shot their latest video for the song, “Rooster,” from their most recent album, “A Lovely Place to Die,” in winter in the wilds of the Kenai Fjords National Park.

“We have a good friend who owns a snowcat, and we went out there and had some fun in the snow,” Davis explained. “It was awesome. It was hovering in the 20s. That’s when you can play out in the snow. It’s not so bad.”

The Alaskan band will enjoy Maui’s warmer weather when the Hawaii leg of their Pacific Bridge Tour takes them to Mulligans on the Blue on Saturday. The tour, which includes Maui’s Justin Morris & Company, also stops in Portland and Seattle before closing in Palmer, Alaska, for the first annual Winterromp Festival.

One of Alaska’s most popular bands crafting a stew of roots rock, folk and Americana, they started out as a community band in Seward in the winter 2012, Davis recalled. “A sort of punk rock bluegrass band, like whiskey-soaked, fiddle driven, sea shanties and murder ballads, and this sad bastard cowboy country music.”

Touring as “a string band for a little over 10 years, then COVID happened,” he said. “Our fiddle player moved away, and the saxophone player Braden Rollins moved into town. We decided to add a drummer, and it started to take this new shape.”

A YouTube video shows them rocking out at the 2025 Salmonfest in Ninilchik. “We’re known for our energy and our live performance,” he noted. “We teeter on a bunch of different genres. But the thing that stays consistent no matter the genre is its high energy. It’s very dancey, and we provoke the audience.”

In previous interviews, Davis has talked about how they seek to celebrate their state and their scene, “both of which are thriving and yet largely ignored by the lower 48.”

“It’s all earth-based music,” he said about Alaska’s music scene. “It tends to teeter on traditional styles of music even when it’s being experimental. You get a lot of jam bands, a lot of bluegrass, a lot of bands like us that kind of hybridize a bunch of that stuff, and different forms of country music. Right now in Alaska, the music scene is the best I’ve ever seen, and it’s the most eclectic.”

With Davis on guitar and lead vocals, the band includes Kyle Comeau on keyboards and vocals, Rollins on saxophone and vocals, Ben Sayers on bass guitar and Will Balcao on drums.

“My dad raised me on ’70s singer-songwriters like John Prine, Leo Kottke, Tom T. Hall and The Seldom Scene, weird little bluegrass bands and the Red Clay Ramblers,” he recalled. “That got me into the folk realm, but it wasn’t until I started getting into rock and roll music that brought in the angst and the ire and energy. I am from North Carolina, and the band that hybridized that the best for me was The Avett Brothers. They were one of the first bands I ever saw that brought the rock energy to bluegrass music.”

Touring all over Alaska from Ketchikan to Nome, just south of the Arctic Circle, they’ve had some wild road experiences, including one time it was so cold they couldn’t close their van’s frozen sliding door.

“We had this old diesel van and made the mistake of playing a gig in Fairbanks in late November, and it dropped down to 35 below zero,” Davis recalled. “We had to leave our van running the whole time, or else it would freeze solid. So it just ran 24 hours a day, and even then our door froze to the point where we couldn’t shut it. It’s a nine-hour drive one way from Fairbanks to Seward, and it’s below freezing in the van for the whole time. We’re just wearing all of our clothes, and our poor bass player’s trying to hold the door shut for the entire ride.”

Looking forward to returning to Hawaii, Davis said they’re grateful to get to play on Maui.

“The first time I came there in 2009, I lived for a little bit in Lahaina,” he said. “Alaska and Hawaii have this thing where they cherish music in a way that maybe doesn’t exist in the lower 48. I don’t know if people are too busy or just too distracted. But Alaska and Hawaii people are there to see your music.”

Blackwater Railroad Company will play Mulligans on the Blue at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with Justin Morris & Company opening. Tickets range from $26 to $40 at MulligansOnTheBlue.com.