By Katherine Kerlin
Triplicate staff writer
As teenagers in Del Norte County 10 years ago, Zack Freiwald and Damian Mulinix each fed off the other¹s music and friendship.
While the two have gone on to get married, have children, and now live in separate states ‹ Mulinix in Washington, Freiwald in Alaska ‹ the music and friendship have remained important in their lives.
Now, performing separately, the singer-songwriters will reunite in a joint concert for their hometown at the Ship Ashore this Sunday night.
The performance coincides with a 10-year reunion of the Del Norte High School class of 1995, giving their former classmates a chance to hear how their music has changed over the past decade.
³For me, a lot of the songs will have to do with people in the audience, even if they don¹t know it,² said Freiwald. For example, one song he wrote describing rusty old car parts and a yard-full of tires is about a friend¹s house here.
Mulinix is currently a reporter-photographer for the Chinook Observer in Long Beach, Wash.
But music has always been prominent in his life, from swiping his mother¹s Beatles records as a child to performing in church and clubs in Washington. Though Mulinix started teaching himself guitar shortly after high school, he began writing his own music only in the past year.
³There¹s so much crappy music out there,² he said. ³I thought, ŒI can write a song better than that.¹²
Mulinix uses his voice, guitar, harmonica and piano to express an alternative country sound he likens to Ryan Adams or the mellow folk-rock of Iron and Wine.
Some of his songs are in the vein of country blues artists from the 1930s and ¹40s, noting an attraction to the blues music of Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt.
³I like taking a lot of things and mashing them together to come up with something I think sounds good,² he said.
Freiwald, who works as a Forest Service maintenance manager in Juneau, Alaska, said he has been writing stories and poems since he was a child. He got more serious about music after high school.
The teen angst and love songs he wrote during those early years are now developing into more story-based songwriting, he said.
³I¹m trying to get away from the whole just-writing-about-me kind of deal,² he said. ³It¹s not that I¹m out of things to say. But I¹m thinking people can only put up with so much of me.²
Freiwald said he has been drawing inspiration from his current surroundings. One such person who found his way into a Freiwald song was an old man on a ferry in Alaska talking to himself while playing solitaire. ³There are a lot of interesting folks who have wierd reasons for coming to Alaska,² he said.
Freiwald describes his music as ³Americana,² encompassing everything from blues to folk to bluegrass and rock. If he had a band, he said it would sound like a mixture of John Prine, Steve Earl, and the ¹70s outlaw country of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
³By reading my lyrics, I think people would have a good insight into me,² said Freiwald. ³They¹d be either thrilled or scared.²
Aside from the show, both men are looking forward to their visit home. ³For me it¹s a way to come back and see all the people I haven¹t seen,² said Freiwald.