Joe Loutchin

I met Joe in Whitehorse while I was working for the Game Department as Predator Control Officer poisoning wolves. He used to help me skin them.

He held the Yukon Champion Fiddle Player award for several years and has two records out called "Fiddler on the Loose" I really like his music as it is the old heel stomping down east music. Whenever he comes to Dawson, he comes aboard my boat and plays the fiddle to my passengers.

He is also a bush character like the rest of my buddies and carries his own sleeping bag so he can crash out on my boat at night. He has trapped and prospected all over the Yukon.

Last fall Joe and I took the "sour toe" out of Dawson on tour for the first time. Me with my "sour toe drink"; Joe on the fiddle. We played the Klondike Inn bar in Whitehorse the first night. The next day starting at 2:00 pm we played the Red Onion Saloon in Skagway, Alaska from 2:00 pm continuously through until 1:30 pm the following day; then back to Whitehorse; did the Ski Chalet just on the outskirts of Whitehorse, then the Capital bar until closing time at 1:00 am.

Joe's wife drove us there and back as neither of us was in any condition to drive due to all the beer we were drinking. I had to relieve myself along the route. There was a construction company up-grading the road between Carcross and Whitehorse. Since this was Saturday, the machines were parked along the road. I went over to a large roller packer and was doing my business on the side of it.

A pick-up truck came to a screeching halt. The owner of the company jumped out and was coming my way asking what in the hell I was doing on his machine. I turned around and said, "Just pissing on it" That direct and surprising answer slowed him down. Joe jumped out of his truck with two bottles of beer and handed them to the guy. He accepted them, climbed back in his rig and drove off shaking his head and muttering to himself.

The ironic thing was Joe's wife was and is the secretary for the company in their Whitehorse office. I met Joe and her when they came up for our annual music festival. She said it is the joke of the year down there about the "Mad River Captain" from Dawson who had the nerve to piss on a one hundred thousand dollar machine and manage to get away with it.

- excerpt from The Saga of the SourToe