Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- Ken Peltier flirted with the big-time in 2008.

Alaska's closest thing to a country music star shared stages with Marty Stuart, Trace Adkins, Montgomery Gentry -- top-tier stars with legions of fans.

Through more than a dozen years strumming and singing in clubs and bars, Peltier honed his hard-luck instincts on songs about drinking dollar beer and crying away his troubles in Lonesome Town with smiling Mona Lisas who load up your Visa but take the bartender home.

But he had a bad feeling about 2008.

"It was going too good," he said.

In December, a swollen lymph node turned out to be throat and neck cancer.

Doctors removed Peltier's tonsils and 47 lymph nodes from the left side of his neck. Then his wisdom teeth and back molars came out in preparation for a grueling course of chemotherapy and radiation treatments that start tomorrow.

Peltier is facing the brutal days ahead with an innate toughness, with strength from friends and family -- and a major dose of humor.

Just think of the lyrics he'll get out of it:

"I'm writing a song: 'Even My Hair Left Me,' " Peltier joked on the phone from a recording studio not far from Nashville.

That's right, recording studio. He's lost 15 pounds, needs painkillers to make it through the day and had to shift his guitar strap to accommodate the shredded nerves in his neck and shoulder.

But Kenny Peltier is still making music.

Earlier this month, after two days of meetings with doctors at Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center, he spent another two days in a Mississippi studio with Waymore's Outlaws, the band that once backed country music superstar Waylon Jennings.

Peltier wanted to finish his third album before his chemo and radiation treatments began -- and with them, the risk of losing his voice.

"I wanted it done," he said. "That would be a big stress on me, sitting in the chair and thinking, 'That's half done.' I might not ever complete it."

Outlaw bass player and producer Jerry Bridges owns the Mississippi studio where Peltier recorded 15 tracks for the new album, and called his work "just the real deal when it comes to country music. Nothing is overprocessed. Nothing is overproduced."

Bridges figured he'd see Peltier again despite his cancer diagnosis.

"I had a gut feeling he would go ahead and finish it up," he said.

"A PRETTY TOUGH" GUY

At 37, Peltier is known to his friends as a true gentleman, an unfailingly polite family man who favors a cowboy hat and Wranglers on stage but keeps his personal side private. He lives between Palmer and Wasilla with wife Amy -- "she's been absolutely amazing," he said -- and their two young sons.

Peltier is a genuinely nice guy, but also tough enough to beat cancer, several friends said.

Hobo Jim, a well-known Alaska singer-songwriter, has a home in Nashville and is an old friend of Peltier's. He says he's heard from "just an outpouring of people wanting to help."

One of them was Nashville heavyweight Mel McDaniel, who hit No. 1 in 1984 with "Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On." He posted a page on his Web site about Peltier.

Within days, Peltier's MySpace page had 4,000 new hits.

Though some degree of renown came with his 2004 album, "Educated Man," Peltier has been working his way up the bar circuit since the 1990s. The five-piece Ken Peltier Band formed in 1996 and quickly became house band at Four Corners Lounge on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. More recently they signed on as regulars at Eddie's Sports Bar on the Old Seward Highway.

Peltier's deep, velvet voice resonates through standards like Jennings' "Don't Think Hank Done It This Way" and "Stand Up" written by McDaniel. But Peltier's also been known to pull out Dwight Yoakam and Rolling Stones live covers if the feeling's right.

He's kept his day job, propping up his music career with early apprenticeships as a mechanic and in road construction. He now serves as statewide training administrator for the International Union of Operating Engineers, overseeing the same apprentice programs he started out in.

During treatment, he won't be able to earn money singing or going into work, though he plans to stay connected with the office from home. The union provides health insurance, Peltier said, but he's already spent $10,000 out of pocket with months of treatment to go.

On the plus side -- sort of -- he's prepared for the coming pain. Along with three eye surgeries, Peltier severed the middle and index fingers on his right hand reaching into a paving machine in 1998.

But the cancer surgeries just hit him with a relentless quality that wore him out, he said. "I'm a pretty tough little guy, but it was one after the other."

Peltier is both grateful and a little uncomfortable to accept help being offered by friends and fundraisers, even though he has raised money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and Shriners International for 10 years.

"It's very odd for me to be on the other end of it," he said. "I know there's people that are worse off that don't get this kind of attention."

GREETINGS FROM COUCHVILLE

The "Upcoming Shows" section on Peltier's MySpace page reads: "Feb-April Medical Pit Stop, Couchville, Alaska."

He starts his radiation and chemotherapy Monday at Valley Radiation Therapy Center, a private clinic located on the campus of Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

Already, the cancer has changed him. A scar runs from the back of his jaw to his collarbone and over to his throat. His throat feels tired, he said. The lymph-removal surgery cut through major nerves and muscles, leaving his ear feeling frostbitten and his shoulder aching.

Peltier got his diagnosis from an Anchorage doctor two days before Christmas, a couple of weeks after he walked into an urgent care clinic in Palmer to get that swollen lymph gland checked out.

He doesn't smoke, but has played smoky clubs for years. Yes, Peltier said, he wondered if second-hand smoke played a role in his cancer, but nobody knows for sure.

"Dr. Chung said, 'Ken, it really doesn't matter how you got it. We just have to get it,' " he said.

Richard Chung, Peltier's radiation oncologist, described head and neck cancers as relatively uncommon and "one of the hardest cancers that we treat" because treatment gives patients so many side effects, including trouble swallowing that means patients can't consume enough calories, and the resulting exhaustion.

About 50,000 cases of head and neck cancer are reported in the United States every year, said Dr. Wendell "Dell" Yarbrough, an associate professor at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

There's no data suggesting singers face any increased risk related to stress or inflammation to their vocal chords, Yarbrough said. Instead, it's the honky-tonk lifestyle that may be more to blame.

"A lot of singers, because of where they work, in honky-tonks or bars, a lot are exposed to second-hand smoke," he said. "Smoking and drinking alcohol are risk factors. Some singers, because of their vocation, are at higher risk."

Peltier expects to lose another 15 pounds during treatment. His throat will swell and develop sores. His appetite will disappear. His Vanderbilt doctors told him that, because he's so young, his treatment involves a "very brutal" combination of drugs and radiation. Basically, he'll feel like a tank hit him.

Asked for a prognosis for a patient in Peltier's situation, Chung didn't want to give percentages but said, "It's good."

Peltier's a good patient. He does his homework, asks the right questions, and has a great attitude, the doctor said. And he has a really nice voice. Peltier gave him a copy of "Educated Man."

Then comes another tough question: Will he lose his voice

"We certainly hope to preserve his singing abilities," Chung said.

Peltier just got back from his trip to the Nashville area, finishing work on that new album and tying up some loose ends for his day job, but also getting a second opinion on his diagnosis and treatment. The Outside specialists endorsed the course recommended by his Alaska doctors.

Peltier plans to spend the down time during recovery listening to the raw tracks of the new album. He plans to polish them later this year.

He says he has no doubt he'll survive

"I know two things: I don't lay down for anything, and I won't for this either," he said. "I really miss my microphone already."

Find reporter Zaz Hollander online at adn.com/contact/zhollander.

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