NKyTribune Staff Report
Andy King started playing drums in grade school at Beechwood, got encouragement from his high school band director to continue with music, and played locally with the popular Kenton County Regulators.
He also played with Ma Crow and the Lady Slippers.
A few years back, he found his way to Alaska to take a seasonal job at Denali National Park that involved singing and playing music — and “paid pretty well.”
“That’s where I met my wife, so I moved permanently in 2009,” he said.
King and his wife Mandy now have a two-year-old son, Warren, and live in Anchorage.
And King has a gig that has put him in front of a larger audience — on a Reality television show called “Alaska Proof.”
The Discovery channel show airs Thursday evenings at 9 p.m. on Animal Planet.
It’s about vodka, Alaska-style, and features a team — including King — from Alaska Distillery, located at the foothills of the Alaska Range. It’s a distillery that takes an unconventional approach to make vodka, harvesting 10,000-year-old free floating glacier ice, which provides the purest water on Earth, from Prince William Sound. The distillery’s master distiller, Scott Lindquist, is the only person in the world to have a permit to harvest this ice.
King is general manager, involved in every aspect of the business from harvesting ice to marketing products.
“I was just looking for a new job and to be honest, I just talked my way into it,” he says. “I really didn’t have much experience in the alcohol business; it just seemed like a cool place to work. ‘Permafrost Vodka’ and ‘Outlaw Whiskey’ — what’s not to like?
“The concept for the show probably came from one of our products, smoke salmon vodka, which is obviously pretty uniquely Alaskan.”
The distillery was founded by CEO Toby Foster — and that’s a story in itself. Foster, a former career pilot, survived a plane crash in Alaska and decided to start the distillery.
“There’s magic in what we do,” Foster says on the distillery’s website. “We blend our skill and passion with the post pristine water on Earth and marry it to the indigenous flavors of Alaska.
“The spirits we craft are a reflection of ourselves and the untamed beauty of our state.”
Other members of the show team — not the whole distillery staff — are Shane Reeves, expedition leader (who finds the “wildest pockets of Alaska to cull experimental ingredients, like shed caribou antlers to special wild mushrooms), and Chrissy Grunzke, assistant manager.
King is definitely enjoying himself. And, for the record, his favorite is the “honey vodka — fantastic over ice, not too sweet.”
He does get back home “at least once a year to visit family, many of whom still live there, which is awesome. I always try to play a gig or two with my old band mates.
“After so many years of playing together, it’s always easy (and fun) getting back together for some music.”
Want to bet he comes bearing some liquid refreshment?
NKyTribune’s Vicki Prichard and Judy Clabes contributed to this story.