You can hear Kurtis Dengler perform Saturday, Oct. 6, 7:30 pm Lopez Center for Community and the Arts.

Weekly: What is special about performing on Lopez?

KD: What makes Lopez special, as far as performing goes, is that people actually know who I am, which is always cool for a change, but it’s also weird in a way, because people REALLY know me, since we’re basically all friends and neighbors.

Weekly: What is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to you at a performance?

KD: So many weird things happen all the time, from bizarre interruptions to drunk people climbing onto the stage and shouting indecipherably into the microphone – it’s just part of the deal, and you have to just laugh at it. I try not to take myself too seriously. Once I was playing a gig in Bellingham where the venue had a radio station upstairs. As I started playing a guitar solo in the middle of the show the radio somehow started blasting through my guitar amp, louder than anything else. Just some random talk radio show blasted through. It was hilarious, and as you may know, is straight out of the movie “Spinal Tap.”

Weekly: How has growing up on an island affected your music?

KD: The best thing has probably been the fact that I could make lots of noise growing up that I never could have made in the city. Now, in Seattle, my wife Isabelle and I have close neighbors and I can’t play too loud, but growing up, I could blast my electric guitar (as long as my parents could stand it) and just sort of experiment. Another thing was just having so many great friends and mentors on the island who also loved to play music, and learning from them.