Bearfoot

Bearfoot formed in 1999 as Bearfoot Bluegrass, a group of six Alaskan teenagers who met through youth music camps in Anchorage and Cordova. Founding members Angela Oudean (fiddle, vocals), Jason Norris (mandolin, vocals), Kate Hamre (bass), Annalisa Tornfelt (fiddle, vocals), and Malani O'Toole (vocals, fiddle, guitar) were from Anchorage, while guitarist Mike Mickelson was from Cordova.

In 2001, the all-Alaskan lineup became the first Alaska act to win the Telluride Bluegrass Festival's band contest, a competition previously won by Nickel Creek and the Dixie Chicks. The band released albums including Only Time Knows (2001), Follow Me (2006), and — after signing to Nashville's Compass Records — Doors and Windows (2009, which debuted at #1 on Billboard's Bluegrass chart) and American Story (2011).

Through the late 2000s and into the 2010s, the lineup changed repeatedly: Odessa Jorgensen replaced Tornfelt in 2008, and by 2011 the Nashville-based group included Oudean and Norris alongside newer members Nora Jane Struthers, P.J. George, and Todd Grebe. Bearfoot played its final show in Bozeman, Montana, in February 2013 before going on permanent hiatus.