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: