iJamming.net

As a writer, I’m allowed to embellish: it’s called poetic license. I do occasionally exercise these rites while penning my posts. But as regards my last missive, about this year’s Escarpment Trail Run, I realize now that I’ve read the tales of others (especially those who were behind me, and therefore caught more of the storm weather, plus the volunteers who spent up to 12 hours on the mountain that day), I may actually have understated the case. The heavy thunder-lightning-hail-rain storm that hit in the middle of the race (coming on the heels of all-night storms that kept most runners awake when they should have been getting pre-race rest, which themselves came on top of 36 hours constant rain earlier in the week), knocked out power for 9,000 people in the area, and not for the first time this summer:

Central Hudson is seeing about a 40 percent increase in “outages related to lightning strikes” this year as compared with years past,

reported the Daily Freeman newspaper.

“It is a real issue for us,” said Van Buren, who added that the company does spend a great deal of time and money installing lightning protection on its equipment. “It is an interesting phenomenon,” she said.

It’s also an example of what you might call climate change.

I believe this is Ben Nephew, who wins the race most years in under 3 hours (!!!!), simply jumping through the deep standing water we were greeted with at the start of the race. This photo and 152 others by Tamatha S., including some from somebody perched mid-course, can be viewed properly here. Chem them out: there are some gorgeous pictures.

Meantime, I’ve cribbed a few comments from our e-mail group.

From race organizer and founder Dick Vincent. (You will have to bear with his madness for describing it as “fun.” He habitually describes all participants as “too stupid to know better,” and readily includes himself in such category.)

This year was the worst water I have ever seen on the trail, and certainly
the worst storms, especially the electricity, that I have experienced during
this event. But I had a blast, certainly the most fun I have had in a long time crossing this thoroughfare. However, lightning is like bees, it is no big
deal whatsoever, unless they strike, and we were very fortunate not to have
someone struck down. Below is what the Berkshire Eagle reported of this storm when it got to Southern County, Mass, where someone at Tanglewood got nailed
< <
From about 1 to 2:30 p.m., lightning struck the ground at a rate of almost
100 strikes every 15 minutes in South County, Wasula said.<<
We were very lucky.
Certainly, with the extreme lightning, the wild rain, the hail, and trails
that were more like following brooks that paths, this year was the most
memorable in my mind.

This from the volunteers who hike in to Dutcher’s Notch, a valley between the two biggest climbs (and descents) on the trail:

“The Dutcher Notch crew’s adventure did not end when the sweeps came thru (very
glad to see the sweep crew) but then we had to get across all the
rivers and rivulets that had formed. Just before finally getting off
the trail we had to negotiate a creek which was now a raging torrent.
We pretty much formed a human chain ferrying each member across. this
final adventure definitely had it’s hairy moments. I’ll be back next
year–maybe I should work the finish line.”

The crazy cats from the Albany Running Exchange make a video at every race they attend. This five-minute clip captures a little of the mood of the day – but even they didn’t send anyone on the actual course with a camera.

This from someone who pulled a DNF. I think you can understand why when you read of his trail tribulations.

“It rained on this trip. I mean it really rained. Thunder started
rumbling as I was approaching the base of Blackhead. It started raining as I beganthe incline. For me this is a 25 minute climb. Before the rain, I said that 30 minutes would work today.
It took 45 minutes on this trip.

As I ascended, it started raining harder. Real hard. Halfway up, I am
listening to huge thunder right over head, and it’s already coming down in
torrents. I remember keeping my head down and only looking at the next steps in front of me.

What I am to do now? Well, keep going of course.

It rains harder and it gets steeper. I am getting colder. After all, I am
wearing next to nothing (loop t-shirt and shorts and a skimpy runners cap).
Water is rushing down the rocks as I come to the hard parts. We’re talking only 50-100 feet of elevation gain, but up a waterfall. At a steep slope. Am I
crazy? This is absolutely the worse part of the course, and I am mixing it up
with lightening bolts.

It starts hailing. That is: ICE is falling out of the sky. Did I tell
you I was getting colder?”

This from an Escarpment veteran, someone who joined the 400 mile club on this run.

“having traversed the trail 22 times during the race and many times not during the race, i can attest to this being the most difficult conditions I’ve ever seen.? I asked the ranger, whose name escapes me at the moment, at the finish if he’d ever seen water like that on the trail, and he said emphatically that this was the worst he’d ever seen!? The standing water was the worst for me since I like to see what I’m landing on.? The running water was interesting, and I enjoyed knowing if I was going up or down depending on which direction the water was running!

I’m eternally thankful that no one got seriously hurt by the conditions out there….there were many people struck by lightening that day in New York State.”

And this, again from Dick Vincent:

“The Cangemi’s and their aid station on North Point witnessed numerous
lightning strikes from their birds next atop of the highly exposed North Point. Dave Boles and gang, tucked in Dutcher’s Notch had been flooded out of their usual spot in the trail, and were tending to many of the runners suffering from “Lightning Shock”, one who had tingles up her arm and had her hair stand up when one blast hit.”

And this from the Volunteers at North Point, the last aid station on the race:

Our cars were parked at the Mary’s Glen trail head, so we hiked down
the Mary’s Glen trail. This trail is often wet; Sunday morning it was
quite wet. On Sunday afternoon, we found ourselves hiking through
rivers. When I realized my shoes were as wet as they were going to
get, and there wasn’t much point in avoiding water, the hike became
more pleasant.

And finally, this from someone who took it all in the right spirit:

AND, this is the first year I had a major fall (and 4
stitches that I am pretty darn proud of).

Me, my shoulder is purple, my calf muscles have still not eased up, and I have a badly bruised toe despite the so-called toe-schock protection built into my trail shoes, and then there’s the general cuts and scrapes, but it’s all okay, because I’m too stupid to know better. Like all those above, I’m just glad no one got seriously hurt out there. Next year: warm sunshine and low humidity?

Of all the crazy things I’ve done in life – and there have been a few – participating in yesterday’s Escarpment Trail Run has to rank among the craziest. When, just more than half way through the 30 kilometer, six-mountain course, the skies – having long ago darkened and offered up the worrying rumble of approaching thunder – opened up with the vengeance of Thor himself, dropping hail the size of corn on my head at the very point I was climbing Stoppel Point hand over fist, sending out lethal bolts of lightning all around and issuing cascades of thunder so loud it felt like I was inside the middle of the storm (and at 4000 foot elevation, I was indeed, right inside the middle of the clouds), I experienced a brief moment of what some might call common sense, when one part of my brain sent a signal to another that maybe I should be at home right now, curled up with the Sunday paper and staying warm and dry rather than racing a dangerous course that most hikers can’t face in a full day. And then, as I emerged from one of Stoppel’s three enforced climbs onto one of its three welcome jogging interludes, a woman my own age (admittedly the consistently fastest Masters female in the region) trotted up behind as if from out of nowhere, rounded me and disappeared briskly into the distance, looking for all the world as if she was just enjoying a gentle stroll in the park… and I remembered that there was nowhere home from here but the finish line, another five treacherously slippery mountainous miles off in the distance, and the sooner I could get there, the sooner I could get warm and dry.

A map tells a thousand words

Alright, I admit it. I loved it. There’s really no better way to feel alive than to participate in something that could, on a day like yesterday, kill you. (Or, at the very least, cause a few broken bones.) Fortunately or otherwise, I’ve been at the peak of fitness this year, I’d trained well for the race, and got as much sleep as possible in the week leading up to it (allowing for the thunder and lightning storms on Saturday night that, it turned out, kept most runners awake for several hours). I set a goal for myself of 4:20 (the first and only time I ran the Escarpment, two years ago, it was in 4:29), and met almost every one of my split points at exactly the time I’d hoped for. By the point I reached the top of Stoppel, however, the rains had turned the last four miles – essentially downhill, but highly “technical,” which means you have to scramble and jump down several rock faces, maneuver over sharp jagged rocks on the flat parts, run along cliff ledges that drop 1000 feet or more, and so on – into a complete slime fest. With the rocks having all the grip of olive oil, I took one nasty fall onto my back that temporarily pulled my calf muscles and more permanently cut open my shoulder and decided to put safety first from there on in. At the end of the race, by which point I felt I understood the true meaning of the verb “to bucket,” I was running literally inside the middle of the rainwater streams that had decided to invade what passes for a trail, themselves following the point of least resistance to the finish line. I came home in 4hrs, 25 minutes, with a great big smile on my face and feeling pretty good about running such a consistently-paced race. In fact, it’s the only time since my first Marathon in 2002 that I hadn’t hit the “wall” – and avoiding that miserable sensation is well worth five minutes off your intended time. Having seen the results, I feel even better; my placing (47th out of nearly 200) would, in normal years, have demanded a time closer to the four hours I hope one day to be achieve.

No pictures from yesterday, I’m afraid. The rain put paid to that. Posie took this one at the start line two years ago. In the distance is Windham High Peak, three-plus miles steady uphill – the first of five or six peaks, depending how pedantic you are about what qualifies as a peak.

It’s been a strange summer: a heatwave pushing towards the 100F mark in late May, followed by a lot more rain than we’re used to even though the mountains are a tropical micro-climate, and just one week ago, another heatwave with temperatures well into the nineties. Up and down, wet and dry, the kind of summer where barbeques and parties are consistently rescheduled or abandoned entirely – and phone calls go out quickly for the kids to come over and use a swimming pool when a Monday or Tuesday turns glorious. We knew it was going to be a particularly wet year for the Escarpment when we were gifted about 36 hours of continuous rain through Wednesday and Thursday, several inches of the stuff succeeding in washing away parts of our hill. With the additional inch or two from Saturday night, we were welcomed onto the course at East Windham by an unavoidable pool of six inch deep rainwater that had gathered just a hundred yards from the start line. And it was uphill from there. (And then downhill. And then uphill. And then…) Still, given the choice, I’d sooner have run yesterday’s race in the conditions we had than the heatwave of the previous weekend. At least, for me, dehydration was not a major issue. (However, an ambulance was called for at least one runner who came in suffering from hypothermia: it got mighty cold out there. It was, also, almost pitch dark inside the forest at midday!)

If there was a real downer to the downpour (because honestly, it made the whole event somewhat comical), it was the anticlimax at the finish line. The North-South Lake State campground is one of the most beautiful spots in the Catskills. Normally, race finishers head slowly to the lake to cool down their aching limbs and then hang out all afternoon either on the beach or the field by the finishing line, enjoying picnics with their families or just their new-found running friends. You can usually see a few six-packs going around; last year, when I volunteered at the finish line, one guy who drove in from Detroit and camped at the park itself brought his excellent home brew with him. No such fun in 2008: I came across the finish line to see a crowd of about 100 people, my wife and kids among them, huddled and massed under the food tent, all with barely an inch to move as the park turned into a mud field. Campbell’s first words to me? “Can we go now?” Not the most polite or congratulatory of welcomes, but I understood his point: it can’t have been much fun for a 12-year old to spend an entire hour waiting for me in such cramped and confined quarters. Had I known we’d be in for this kind of storm, I’d have encouraged the family to stay home. Instead, I ran (yes, ran) to the car to get warm clothes, got changed, grabbed some bagels, checked off some friends, and headed home for a warm bath and that Sunday paper.

Where was this guy when I needed him yesterday?

As I’ve mentioned before at iJamming! when writing about this race, there are no medals dispensed, no awards, not even a free t-shirt. (Not until you run six races, at which point you join the 100-mile club; then you get a free t-shirt.) Unlike the New York Marathon, where a million or two people cheer you along and your name is printed in the following day’s New York Times, few people know about this race. But those who do, know all too well its reputation and its qualifying standards – they call it the Boston Marathon of trail running – and when you meet such like-minded folk, you get bragging rights worth so much more than a medal that stays in a box until you forget where the hell it is. Am I sore today? You bet. Will I run it again next year? You know the answer to that one, too. Hey, four more years and I get a free t-shirt!

More on the Escarpment Trail at iJamming! here

My good friend Chris Coco has himself a new musical project, City Reverb, which will be releasing its debut album, Lost City Folk, in September. If you don’t know Chris as a musician, you may well know him as a DJ – either from the radio (as host of the Blue Room and, more recently, some documentaries on Radio 2), or from the clubs, where he’s been DJing a very Balearic brand of chill-out music since before either phrase was coined. Oh, and there are some people may know him as Robbie Williams’ recent tour DJ, a job of global stadium proportions that I suspect just may have played its part in the formation of City Reverb.

For, unlike Chris’ previous studio projects (and there have been many), City Reverb is a group. Not quite a rock group, perhaps, but then again… not that far off. I’ve been living with an advance copy of Lost City Folk for a few months now, and if I didn’t know it was good from the first listen, I certainly did at the point that songs started showing up on my iPod – and I found myself checking for the artist credit (hey there’s 6,000 songs on there now!) rather than hitting fast forward.

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So what, or who, or why is City Reverb?

“City Reverb,” says Chris, with typical succinctness, “is an idea that’s turned into a real group. It’s from and about London I guess.”

I guess it is. The MySpace page includes the following quote, which may or may not be the group’s own:

“In 2008 for the first time in the history of mankind there will be more people living in cities than there are left behind in the countryside. By 2050 a staggering 75% of the world’s population will live in cities.

Is the human race keeping up with the relentless pace of change or are we all becoming lost city folk, searching for soul and direction in the maze-like canyons of our new concrete world?”

It’s an interesting question, especially for someone like myself who, rather than being “left behind in the countryside,” made a conscious decision to move to it. I don’t feel like one of those lost city folk anymore, and I haven’t done since I lived in London 20 years ago. But that doesn’t mean I can’t relate to City Reverb, whose music I actually find quite pastoral.

Lost City Folk is a little bit chill (though a lot less than you might have expected), a lotta bit soul, a surprising amount of rock, and a hell of a lot of song. These are not dance tracks, but rather, concrete (ha!) pieces of music, most with verses and choruses, and even, perhaps, the odd middle eight. It will fit perfectly in your collection alongside those albums you surely must own by Lemon Jelly, Groove Armada and co. You can hear a few tracks at the group’s myspace page: I’m particularly taken by “Time Side On,” probably the hardest rockin’ song on the album, and by the album’s opening track, “Everything Will Be Alright,” which takes me back to the early 90s and those late-night/early morning DJ sets digging the sweetest in ambient dance – something I still insist is not an oxymoron. That opening cut is also one of many on Lost City Folk on which Chris has bitten the bullet and decided to sing for his supper, and quite attractively so. It’s odd to have known someone for so long only to discover that they have a decent singing voice; I imagine it must be even odder for the person in question.

A video for City Of Lights reveals Lost City Folk’s fascination with London… Personally, I find the album very pastoral.

One song you won’t hear on the MySpace page, but which, with the act’s permission, you can download here for free, is “Seventy Three,” a piece of softly spoken soul that clearly harkens back to the same year of our glam youth as Life On Mars. “Stephen Duffy (Lilac Time) helped me with some of the words,” says Chris, which I trust is not the only reason I was attracted to it. (In the late 80s and early 90s, the Lilac Time made some of my favorite music of the last 25 years. Duffy later made a proper living for himself writing hits for Robbie Williams. Therein, I assume, lies the connection with Coco.) “It was supposed to be about Nick Drake but ended up being about me as a kid and my lost brother and all sorts of other stuff as well.”

There are no bonus points for spotting a musical connection to Dexys’ “Love Part 1” or “Reminisce Part 2” – but as someone who once got laughed off stage for his own attempt (“Inspiration Part 2” I believe it was called, written the morning after seeing Dexys at the Old Vic), I can vouch for just how hard this stuff is to pull off. Especially if you’re writing about a lost brother… the real lost city folk. Now some of the lyrics are making more sense, and rendering “Seventy Three” more poignant than it already seemed. I think it’s a beautiful piece of music. But judge for yourself.

Lost City Folk will be released through Dumb Angel on September 15. The new single “City Lights” will hit stores September 1. The five-piece City Reverb – Chris Coco, Micky Bucherri, Nick Cornu, Adam Barry and Lew West – will be playing the Green Man festival in Wales on August 15 and presumably other shows around the UK as well closer to the time.

Download or stream “Seventy Three” here.

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This past Sunday, we risked the oppressive heat and humidity and trucked on down thirty miles to the village of Rosendale for the second and final day of its 30th Annual Street Festival – and accompanying live music, spread across no less than five stages. We caught only the tail end of the event and it was none too easy on the kids, with temperatures well into the nineties. But I was glad to finally get to experience the Festival. Everywhere we turn up here, there’s another outdoor concert and if the quality of performers is not always up there at the very highest echelon, well Goddamn, it’s free, ain’t it? Super short observations follow below.

Todd Giudice has at least three things going for him: great voice, great guitar, great amp. The clarity of performance was instantly endearing. The songs? Good bordering on very good. A pleasant surprise.

Futu Futu performed on the Mountain Stage. I really enjoyed the deliberate dissonance of the horn section.

Rosendale’s Main Street

Ross Rice, publishger of local arts magazine Roll, hosted a post-Festival gig on his porch. That’s his son playing the drums.

The Rhodes were the most intriguing of the few acts we saw. The Highland-based band won last year’s Garage Rumble at the Bearsville Theater. Their clothing suggests they’ve been studying the Felice Brothers. But their performance was something else: sixties-influenced, absolutely (though themselves they claim the “rockabilly” tag) and yet they played with remarkable quietness, so that every little guitar lick and melody was clearly audible. One song sounded just like the Monkees at their commercial height; the next was like a Beatles love song circa 1963. (Think “Do YOu Want To Know A Secret?”) Though it may not be that they need to rough up the sound – I was really taken by the meticulous musicality of it all – the influences are too obvious right now to render the Rhodes more as yet than a promising prospect. But look at them: They’re young enough to grow out of it, right? So watch this (My)space. They’re playing a bunch of Manhattan and Brooklyn gigs in early August, as well as Brittany Sokolowski’s Birthday Party in nearby Hurley. Can anybody come?

The Rhodes performed on the Café Stage, out front of the (vegetarian! Yes!) Rosendale Café, where just a few weeks earlier, I’d shared a car ride with some neighbors to go see Mary Gauthier perform. Gauthier, in case you’re not familiar, is the singer-songwriter who only came into her own in middle age, after years of hard living, such as infused the song “I Drink” from the album Mercy Now. I wrote about the title track to that album when I first heard it, via an NPR All Songs Considered Podcast. The song near enough stopped my car in its tracks. (Read the full experience here. Hear the song at Gauthier’s MySpace page.) Turns out I’m not alone, as the same thing happened to a tough guy friend of mine when he first heard it; having just fathered a second son, the lyrics about family and mercy hit too close to home, forcing him to pull the car over and shed some tears.

Diana Jones (left) and Mary Gauthier at the Rosendale Cafe, June 6, 2008.

There were no tears in the house at the Rosendale Café, an incredibly intimate gig given Gauthier’s current standing on the Americana scene. (Her new album, Between Daylight and Dark, was produced by Joe Henry for Lost Highway.) There was plenty of laughter, no shortage of standing applause, and lots of loving – especially between Gauthier and her partner, Diana Jones, who played a short opening set and then joined Gauthier for much of her own. In fact, I’m not sure when I last saw such a look of admiration between onstage performers as when Gaulthier gazed lovingly upon Jones near the end of their shared set. Gauthier and Jones do not perform what you might call uplifting material: in fact they bill themselves with a certain facetious self-deprecation as the Sorrow Sisters. But any time you get the opportunity to sit just a couple of tables over from a writer and performer the quality of Gauthier, you take it. This was, apparently, Gauthier’s fourth visit to the Rosendale Café – they’ve been booking her since before the likes of me ever heard of her – and the owners clearly hope it won’t be her last. But given the village’s keen obsession for live music, I can be sure that there will always be something worth traveling down there for.

This is what’s been twisting our melons, man.
Click on images for web links

Chris Coco’s new project

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Seeing Brian Wilson at Belleayre Mountain….

….and getting to picnic outdoors

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British Indie Bands on form

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White Wine from the Hudson Valley

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Diary of Rock’n'Roll Stars

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Diary of a Non-Rock’n'Roll Star

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Old school rapper meets old school raver

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Poetic textures, articulate melodies, groove grooves, shimmering impressionist harmonies

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Pay-as-you-like sample-happy party music

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The organic food we get weekly from our share at Taliafero Farms

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Exhaustive/exhausting cultural/music studies

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Stop Homework?

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I never tire of beautiful female-fronted love songs

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Big beats still rock the block