Friend of The Jiffy: "Music Person" Presents A Postcard From The Hudson Valley

Dylan Tupper Rupert joins the show today in my first-ever feed drop to take us on a ride-along with her podcast "Music Person!"

It's the first part in a three-part series for her show, dedicated to mapping out how the Hudson Valley’s history, density, and seasons shape a vibrant indie music scene today. In part 1, which we feature here, Dylan visits Hannah Cohen, Sam Evian, Flying Cloud Studios, and Big Pink (and Jenn Pelly and Olivia Bee make some cameos).

Go check out Dylan's full series here: https://www.talkhouse.com/artist/music-person

Listen ad-free and support her show here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/musicperson

And follow Dylan on Instagram here! @yaydylan

Chapters

• 0:00 Host Introduces First Feed Drop
• 1:17 Meet Dylan And Music Person
• 3:02 Why The Hudson Valley Pulls Artists
• 5:03 Defining The Travelogue Vision
• 8:23 Series Roadmap And Guests
• 10:09 Setting Off: Postcard From The Valley
• 12:37 Method Podcasting And The City Escape
• 15:29 Community Density And Creative Flow
• 18:04 Flying Cloud Studios: Arrival
• 21:18 Building A Kinder Recording Space
• 24:24 Life And Work Rhythm Upstate
• 27:36 Neighbors, Seasons, And Daily Texture
• 31:14 Roots, Affordability, And The Move North
• 34:56 Lore Versus Reality In Woodstock
• 38:10 Seasonal Change As Creative Fuel
• 42:00 Bridging Artists And Longtime Locals
• 45:36 Social Fabric And Spontaneous Collaboration
• 49:04 Winter Lessons And Growing Up
• 52:32 Fourth Of July At Colgate Lake
• 55:20 Pilgrimage To Big Pink
• 59:18 Grossman, History, And Myth-Making
• 1:03:24 Tourism, Spillover, And Money Tensions
• 1:06:30 Why The Myth Still Feels Alive
• 1:09:12 What’s Next In The Mini-Series

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

James here, and as you know, uh the Jiffy is taking a break through December, but I didn't want the weekend to go by without posting an episode, so I'm trying something new here. In the podcasting industry, this is something that's called a feed drop. So I'm dropping an episode from a different show here in my feed because it's a show that I think you will really like, and I don't want to give too much away, but I will say we have a very special guest in the intro section right after this. Oh, and just a heads up, there are a few F-words here and there, which is fine with me, because the Jiffy is F-word positive, but I just wanted to let you know in case you're not, which is fine. Okay, here's the show. Hello and welcome to the Jiffy, a podcast about upstate New York that really takes you places. And this is a special episode because in this intro we have a special visitor, a special guest here with us today, because as the podcast is taking a break for the holidays, uh, we still gotta keep the podcast feed our current and act is very important. But I'm very excited about this because this is our first ever special guest in the intro. It's our first ever what they call a podcast feed drop in the industry. Uh who do we have here? Who's here with us?

SPEAKER_09: 1:06

Oh my gosh, James, hello. My name is Dylan Dupper Rupert, and that is correct. I am a visitor. I'm a visitor to your beautiful lands of upstate New York. Um, or at least I was in June and July of 2025. I am the host of a podcast called Music Person. It's on the Talkhouse Network, and it's basically portraits and interviews and scene reports of people that are living the music life today. Hey, I'm Dylan Tepper Rupert, and this is Music Person. The show about the music life and the people who live it. It's mostly about independent musicians and like the indie rock genre, but um that's kind of my bread and butter. And I went up to upstate New York, like I said, in June and July of this year, and I, you know, met with some artists up there and learned a lot about what the music life looks like between Hudson and Woodstock and Kingston and Beacon. And that's what I'm excited to talk to you about.

SPEAKER_00: 2:07

It's really cool because I mean, I think that everyone knows obviously Woodstock is like a music capital, but yeah, you went to Woodstock, Socrates, um, Kingston and Hudson and all these other places. And I'm wondering, like in in your journeys after you visited, uh, you now had a few months to reflect on it. You're putting this podcast series together. What are some of these things that stood out to you that you remember most about your time here?

SPEAKER_09: 2:32

Oh my gosh. Well, one, it this is sort of like a narrative thread in the series, but I sort of I I set up the um I guess the lore of the Woodstock of the imagination, uh, of music imagination as this place that even before the 60s was a prolific magnetizing place for artists and musicians to like retreat from New York City. And I was like, I was one of those people where I I live in Los Angeles. I was in New York for work and also just friends and everything that happens when you go to New York. And I was there for a week and then I went upstate for a week, and I was like, wow, I'm finally gonna unwind and relax. But that didn't really happen because I got so excited about the sheer density of the creative community in upstate New York, and I just wanted to talk to as many people as possible, get the broadest sense in the shortest amount of time that I had of like what it really is like to be a musician in you know the 21st century in this place that's really famous for 20th century music. The things that were really that just like absolutely enchanted me are the obvious. I mean, swim holes, beautiful mountain drives, just like the way summer hits in upstate New York. You know, I I come from a place that um has a lot of uh attitude, like supremacy attitude about the qualities of its summer. I'm from the Pacific Northwest, I'm from Seattle, Washington. We are very uh we we go hard for our summers and we think they're the best in the world. But it was honestly pretty fucking awesome in Woodstock too. We loved swimming at Colgate Lake. I felt like it was just like this postcard. And what else was really exciting about it? I don't know. I mean, another thing that feels so exotic and luxurious to me as someone who lives on the West Coast is the density of the Northeast just in general, like how much closer these clusters of charming small towns are to one another, how easy it is to get places by the train. Like that is just not something we have over here. And I think that honestly is like a huge contributor uh to the density of the creative community upstate. Like there really is a connection between New York City and uh and these small towns are well.

SPEAKER_00: 5:03

Okay, so now I want to hear about uh music person. So just tell me a little bit about this show because I it's one of my favorite podcasts. I love especially like your travel logs or your like audio blog blogging sort of approach sometimes, like your Dylan Fest episode most recently was really fun to hear. So tell me a little bit about what you're what you're trying to do with the music person and how did it come to be? What's the origin story?

SPEAKER_09: 5:25

Thank you so much for saying that. Well, the origin story is sort of like my my whole life order and story. So I won't I won't belabor that too much. But in general, I'm one of those, you know, as I think you can really too, James, like one of those multi-hyphenite creative people.

SPEAKER_00: 5:42

I'm gonna jump in quickly with a little resume too, because you've produced for like you have history in the in the audio podcast, you know, audio journalism space and music, especially KCRW's Lost Notes. You've done the 33 and the third podcast, a founding producer of Bansplain. And now you're doing this incredible show, Music Person. Sorry, I had to jump in and and like give credit where it's due because you have quite the career.

SPEAKER_09: 6:03

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's that's sort of like the podcast leg of the career, and uh sort of leading up to that or feeding into it was uh years being like a music critic, freelance, and just even before that, ever since I was a teenager, even a preteen, just being really invested in my local music scene growing up in Seattle and then in San Francisco, LA, where I lived. Um and so all of that sort of leads up to music person today, which is, you know, which is my effort to create something that's like uh what what did I say in the pitch? Like, what if there was a fresh air for indie rock, but it had like a college radio vibe? Like, could Terry Gross be 33 years old with a college radio attitude and you know, have it work out? So that's kind of what I'm going for. Um, and I think like with these with these travel episodes that I do, there's of course like a lot of inspiration from, you know, not to be super heavy-handed, but just like the way that Anthony Bourdain explored and perceived the world and and made media about it that felt very thoughtful and and true to the people and the places that he was exploring. So Music Person is sort of an experiment in those forms and sort of um, you know, long-form interviews with artists that I think are worth talking to. And also, yeah, I guess medium to long form travel content that revolves around music and music culture and the people who make it and just what that what that means for music. And you know, it's also just fun. I think it also creates a a vibe of people getting to come along the journey with me, which you may not get to do in your real life. So why not just do it for an hour in your headphones? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00: 7:54

Okay, Dylan. Well, I'm so glad that you stopped by to introduce the series. I can't wait to hear the episodes. Let's get to it, let's hear what you've brought us. Do you want to kick it off for us?

SPEAKER_09: 8:03

Yeah, so this is not only part one of my three-part postcard from the Hudson Valley series, but it's my first travelogue mini-series period. It's a format that I wanted to explore, you know, as a vehicle for traveling to places that felt like they had interesting music history or music history was being written in real time. And I literally can't think of a better place to kick off that sort of a project than the Hudson Valley because it's rich in history and it's so freaking compact with incredible artists. So you'll hear a little bit more in the intro for episode one, which is what's about to play in your earbuds or whatever you listen to. But in episode one, I sort of just kick off the series by giving you a roadmap of who we're gonna meet, which is Hannah Cohen and Sam Evian, who run Flying Cloud Studios kind of north of Kingston a little bit. Then we visit with the indie rock band Babe Hoven, who live outside of Hudson. We take a detour to an ashram. Then in episode three, we visit with my my friends. I'm friends with this uh family, the parents and the daughter, the Littletons, Dan Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell and their daughter Story Littleton, who are deeply involved in the Woodstock music community and offer this honestly just incredible uh multi-generational perspective on what it's like to live a music life, both as Gen X and Gen Z in this place with working musician parents. So, episode one, I'm taking you up to the absolutely bucolic, beautiful Flying Cloud Studios, where we visit with Hannah Cohen and Sam Evian, and then we also take a little dip into Colgate Lake, and of course, of course, we visit Big Pink because that was a pilgrimage that was absolutely non-negotiable. Hey, this is Music Person, and I'm Dylan Tupper Rupert. Welcome to my first ever travel log series. This is a postcard from the Hudson Valley. So back in July of 2025, I took the train to upstate New York with a few of my friends for a series of really fun reasons. But the core one was that I just heard so much about, you know, not the incredibly obvious music history of, you know, a town called Woodstock. But the actual contemporary independent music scene happening in and around the Catskills. It just seemed like there was such an unusually high concentration of really amazing artists and music coming out of that area that I just wanted to go there and meet with them and go to their houses and see the world in which this really compelling music was coming from. So over these next three episodes, I will be taking you with me on this adventure where we're going to visit with a handful of artists who are living music lives in these cultural pockets of small town upstate New York. Because obviously there's a lot of it. But rather, these episodes are going to be like postcards from my time exploring some of that context and the creativity that comes out of it, from people who have chosen to build their contemporary music lives there, and who are making work that's deeply informed and shaped by their chosen home. Okay, so in episode one, I'm heading up just a little bit north of Kingston to visit the residential recording studio of basically anyone's dreams, Flying Cloud Studios, which is also the personal home and property of artists and partners Hannah Cohen. And Sam Evian. They're a stalwart in this music community, and they're just legends. Dan Littleton was in the band The Hate It, who were kind of like a cult, like proto-emo band that were a part of the whole revolution summer scene in Washington, DC. And along with his wife, Elizabeth Littleton, they formed the enduring cult favorite indie folk band of the late 90s, early aughts, called Ida. And in the early 2000s, they moved to Woodstock. They had their baby daughter, who is now a grown-up daughter. Her name is Story Littleton, who's in several music projects, but her solo songwriting is incredible. And she's also going on tour, opening for Lola Kirk next year. Interspersed throughout these visits are some of the detours and adventures I took and ensuing reflections. And along for the ride for a lot of this was the illustrated music critic, New York native, the brilliant Jen Pelle. She's a longtime writer-editor for Pitchfork, and it was her birthday week, so we took the train up from New York City together. This travelog series feels very um full circle to me as someone who, as a baby, her first words allegedly were go places. So I do feel in a way right now that I'm fulfilling my destiny of go places, and I would love to share that with you too. So here's part one of my postcard from the Hudson Valley. I hope you enjoy the adventure. It's kind of like a low-hanging fruit of a joke for me to joke about doing some method podcasting. But the more that I think about my trip to the Hudson Valley in July of 2025, the more I realize that I might have accidentally method podcasted too close to the sun. And that is to become so wound up, frazzled, overwhelmed by the fervor of your creative hustle and your urban scheming down there in the city that your soul gets sent like an ephemeral postcard from the collective subconscious just begging you to get out of town, to take a fucking break. And you simply have to accept the invitation. So everything I just said is a really obvious story, and it's an even more enduring paradigm of the creative life. But all that aside, it's still something that I feel that urge to get out of town and slow shit down. This isn't just an obvious story or cliche story. Get out of the city, go upstate, take a load off Annie. Sorry for yelling. But it's that enduringness of that impulse that is so integral to a lot of creative people's lives that felt like a signal for me to want to go to upstate New York and dig into this more deeply. That's because I've heard so much about this region. Yes, historically, yes, the lore, Woodstock, Big Pink, Bob Dylan, Todd Rundgrin, Karen Dalton, Jackson C. Frank, the sort of New York City expats to Woodstock pipeline is some of the most famous lore in rock and roll history. But I know a lot of people who live up there now these days, or at least know of people. Enough that it seemed undeniable that there was a really interesting sense of creative community, or at least some spiritual creative draw to this region that still exists today.

SPEAKER_10: 18:23

Did you tell your dad about the band how to do it? No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_07: 18:28

It's like we should write a song outside of the foreign idea.

SPEAKER_09: 18:45

I mean, my special pet curiosity in life is about music communities. How they form, where they form, who's doing the forming. And I'm particularly interested in ones that happen outside of the obvious urban centers where creative community is often kind of a given. Something about upstate New York that I felt like I was starting to put together by all of these rumors and murmurs of its specialness and who was choosing to move there and who had built their lives there already and what was going on is that there's this unique balance of a region being able to offer retreat while still providing infrastructure for community.

SPEAKER_10: 19:28

I don't think I've like rested for more than an hour in like five weeks.

SPEAKER_09: 19:35

I'll admit that the irony of me setting up this whole you know narrative of me going to the Hudson Valley to relax, to unwind, is that I certainly did not allow any time for relaxing or unwinding. I'm a bit of a scheduling maximalist. And when I look back at my schedule now, I was like, what were you thinking, Dylan? But what I was thinking, and what I was right about, was that there was such an incredible collection of people in the Hudson Valley the week of July 4th, that it would have felt like a crime against God to me to forego any of these incredibly serendipitous options for creative kinship and adventure. One, my friend Jen Pelle, music writer, contributing editor at Pitchfork, Kindred Spirit, would be celebrating her birthday over July 4th weekend. And we had been talking all year about doing some sort of writing retreat together. So this kind of seemed like a no-brainer because I was already going upstate. My best friend is a photographer. Her name's Olivia B, and she was having a solo show opening on July 5th at Headstone Gallery in Kingston. So her whole family, her husband, her baby, her parents, and our friend Andrew Lyman were all gonna be upstate to do 4th of July together, go to this gallery opening. And then when I put the word out to my music people network that I was gonna be upstate and wanted to talk to people about their lives for this show, I got a ton of really exciting yeses in my inbox and DMs of suggestions of places to go and people I should meet. There's honestly way too many to even get to explore my already overpacked week there. People, driving, music, events, water features, a sitar concert. Oh, and also by the way, Jen and I were dog sitting, these two Mexican hairless dogs in Beacon, so that was kind of another thing that was going on. I had really limited time, but I wanted to get as thorough an impression as I possibly could of this music community in upstate New York. I had a visual, like it was this creative stream that people came up from the city to drink out of. Like its water had restorative properties or something. But then also that stream flowed back down into New York City and trickled into its culture. And what would you know? That metaphor sprung to life at the property of Hannah Cohen and Sam Evian, where a literal river gurgles its way through their property before it winds up soon after that's New York City tap water.

SPEAKER_08: 22:24

It's really sweet.

SPEAKER_10: 23:30

I had to record going over the bridge because it was a bucolic sound.

SPEAKER_09: 23:38

Hannah Cohen put out her second solo album in the spring of 2025. It's called Earth Star Mountain, and I absolutely loved it. It featured collaborations with Claro and Sufian Stevens and Liam Kazar. It really felt like she tapped her rich Caskill's music community for this record.

SPEAKER_07: 24:04

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_09: 24:07

I feel like it's one in which you also can really hear the beauty of the place and the community that it came from. Hannah's a transplant from the West Coast, like me. She grew up in San Francisco and lived in New York, where she was a model and a musician. And in New York, that's where she met her partner, Sam Evian. Sam's also a musician, a sought-after guitar player, and he's been putting out his own records since 2016. His years working in studios as a producer and engineer in New York City really inspired him to branch out, literally, and do his own thing.

SPEAKER_12: 25:02

Or like an ISO booth that like recording abandoned like one room and the ending there is way different than like isolating people.

SPEAKER_05: 25:14

So I I kind of actually became allergic to like professional recording studios over the years. You know, there's so much there. There's like it's such such a hyper-masculine environment.

SPEAKER_11: 25:23

Yeah, like a gear list.

SPEAKER_05: 25:26

Yeah, so this is kind of a response to that.

SPEAKER_08: 25:29

Definitely feels like the antidote. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 25:31

And so Hannah and Sam built out this studio on their property. It's called Flying Cloud, and it's in this big, airy outbuilding, just a stone's throw from their cozy, incredibly stylish main house. There's this huge meadow where their dog Jan loves to frolic. It's surrounded by beautiful leafy trees. Like jumbo.

SPEAKER_08: 25:57

Yeah, our friend Adrian.

SPEAKER_11: 25:59

Adrian James. Yeah, there's a big one. Hey Sam. Hello. Jan. Jan is nice. I was gonna show down the studio.

SPEAKER_09: 26:10

And this big white creek with a few little swimming holes, perfect for hot summer day dips.

SPEAKER_12: 26:16

Was this structure already here? So this one's here.

SPEAKER_09: 26:18

It runs through their entire property.

SPEAKER_12: 26:21

Taking all the siding off, reframing it, putting in new windows. There's like it was a garage with just gravel floor, and there wasn't even a staircase upstairs. And we built like a whole apartment upstairs. Oh cool. So do artists stay in the apartment? Artists stay up there.

SPEAKER_09: 26:38

Flying Cloud is a gorgeous residential studio that attracts artists from all over to come and stay and camp out with Hannah and Sam. But it also seems like a bit of a clubhouse and a hangout for their local Catskills region indie rock community. Flying Cloud Studios. Oh, beautiful. Smells really good. It smells like the wood of that makes up the walls.

SPEAKER_12: 27:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 27:10

Oh my god, it smells so good in here.

SPEAKER_12: 27:13

That's like that's a great thing to have when people come into the studio and say that it smells good.

SPEAKER_09: 27:18

It's where Sam's worked with artists such as Big Thief and Cass McCombs and Blonde Redhead, Courtney Marie Andrews, and a lot more. Yeah, we should pitch them. Seriously. The collab. Tell me about the studio.

SPEAKER_05: 27:37

Well, where do we begin? Uh it used to be a really junky barn that when we moved in here, I don't know if Hannah told us.

SPEAKER_12: 27:46

Yeah, gravel floor.

SPEAKER_05: 27:48

Yeah, we were running recording sessions in the house. And over the years we put time into kind of turning it into what you see now, which is like a kind of modernized barn studio thing.

SPEAKER_09: 28:05

Hannah and Sam are far from the only ones retreating upstate to open the dream of a gorgeous residential recording studio on an affordable piece of land with a creek running through it. Obviously, there are a few famous inspirations here. Bearsville, Big Pink, etc. But a lot of great records have come out of this place that really captures the magic that I think Hannah and Sam were inspired to tap into.

SPEAKER_05: 28:29

Love and labor that went into it.

SPEAKER_09: 28:31

Were you on the like the School of YouTube DIY tour? Do you have any reno experience? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 28:38

I'm a YouTube user. Everything I've ever learned has been off YouTube.

unknown: 28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_12: 28:48

And yeah, you can see the creek from out here. And in the winter time, you see the mountains because the trees don't have any leaves. So pretty. Yeah, one day I was like, we should like put a little porch out here. Like have a little.

SPEAKER_09: 29:05

I'll be right back to interview Hannah Cohen in her beautiful kitchen.

SPEAKER_11: 29:09

That'd be really cool.

SPEAKER_09: 29:10

So cool.

unknown: 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11: 29:12

Wow, you guys really crushed this.

SPEAKER_09: 29:18

Here's a clip of her song Dragon off of her 2025 album Earth Star Mountain.

SPEAKER_03: 29:37

I'm not gonna be the only one who know I love you. But the dragon you don't say. I'm not gonna be the only one who know I love you. But the dragon you don't know.

SPEAKER_09: 30:04

Thank you for having me in your beautiful home.

SPEAKER_12: 30:07

This is really gorgeous. Thank you. We've been we've been here for yeah, sick. This is our sixth year up here, and we've just slowly been kind of chipping away at renovating when we can and you know, building out the studio. And yeah, the kitchen was pretty funky when we first moved in and we were able to do a lot of work ourselves and give it a facelift.

SPEAKER_09: 30:32

Beautiful. Has a so much style. What's like what's your guys' sort of like day-to-day existence as artists?

SPEAKER_12: 30:40

Well, it depends very much if we have a session here or not, because since we started the studio up here, it's like if you build it, they will come. Oh, yeah. It's sort of like it really is a revolving door of artists here. And it's like if we're not on tour or if we don't have a session here, it's usually we're just like taking it pretty easy and yeah, recovering from being on tour or having a big session here. So our usual kind of routine is I have the mornings to myself because Sam is up late working in the studio. So like we both have our own like kind of cherished artist time, um, which I think is really important. Yeah. I have the mornings where I write and you know, take the dog for a walk, do my morning fluffy stuff. I fluff around. Um I have morning fluffy time where I'm kind of just yeah, fluffing about and either like trying to write or or just you know, doing some gardening or catching up on like upstate shit, which is it's a lot living up here. Like the maintenance of like living in the forest is in the woods. Yeah, there's like there's a lot of maintenance for sure. But yeah, I think just kind of trying to have yeah, fluffy mornings, and um then um, yeah, Sam gets up a couple hours after me and I make him coffee, bring him coffee, and then I just start talking because I haven't talked to anyone for hours. So then I just kind of like unleash a bunch of stuff on him.

SPEAKER_11: 32:24

Oh I have a big bonfire. Yeah, right now it's a little uh I love these orange blueies.

SPEAKER_09: 32:31

I've seen them everywhere. I've only seen them like here and here. I feel like I saw them in North Carolina too, but oh yeah, I think they're like kind of east coast, very east coast coated, they're gorgeous. Oh, this is so lovely. Oh, cool. Do you harvest the ries? And um what's kind of like your general regional map in your mind of this place and like uh your personal landmarks and how you interact with this area?

SPEAKER_12: 33:03

Well, we stay pretty close to this zone where we live. Like we're very close with our neighbors. Yeah, like on a normal day, like I'll walk down to my neighbor Linda's house and we'll talk about like this stitch that I fucked up in knitting. Like, she's been teaching me how to knit for the last like two years. She's in her late 70s, and so like hanging out with the neighbors or like going down the road to our neighbor's farm and working on their farm and you know, picking blueberries or you know, processing some produce or chickens that they need help processing, or my mom, my parents live down the road now. Well, really, did they move here after you guys? They moved up here afterwards, and then my dad spends more time in California now. My mom's out here, so like, yeah, I'll go check in with my mom and fluff about over there. Uh-huh. Help her with some other daughter fluff about help her with some things. There's always something to do together. And then um, yeah, we have like a bunch of friends in the area, or like we'll drive over, you know, 15 minutes to our friend's place and hang out over there. It's just very, yeah, we're all like here. It's beautiful. But I go into Kingston multiple times a week and Woodstock, and we get a lot of produce from our neighbors, like chicken, lamb, um, eggs. It's pretty, we're feel very lucky. I mean, like I all of our hiking trails and things that I do, like I just walk in our backwoods, and there's old logging trails from like that are hundreds of years old. So it's we're pretty self-sufficient here. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_09: 34:36

Talk to me about your kind of like life path that led you to sort of like settle in up here and what sort of like decisions or like feelings you had over the course of your, you know, multi-tenacled creative career.

SPEAKER_12: 34:52

Yeah. Well, I moved to New York when I was 17. And so I've been in New York for 20 years or 21 years now. I lived in the city for about like, yeah, 15, 16 years before moving up here with Sam. Sam and I met about 10 years ago. I turned 30 when Sam and I first started dating. So I was 29 when we met, and I'm turning 39. Oh my god. It's been a while. Um, but yeah, we met in Brooklyn and we were in the city. He was working at the studio Figure Eight, which is super interconnected with a lot of musicians and all of our friends, and um and a lot of the engineers that were working there at the time now have studios up here. Eli Cruz is one of the first people to move up here from that group of people in Brooklyn. And then we came. And now um Phil Weinrobe is up here now, too. He just like bought a place with his um wife, our friend Maya Friedman, amazing singer. They just bought a place up here like two weeks ago. This seems to be the thing.

SPEAKER_09: 35:58

Yeah, everyone's moving up here, having their own studios, yeah, who like turns like 32, maybe, yeah, and is like, okay, what do we do now?

SPEAKER_12: 36:08

Yeah, exactly. I think um, you know, being realistic with ourselves, like we couldn't do what we wanted to do in the city, like have a recording studio. And Sam and I had come up state, um, I guess like eight years ago, and Sam rented a house in the same town that we're in, and he recorded his um his record there. It's called You Forever.

SPEAKER_02: 36:47

To close my head and stay to have a rented to lift.

SPEAKER_12: 36:56

And that was sort of like the like the foundation of like what we built our studio off of of like being in one place with the band for like two weeks, having all the meals together, being in nature, being like, yeah, in a rural area and sort of immersing yourself in this place. It's like very different than yeah, recording in the city. And I think yeah, we were just looking for something different and a place where we could put our roots down and build something and and like being realistic with like how we could do that. You can't do that in the city, like as like freelance, you know, musicians. And um so we went two and a half hours outside of the city and and before COVID. Like we couldn't do this now, like we couldn't afford to live here for sure. Just because like the financials have changed so much since COVID. Yeah, like everything's tripled in price, and yeah, so we feel so lucky to have come up here when we did because it wouldn't have been possible for us now. So yeah, it was a lot of the stars aligning and the timing for us was for sure a lot to do with it.

SPEAKER_09: 38:02

Yeah. It seems like the proximity to the city is really unusual. And like we were just talking when I first got here about like other sort of bucolic rural artist retreat type places. Like this comes up on my show a bit. It's like even though the show is new, I feel like a recurring theme already is sort of like how much denser the East Coast is, especially like the general New York area. So it's like when you're talking about the like if we build it, they will come sort of thing. It's just like there's such density of music and like serious creativity happening nearby that it seems like this is so needed and wanted as a place for people to like retreat to.

SPEAKER_12: 38:48

Yeah, and I think also a big part of it is like the cat skills for like hundreds of years have been this place where artists, writers, sculptors, musicians have come to retreat to, and there's an energy here that it draws us to it. So yeah, it's like, yeah, there's so many musicians up here, and yeah, it has a lot to do with it being close to New York, but it's also like I think we're all drawn here for a reason. Yeah, it's really special.

SPEAKER_11: 40:08

No, it's just right here. Like I just go up and we have so much privacy here.

SPEAKER_09: 40:18

Are there any like specific creative historical moments or scenes or outputs or characters or anything like of this region that maybe even before you moved up here that you fantasize sort of like tapping into that energy?

SPEAKER_12: 40:32

I mean, I don't I don't think that like Sam and I were like, hey, like Jimi Hendrix was here, but like it doesn't hurt. Like we love that Jimi Hendrix was hanging out at the like swimming hole, like 15 minutes from here. Love, love that lore. Yeah. But um, yeah, I don't think I know, and it's really funny because our rescue dog, she came with the name Janice, like spelled like Janice Joplin, and like we were kind of traumatized. We're like, oh my god, we're gonna be able to do that. Those people who have a recording studio next to Woodstock, and their dog is Janice Joplin. But we didn't name her that, but we didn't change her name either. But that's all she had. So anyhow, now we love the name. But yeah, I don't yeah, I wouldn't say that I don't know. I think you know, Sam, you know, loves Big Pink, and you know, but I don't think that was the reason why we moved up here is more about space, affordability. There was a barn on the property, there's a really cool creek and bridge that you cross, and like six acres on state land is like that was the big allure.

SPEAKER_09: 41:38

What like textures or like features of everyday life here, kind of on like a sensory level, do you feel like have most come into your creative work?

SPEAKER_12: 41:52

Well, I've talked about this before, but like witnessing the rot and repeat of the seasons and and witnessing like a certain area change over time and following that every year and like looking forward to it, I think it's just really changed the way that like I live and experience time. And it's such like something that I cherish so much, like being like, oh yeah, like next month, like springtime is gonna happen in like two weeks, like the leaves grow like this much every day, you know, and and then it's like this like color therapy, and every season, like these like fluorescent, like lime green colors, and then they slowly dull down to a darker green, and then they turn yellow and red, and then they turn brown and fall off. And yeah, the seasons here are so extreme, yeah. That like living so close to that and in tune with that is just like changed me on like a metabolic level, I think. And yeah, like I wasn't into mushrooms, um, like foraging mushrooms, like psychology mushrooms. Yeah, like I wasn't into gardening, like I I mean, like I appreciated those things, but now I'm like so I'm not like I'm not one with them, but I'm yeah, like I'm beside them. There's a wall of trees around us, and so I think being like held by nature is really yeah, changed the way that I look at and like interact with people and myself and animals and nature creatures. So yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 43:28

You give me a lot of beautiful sensory images that I think really come up in your album. You know, it's like even before I came up to this area, I felt like I got a really just like an impressionistic stamp of like what it might feel like to be here. Yeah. What about like your community up here? Because there's so many artists in, you know, there's so many artists in this area. I know you like collaborate a lot with Claro. And you know, obviously I'm talking to like so many artists that have lived here, but also we're in like in a small rural town, and that creates like different dynamics with people that have been here for a long time that might have like different views, you know. Like I always love to hear from people that like leave the city, so to speak. And like sometimes I feel like coming to a smaller and more rural place, you actually in a way that you might not anticipate, being like a person living an urban life. Sometimes I think it puts you into a more direct community with different types of people that you like really, really have to coexist with in a more direct way. I'm curious about that balance of your creative community versus kind of maybe more like established locals and what that looks like.

SPEAKER_12: 44:43

I think like to talk about yeah, the locals. Yeah, I think like everybody is interesting if you ask them the right questions. And you know, getting to know my neighbors and hearing their stories of like some people that live on a road, their families have been here for like 300 years, you know. Like that's that's so East Coast too.

SPEAKER_09: 45:04

Cause I'm like, the West Coast hasn't existed for three years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there are years, there are years on the history timeline that you know, I mean, at least in terms of western settle settling in the area, or just yeah, and then you get into some like pretty awful stuff.

SPEAKER_12: 45:20

But um, I mean it's everywhere. Yeah, so meeting my neighbors that you know they're in their 80s and their great great great grandparents or further up have been here on this road. Yeah, it's very grounding and and also just like learning about the area through them and little like trails and lore and um, but yeah, and then the artists that live here, yeah, it's been so incredible to be like, you know, have my dear close friend Sufi on like 15 minutes away, and and we're all up here and we're encouraging each other to write more or like doing songwriter exercises and just um yeah, having a community, but then having your music community so close is yeah, so enriching. And you know, like we're always listening to music or sharing music or just kind of like fucking around the you know, fire pit and like breaking out in song, or you know, or or or just doing super ratchet like mountain stuff and going out like on ATVs and the magic happen.

SPEAKER_05: 46:28

We encourage people to stay for two weeks when they make a record because it really just first couple days, yeah. You see like the city wash off of yeah.

SPEAKER_12: 46:37

I love how like inclusive it is up here. Like everybody's like, Yeah, we're having barbecue, come over. Yeah, like we're just hanging out, you know, bring a side dish or not. It's pretty pretty lax. I mean, we've been pretty busy lately, so I mean, we're gonna see our friends tomorrow, you know. Like we see our friends all the time. We're more social up here than we were in the city, and we were very social in the city, so it's like it's non-stop up here, but it's great.

SPEAKER_09: 47:04

That's amazing. That's like really, I think, different than yeah. I think probably what people would think about like sort of moving to the retreat becolic place, um, the rural place, but also, yeah, it's totally different than again the other like smaller places I know where people live because yeah, the density here of creative energy feels really unique.

SPEAKER_12: 47:28

Yeah, and it's fun. Like, will we like, oh, we're working on a song, like, let's call so-and-so up and have them like throw down some keys on it, or and like you can just call your homie up and they'll be like, Oh, yeah, I can come over tomorrow afternoon, like for an hour. And that's so fun. And like the cool thing of up here is like it will only take you 30 minutes, always. Like, you put the directions and it says 27 minutes, it will take you 27 minutes. There's no traffic up here. It's crazy. Like, when we first moved up here the first night, Sam woke up in the morning and was like, he kind of like jolted out of bed, and he's like, Oh my god, I don't have to move my car. Being in Brooklyn, you know, like I don't have to move my car for parking, you know. It's like such like a chakra blew open.

SPEAKER_09: 48:11

Don't have to move my car anymore again.

SPEAKER_12: 48:14

But yeah, I think, yeah, there's there's so many. I mean, I I'm always like moving up here completely changed my life and for the best. And I highly recommend it to anybody. Like it's it's been life-altering.

SPEAKER_09: 48:28

Are there any like uh sort of like weird or off-putting or maybe just life lessons, things that you've experienced from moving up here that you never expected?

SPEAKER_12: 48:42

The like dealing with gnarly weather stuff, that that that part is can be kind of scary, or like the driveway completely freezing over and turning into like an ice like skating rink. That's that's not fun. That's not cool. And that's something that's like with I guess like global warming and like extreme weather, like the weather is getting more extreme and like more up and down, and then that makes for like an environment for like ice on the driveway. But now we're like we're figuring out a better kind of way to manage it, which is just using a shit ton of salt and sand combo, and then you're good. But there have been some times when it was like, okay, we're parking at the bottom of the hill and we're hoofing it up. Yeah, mostly the winter is intense, but once there's no there's no such thing as bad weather, it's bad clothes, bad clothing. So if you're like all kitted out with all your warm, cozy stuff and making sure your organs are covered, you're you're good. And we have that wood stove, we get it bumping really toasty in here in the winter and we're fine. So wood stove. Yeah. Um, you can like we cook on top of it too. It's fun. I mean, I really don't have too much bad things to say about living up here. I mean, I guess being far away from like good food, but we make all the good food here.

SPEAKER_09: 50:06

We're coming.

SPEAKER_11: 50:12

Um, oh that sounds fucking amazing.

SPEAKER_08: 50:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 50:24

This might be kind of a weird question, but I've been thinking about this since spending a week in New York and I haven't been there for a few years. Do you feel like moving up here maybe made you or accelerated your sense of like maturity or made you grow up faster or more?

SPEAKER_12: 50:40

Absolutely. I had to put my big curl pants on. Yeah, like in the winter when the power goes out, starting up um oh my god, well generator. A generator, yeah. I know how to use the generator, I promise. Um yeah, starting up the generator, hooking it up to the power, not electrocuting myself, do using the breaker. Uh yeah, we were learning about the breaker in the house. Yeah, managing like driving in the snow, didn't know how to drive in the snow. Because when I lived in the city, I didn't have a car. So yeah, learning about like black eyes, learning how like you don't slam your brakes on, which I thought, you know, that's like your initial reaction is to slam the brakes on. Yeah, power outages, extreme weather, yeah, how to look after a place, keep it warm, um, chopping wood. I love chopping wood. I wasn't in, I hadn't really done that. Stacking wood. I really love all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I had to kind of grow up and just kind of face the face the music. Yeah. The musical storm, the storms that be.

SPEAKER_11: 51:51

Um there's like a little bog down there. Cool.

SPEAKER_12: 51:57

Um yeah, I think so. There's so much rain. It's like they call it a temperate rainforest. So we get a lot of rain. It's like flashy rainstorm.

SPEAKER_09: 52:10

It's so lush because of that. It's like the relationship to water is so different on the side of the country. It's really yeah.

SPEAKER_12: 52:19

So you're from California or I'm from San Francisco or Bay Area. Yeah. That's where I went into. Being able to see go on hikes and cook and and I don't know, create always. Like that's always that's all we're doing up here. It's like whenever we're spending time with our friends, that's all we do is cook at the farm, write music together or not, or like kind of we're always sharing and encouraging each other. That's just like what the everyday life is. So and I I just feel so lucky. I feel so lucky to have access to that. So I guess it's just always it's always like this.

SPEAKER_09: 52:58

So actually, it's time for a quick break. I'll be right back with more from the Hudson Valley after some advertisements. I don't want it to end, but I have to go run to bagel. I will be excited to see like the Jigsaw puzzle of everyone's creative space and like upstate life.

SPEAKER_11: 53:21

Yeah, they were just recording here in the stream.

SPEAKER_09: 53:24

Oh cool. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_05: 53:26

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Sam.

SPEAKER_10: 53:28

Thanks for showing me around.

SPEAKER_08: 53:42

Ah, there's another big hawk in one shot.

SPEAKER_09: 53:58

It was the 4th of July, but I got my whole gang together who was upstate that week. That is, my very best friend Olivia B, her parents, Cara and Houston, and her little baby Mary, our friend Andrew Lyman, and my buddy Jen Pelle, who came with me up on the train from New York. And we were celebrating her 36th birthday that day. So when I asked my friend Elijah Wolf, my local plug, as he was born and raised in nearby Phoenicia, the best place to go swimming with three generations, grandparents to baby, on probably like the busiest swimming day of the year, 4th of July, he suggested Colgate Lake. And it was so perfect. We weren't the only ones who thought so. There was another huge chiller just floating on his back alone in the lake, seemingly vibing away from the group of his friends. And just singing, suck up the sun to himself. I am a fan of freshwater, like splish splasher, freshwater girly, if you will.

SPEAKER_05: 55:32

I always wanted to do a girl scout.

SPEAKER_09: 55:37

And the Hudson Valley is somewhat of a paradise for people like us. It certainly had to be the draw for the history of artists that have come up to upstate New York. Going as far back to the Maverick Art Colony, which was a utopian experiment that sprouted up in turn of the century Woodstock that had music festivals decades before, you know, the famous one. Which, if you don't know, didn't even happen in actual Woodstock. The festival, of course, was held in the town of Bethel. But it's that particular era of rock and roll history that really is sort of the unspoken through line with a lot of the artists that live there today or who feel inspired to have any sort of relationship with the place. The house of a certain color, Big Pink, it's an Airbnb you can rent. And because it just feels like the most obvious pilgrimage you have to make as a music person when you're in the Woodstock area, and with the added bonus of, you know, we were with Olivia's boomer parents, and I knew her dad would be really excited to go with me and Jen. We made a plan after the lake to go stop by Big Pink and just look at it.

SPEAKER_10: 56:52

We're driving on the very streets, where Bob really got into a motorcycle accident.

SPEAKER_07: 57:03

I have a feeling like deep down in his heart somewhere, Olivia's dad is like, I'm having the best day of my life. I'm with my grandbaby, and uh we're going to the big pink house.

SPEAKER_09: 57:16

Since it was my friend Jen's 36th birthday, taking a detour to visit the house Big Pink felt like the absolute perfect thing to do.

SPEAKER_07: 57:27

I wonder if he ever dreamt that one day he would have a granddaughter down for the ride to get.

SPEAKER_09: 57:36

Jen's been one of my favorite music writers for a long time. Well, as friends, we're sort of like a study in contrast. She's like a true Diet-in-the-wool New York City kid who never learned how to drive and had just recently told me a story about how she asked why anyone would ever need to go to the forest when Central Park is right there. In contrast to me, who's very West Coast and no stranger to a rugged adventure, we definitely share a very unique kindred-spiritedness that gets alighted whenever we spend time together. Jen also has some really interesting ties to the Hudson Valley. For several years, she's helped book the Basilica Hudson Festival, which happens in September. And also she just spent a lot of time in this area growing up because that's where her grandparents lived, in the woods, no Central Park. She was a bit of an East Coast whisperer to me, and I felt like her perspective would help me understand the region a little bit more as we explored it together. And because I'm a person who thinks it's very incredibly important to celebrate birthdays to their maximum potential, I was very excited to be her chauffeur on any adventure she wanted to take. Fortunately, they were the same ones I wanted to take, including going to Big Pink. As we wound our way through the truly steep hairpins around the Caterskill Forest between Colgate Lake and West Salgarties, where Big Pink is. We were definitely soaking up the symbolism of a time that has quite literally logistically come to pass. Jen and I, as nerds about music and rock and roll history, had absolutely no qualms about, I don't know, being a little bit obvious about the whole thing.

SPEAKER_07: 59:20

I love being on the nose. It's so funny. Like, where else are you gonna be? If you're not on the nose sometimes, then you're just hitting your head all the time. Yeah, it's really it's really it's kind of amazing that you carry some experience to like decide to just touch your character of myself going to Big Pink on 4th of July.

SPEAKER_09: 59:49

Big Pink, of course, was the house that several members of the band, Bob Dylan's backing band, lived in and recorded seminal albums, such as Music from Big Pink and the basement tapes with Bob Dylan. A fact that I wish I didn't know was that they rented the house for$125 a month. I know this is mid-60s money, but hearing numbers like that with a digit shaved off of what I would think would be affordable makes my stomach turn. Another thing that is just truly of a different music industry in a different time is sort of the inciting incident. Why so much of rock and roll history ended up in this valley in the first place? Well, there's always that impulse of artists to leave the city and come up to a beautiful small town. It seems like the reason a lot of that happened in Woodstock and Kingston and Hudson area was Albert Grossman, who was Bob Dylan's formidable and wildly successful manager, who, along with Milton Glazer, who is one of the most iconic graphic designers of all time, sort of picked up where the Maverick art colony left off. And with their spare guest rooms and connections to who was selling houses on the cheap up there, provided very soft landings for this music community to leave New York and give it a try. And when the hippies started coming up to Woodstock in the mid-60s, there was resentment, not just from the blue-collar townies, but from the old guard. The people that were part of the original art colony who were just like, who the fuck are these freaks with long hair coming to my town? Also, we did it first. Some of these tales I was reading about reminded me a lot of my stepdad's stories. He's 70 years old and grew up in Laguna Beach, and he has a lot of tales about what it was like as a teenager watching Timothy O'Leary and his magic bus roll into town. It's sort of a tale-sol this time. The young hipsters coming in and gentrifying, but it's not as straightforward as, oh, it was just cheap, or it was just different from New York. There was an infrastructure of creative retreat that had already been established for decades at that point in the Woodstock area. So, you know, over a century later, the cultural history that sticks in popular imagination was the presence of Bob Dylan and the band, and of course, the Woodstock Music Festival. But there was a quote in Barney Hoskins' book, Small Town Talk, which is about these rock and roll years of Woodstock, where music mogul Danny Goldberg said, The image of Woodstock for me was defined primarily by Bob Dylan. It was sort of this magical place in the country that the great genius of our culture had chosen to live in. Big Pink had created a mythology of the place, as somewhere where musical greatness was comfortable and alternative to the city.

SPEAKER_08: 1:03:08

You have arrived. No one's staying here right now. There's no one in the park there.

SPEAKER_07: 1:03:15

Wow, look at that. It's cool. So sick. Look at Olivia's dad. It's right there. So sick. Olivia's mom was like, yeah, it is right there. Why are we here?

SPEAKER_08: 1:03:33

When I was talking with Hannah Cohen yesterday, who has like a recording studio up here with her partner. She was like, it's just a thing where it's like if you just move to the country, like if you build it, they will come. Like everyone just is always coming. And I was like, if you live in two hours from New York, yeah.

SPEAKER_13: 1:03:51

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07: 1:03:55

Do you live at a train ride? Do you refer to Spotify? Spotify is like flushing yourself down to the toilet.

SPEAKER_09: 1:04:01

That's my best friend, Olivia B. She lives on a farm in rural Oregon. And culturally and socially speaking, I mean obviously geographically too, but it is very much not a two-hour train ride from New York City. She used to live in New York. She grew up in Portland. And while Portland is technically close by, just trust us when we tell you that the cultural spillover and exchange is not the same. I think that she would tell you that her experience of this kind of hybrid rural agricultural artist life is one more of if you build it, you will keep building it forever. There will be no end of the building because things will continue to break and you will not only have to build, but constantly fix. And maybe they will come. Maybe. It's not really guaranteed, but if they is Dylan, Dylan will definitely come. And yes, there are a lot of logistical advantages that the Hudson Valley has to attract artists, even to this day. And feels like a genuine two-way flow between the desire of the creative community upstate to stay connected to what's happening in New York City, as it is the people in New York City really needing to get out of Dodge and breathe some fresh air. You can drive there in under two hours. You can take the Metro North up to Beacon, like Jenna and I did. It's still beautiful. It's incredibly bucolic. And perhaps most of all, this mythology is so palpable. You see it in the hand-painted wooden signs on the side of the road, advertising rock and roll records, like it was like a farm stand selling apples. You feel it in the energy in the small but really lively room at Tubby's, which is the favorite upstate music venue in Kingston. You definitely feel it in the tradition of the Leave on Helm Studios barn, keeping live music alive there. And in contrast, you also see a lot of New York City money in really, really random places that you don't expect to see, like a dead-end farm road with a designer handbag store. The Hudson Valley is largely, though not exclusively, a tourism economy. And of course, that's what you're gonna see a whole lot of, especially in a brisk trip like the one I did. But I think you can still perceive the special music history there. But that's easy for me to say because I wasn't just there chasing the lore, but I was actually going out and uncovering real music lives that are being built there today. And so I think even though everyone's a little squeamish, maybe self-conscious, about owning up to their attachment to this rock and roll mythology of the place.

SPEAKER_10: 1:06:47

We're having a good time.

SPEAKER_09: 1:06:48

I don't know. To me, it still feels pretty present and authentic.

SPEAKER_06: 1:06:56

So maybe I didn't think he flies in that shrub over there right there, there is a wagon wheel, just one wagon wheel. Um so if you want to rock it like a wagon wheel, there's a wagon wheel back. I'm serious. There is a wagon wheel. I saw it there like this.

SPEAKER_09: 1:07:15

That is Olivia's Dod Houston, who's absolutely boomering out at the big pink house.

SPEAKER_06: 1:07:24

Maybe was this the wheel? Maybe that's the wheel. Was it ever? It does look slightly damaged.

SPEAKER_10: 1:07:30

It could have been on fire.

SPEAKER_09: 1:07:35

Next time on Music Person, the Hudson Valley Travelog. Come with me even further upstate and meet with Babe Hoven. We'll also go to the complete opposite end of the valley as Jen Pelley begs me to go to an autrum with her. Thank you for listening to Music Person. I'm your host, Dylan PepperRupert. This episode was edited by Max at Love Dub Studios. My theme song is by Nicole Lawrence and Ben Allman. Music Person was created and produced by me, Dylan HepperRupert, and Talk House. It is distributed and modified by Talk House as part of the Talkhouse Network. Please subscribe to the show and follow us on Instagram at Music Person Podcast or sign up to listen on Patreon ad free at patreon.com slash musicperson.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:28

See what I mean? Isn't Music Person a great show and isn't Dylan just the best guide through the musical world? I especially resonated with it when Hannah said living here in the Hudson Valley, uh, you really do become attuned to the four seasons in full, which is really I don't know, it's really beautiful. And I also learned that Sophia Stevens lives here. Did I hear that right? Anyway, go check out the rest of Dylan's three-part series about the music scene in the Hudson Valley. She just posted part two over at her podcast channel this week, and she has a Patreon as well, so go check all of that out. I've linked to everything in my show notes. And as I mentioned at the top of the episode, this was my first feed drop, so I'd love to know what you think about it. Sort of an experiment for me. There's a link in the show notes where you can send me a text and let me know. Okay, the Jifu will be back to regular programming in January. Until then, I'll see you over on the James Cave Instagram feed.