The Tank

Denver is a sleepy place at 6:00 on a Saturday morning.  I can't say Kelley and I were any different as we packed our gear into the truck and headed west on an empty I-70 for a quiet corner of Colorado.  If you read my piece last fall on high school football on the Eastern Plains then you already know our road trips tend toward the interesting places in our state that are hard to find. (For the record Casa Bonita is not interesting)  This morning found us heading northwest to a place neither of us had ever been... with the hopes of experiencing something truly beautiful.

Heavy Metal

In the northwest corner of Colorado, very much off the beaten path is a musical instrument well worth the five hour drive from Denver.  It's a place known simply as The Tank,  its part studio, part concert space, and part church to music lovers.  On a hill outside the town of Rangley is an empty water tank that stand 65 feet tall and is approximately forty feet across.  For as long as locals can remember people have been crawling through a three foot round hole at it's base to sing or play music that sounds like it comes straight from heaven.

Home on the Range(ly)

Rangley, Colorado is a place diluted by low gas and oil prices.  Pump stations still dot the high desert landscape but the drilling boom that brought new families and money to town has dried up, leaving Rangley searching for another well to tap.  These days the main street isn't vibrant but it is welcoming and the folks we met were upbeat and hopeful.  The White River snakes through town and is a lovely and underutilized sportsman's paradise.  Then there are the ATV trails, the college, and a new classic car museum.  But the true source of Rangley's relevance just might be The Tank.

Tank Deetz 

Exactly when and how The Tank became apart of the Rangley landscape is a mystery.  Even it's intended reason for being there is mostly conjecture.  What is clear is that it came from somewhere in Colorado, maybe the Arkansas River Valley, sometime in the late 1960s. Originally owned by the Rio Grande Railroad, it was hauled to that hill in pieces and reassembled, possibly by the power company, who may have intended to use it for something related to hydroelectric power.  But the tank was never again filled with water after the rebuild, apparently because the sandy soil was deemed an insufficient base for that much weight.  I do know that if you ask those who love The Tank why it ended up where it did you will get one definitive answer... "To bring beautiful music to the folks of Rangley and the rest of the world".

People of The Tank

Located just outside of town up a steep gravel road, The Tank sits on a large enough flat spot for itself, a welcome trailer and a dozen or so cars.  Over the last few years volunteers saved it from the scrap yard with a Kickstarter campaign and cut an actual door into the side to bypass the crawl (which you still have to do to get the proper experience).  Now The Tank is open on Saturdays to musicians, adventurers and amateur writers who want to be blessed by it's sounds.  We were met at The Tank by three ladies who volunteer their time as protectors and tour guides.  Everything I learned that day was thanks to them.

No shoes are allowed which adds to the sanctity of the place as you step inside.  The space is completely empty save for one chair and blankets laden with musical instruments of all kinds.  On one side is an oversized xylophone made from large metal pipes, and played with a rubber hammer. It's open for any and all to play their guitar, sing, or just bang on pipes and metal dishes if you're musically inept like myself.  Kids swing those noise makers above their heads or play kazoos. Even whistling sounds amazing.

It turns out that trying to describe what The Tank can do is really hard.  Sound in there doesn't so much as echo as it does roll around and around above you.  The reverb lasts for so long that you're forced to play or sing very slowly so as not to create a jumbled mess.  One guitar sounds as if you're listening to an entire orchestra.  Video helps but you need to go see it for yourself to truly soak it in.

Tanking

When you drive all that way to check out something new all you can hope for is to learn something and enjoy the journey.  But when you get both of those things and get to meet great people who share their talents, you have to count yourself as lucky.  When we arrived at The Tank a lone guitar player was just putting on his shoes to leave.  It turned out that his name was Sean, a local pipeline worker checking out the sound for himself.  I guess we managed to twist his arm because he stayed and played for us and hung out for an hour or so.  He played us a couple songs including one by Jake Owens.  I couldn't tell where his voice began and or where the echo took over.  One man and his guitar sounded otherworldly, like an elf choir in The Lord of The Rings.  All I could do was close my eyes and lean against the wall.  Trust me it was better then church.

Volunteering that day to welcome road warriors like us to The Tank experience was a young lady named Sam.  She remembers the days when her grandmother lived down in the bottom land below the Tank.  Musicians used to come knocking on her door with an extension cord in hand in hopes of powering their recording equipment.  Sam has been crawling through that hole to sing inside that metal amplifier since she was eight.  A feat which had earned her the moniker "Voice of The Tank" around those parts.  It was a quiet Saturday so Sam and the other ladies that were volunteering that day joined her to sing for us.  Sean told me to lie down on my back in the middle of the floor and let all the sound wash over me.  It started low and slow, then built into this crescendo that I am struggling to describe.  Astonishing, stunning, breathtaking, that's the best I can do.  The angels singing to the shepherds announcing the birth of Christ might just have some competition. Watch Kelly's video below and see for your self.  I guarantee you've never seen me get all Pentecostal before.

Go

Do yourself a favor and add The Tank to your travel plans.  If that's not feasible because you're Canadian or something then at least add it to your bucket list.  Just having it on the list helps get you there sometimes.  Go to the website tanksounds.org and spend some time exploring and listening to the music they have posted.  If you make it to Rangley go to Giovanni's for pizza.  You can't miss it right there on the main drag.  Oh and if it's warm be sure to bring your swim trunks because you're going to want to jump into Kenney Reservoir on your way out of town.  We sure did, but five hours of wet shorts was a deal breaker.

"You don't play an instrument in The Tank, you play The Tank with your instrument"

                                     -Bruce Odland

Sect Life- Move Over Huckleberry Finn

Kids that grow up in communes or cults tend to have an inflated view of their place in the world.  They are largely kept separate from the rest of the world and constantly fed the idea that they are special, or set apart.  Not special individually no; but special because they are the kids of folks who believe they are living the right way while everyone else is hopelessly lost.  It's a good tactic by the adults to keep the kids satiated and hopefully heading toward membership when they grow up.   Sometimes this is manifested in ways that resemble today's suburb raised kid rocking Steph Curry's sneakers that thinks he is entitled to play hoops with the big boys.   He was born with a silver spoon and a mom taxi, which have blinded him to the fact that life can be unfair, or God forbid hard.  Sometimes the only way to teach that lesson is to knock him on his ass every time he tries to bring the ball into the lane. Or in the case of sect kids it might mean having the Coast Guard yank your Huck Finn raft off the Hudson River faster then you can say Tom Sawyer.

OK now that I have my hooks in you but before I tell this story please stop and take a look at this Google "street view" of the Hudson River.  

The Hudson River at the Mid Hudson Bridge.

It's big right?  In fact it's over a mile wide at this point.  And it's a major shipping route north from NYC to places like Albany and beyond.  Which means its full of barges like this...

So would you let your junior high kids build a raft, load it with camping gear and food, and float the whole thing down that river?  For more then one day? 

I know what you're screaming in your mind right now.

Hell No, Never in your wildest dreams!  NO, NO, NO.  Who can I punch right now? Someone needs to get fired immediately!! 

I got news for you folks, they did.

My memory of the impulses behind that rafting the Hudson brain fart are a little fuzzy.  I do have a picture taken in May of 1990 when I was eleven, of us after the voyage wearing faux leather Daniel Boone type shirts, probably because we were studying the history of river explores like Lewis and Clark in our "exclusive" private school. How things usually went when crazy ideas came to fruition there was that as long as our ideas were deemed beneficial to the rest of the commune, or to a sister group, or were some undeniable educational opportunity then we got the green light.  Once we managed to close down the factory where all the members work for half a day to put on our own faux version of the Olympics.  I'll never forget the time we talked them into letting us go protest some injustice on the steps of the capitol building in Albany. (you thought NYC was the capitol didn't you?)  Or that time we spent a whole summer building a village of primitive cabins in the woods and cooking our own meals on a open fire.  Not bad huh?

One thing about growing up on a large commune is that you can usually find plenty of stuff laying around to build things like tree houses, bird feeders for your Mom's birthday, or an occasional raft. And if for some reason the kids shop class area doesn't have what you need you can always raid the real wood shop, or the factory for that matter.  Need something welded?  Are you looking for barrels? What about a motor?  No problem we've got that.  Oh and here is a pond to you kids can use to build your raft and make sure it floats prior to launching it into a big ass river.

The raft itself was roughly a twenty foot square of wood that sat on the above mentioned steel barrels, which were sealed shut and provided the buoyancy necessary to keep the whole thing afloat.  We had built some boxes as well to hold supplies and act as benches.  And of course we had to add those long oar type things that the pioneers used to "steer" the their rafts.  

If my memory serves me correctly the day of the launch came on an overcast day in early summer. The plan was to float roughly twenty miles down the river to an island were we would camp for the night.  The crew consisted of the dozen or so kids that made up my age group, and our two teachers who were Sect members assigned to educate us...(or drown us).  A truck brought the raft north from the commune while we followed in a van to a spot called Bristol Beach near Malden NY, for those of you following along on Google maps.  We half dragged, half carried the raft down to the edge of the Hudson.  Waived goodbye to the transport crew, and pushed of into the river.  I am pretty sure we were wearing life jackets.

I honestly don't remember if we were on the water for ten minutes or forty.  I do know it wasn't long before we were approached from the south by a white boat full of armed men.  Which upon further inspection turned out to be a Coast Guard cutter out on patrol.  I really don't know if someone called us in or if they just stumbled upon our craft.  I do remember that they were pissed at us being out on the river on an unlicensed and non-seaworthy vessel.  Needless to say we were boarded as if we were drug smugglers and towed off the river to the Coast Guard Station at Saugerties.  

We were stunned, angry and emotional.  How could they do this to us at the very beginning of our great adventure? Didn't they know we were Sect kids who lived above and firmly outside of the laws that didn't convenience us?  What do you mean there were fat tickets that needed to be reconciled?  Now I wonder why no one got arrested that day.  I can just imagine what those guys told their wives when they got home that night.  

               My wife says my Daniel Boone gear was ill fitting.  What does she know?

If you're reaching this part of my tale and feeling a little sad I understand.  But don't feel sorry for us kids back then.  Instead of having to go back home with our tails between our legs as failed explorers we loaded up in the vans and headed for beautiful mountain lake to camp and lick our wounds.  Such is life when you own a very nice private lake in the Catskills.  Oh and we got a new teacher right after that.  Even communes have to draw the line somewhere.

Because Your Not Reading Jim Harrison And You Probably Should

Last weekend at Back of Beyond Books in Moab I picked up some poetry by the late, great Jim Harrison.  The writer of many works including Legends Of The Fall died this March, but left behind a cornucopia of literary goodness for us to chew on.  So in this age of Pokemon Go and The Donald why not take a break from the madness to ponder some poetry?  I even threw in a little pallet cleanser from Harrison for my fellow lightweights.  Enjoy!


Broom

To remember you're alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you've made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalain
odor that your are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone's inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
En route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out he window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, return to the cemetery
in the evening and wind through the stones
and slow dance of your name visible only to birds.


The Current Poor

The rich are giving the poor bright-colored
balloons, a dollar a gross, also bandages,
and leftover Mercurochrome from the fifties.
It is an autumn equinox and full moon present,
an event when night and day are precisely
equal, but then the poor know that night
always wins, grows wider and longer
until Christmas when they win a few minutes.
Under the tree there is an orange as big as a basketball.
It is the exiled sun resting in its winters coolness.  


Blue Shawl

The other day at the green dumpsters,
an old woman in blue shawl
told me that she loved my work.