Jade Tree is kayaking music.

Some of my favorite bands are or were on the label Jade Tree out of Wilmington, DE. Consequently, one of my best friends and paddling comrades, Drew Hayes, lives in Wilmington as well. Recently Drew and I met at the Potomac for a day of paddling. I did not paddle Drew or visa versa. Instead we paddled the river, and it needed it too... that silly misbehaving river. Below is a photo of Drew in his element, and at the same time out of his element. Drew is known as a surf kayaker so most people don't know that he can get out and run creeks and rivers with the best of them.

Drew runs the Spout on Great Falls, VA - Photo Andy Gates


Back to the original story. When Drew and I met at the Potomac he handed me an article out of a Wilmington paper about Jade Tree.

The significance of Jade Tree to the sport of kayaking is as follows. There have probably been more Jade Tree songs on kayaking videos than any single record label. I contacted Jade Tree six or seven years ago with an interest in one of their most monumental bands (in my opinion), Strike Anywhere. They were new at the time and into the idea of licensing their music for my videos, which were issues of LVM at the time. LVM Issue 1 features almost all of Strike Anywhere's debut album, "chorus of one." Consequently they were a huge hit with the paddling crowd and other video producers and ended up being featured on other videos on the market. Thanks to Jade Tree other bands have had great acceptance in the paddling world - bands such as Despistado, Micah P Hinson, Ester Drang, Denali, The Loved Ones, Paint It Black, Trial by Fire and more. Jade Tree even re-released three of Avail's albums last year, all of which have had songs on kayak films.

If you are a kayaker looking for cool sounds of all kinds check out Jade Tree and all their talented artists. I think that music incorporated into video is what ingrains memorable images of motion pictures into our minds. To me Jade Tree has done that more than ever and they deserve the support of paddlers.

Read the full article here:
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Goodbye,

Spencer Cooke, Effort.tv

chris gragtmans photo

I'm excited about this. Check it out.

Chris and I went paddling yesterday at the Pigeon. I-40 has some awful, traffic jam causing construction going on at the junction of 240, 26 and 40. To add insult to injury they had to go and use profanity right in front of everyone.

This kind of aggression will not stand.

How to break through the surf

This is an article I wrote this spring that has just been published in Paddler Magazine. Due to space constraints all the photos that I intended to go along with the article didn't make the cut. I have included those extra photos in this post to further explain the techniques described in the article.

Additionally, come join me on October 19-21 for a surf kayaking class at Cape Hatteras, NC. I will be co-instructing the course with Philip Aschliman through NOC's instruction program. You will be able to sign up through NOC.com
In the meantime I have put together a short video teaser of the skills you can learn in this class, incliding how to paddle out, as detailed in the below article. Download the video by clicking here!

Please enjoy,

Spencer Cooke, Effort.tv

Please click the image for the full size, legible article.








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