Ashokan Reservoir

I wasn't born in the Hudson Valley or the Catskills, but my love of music was.

I was about four when I moved with my mother and soon-to-be stepfather into an old hunting cabin in Sampsonville, in the town of Olive, not far from the Ashokan Reservoir.

It was about as rustic a childhood as you could find in the 1980s.

Our water at the cabin, delivered by an electric pump in warm weather and by hand-carried buckets in the cold, came from a mountain spring called the Bear Trap, which would later lend its name to the record label I would start to release my own music.

I got my coffee, got my pack, got my bag, my after-race bag with cozy sweatshirts and socks and a towel.

I picked up the girls and we drove up a windy [laughs] and twisty series of roads, and eventually crossed over the Ashokan Reservoir, which supplies water to most of New York City.

It's usually a beautiful, stunning view, but as it was still pitch dark out, [laughs] I just had to imagine the calm waters before this storm blew in.

We had to park in the little town of Phoenicia, which I love.