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Getaway’s lasting legacy

SARANAC LAKE – Once upon a time, The Getaway was a home away from home for kids who wanted to play their music loud. Today, some of those kids have grown up to become full-fledged musicians or otherwise make their livings in the music industry, and, to hear them tell it, that may never have happened without a place like The Getaway in their lives.

The Getaway was a specific incarnation of the Saranac Lake Youth Center. Formed in July 1982 by the Saranac Lake Ecumenical Council, the SLYC was initially located in a building behind the First Presbyterian Church. In 1984, it changed its name to “The Getaway” and moved to a new location, a two-story building behind T.F. Finnigan now occupied by Earthshine Yoga Studio and Human Power Planet Earth bike shop. The Getaway remained in that location until 2004, when it moved to the Dew Drop Inn building on Broadway.

Saranac Lakers who grew up during The Getaway’s heyday might remember seeing bands like Reflex, Silencer, Trip, The Groodys, Snotbox, Good To Go, Ketchup Knife, Retract, Abbot Hayes and Monday Mourning packing the building’s second floor. Today, former members of those bands such as Josh Clement, Chris Morris, John Warchol, Eric Ackerson, Tim McCormick, Bryan Shortell and Eric Sternberg are still playing music in bands across the Tri-Lakes and beyond, proof positive of The Getaway’s lasting influence on the music scene.

As a youth center, The Getaway held dances and talent shows for middle school and high school students as far back as 1986, when a 13-year-old Josh Clement first burst onto its stage with his band, Reflex.

“We felt like rock stars,” he said. “Our parents would come and videotape it, and we would get Beatles screams (from the crowd). You only need to hear Beatles screams once when you play, and you’re going to do it the rest of your life.”

Clement said The Getaway’s middle school talent shows often featured a variety of acts, such as girls dancing along to Madonna songs, boys performing BMX bike stunts and a fair share of lip sync-ing. Its inclusive atmosphere inspired him to put a band together with his friends Tim Kilroy and Kevin Kunath, even though he didn’t know how to play an instrument at the time.

“They each played, and I said, ‘Hey, let’s start a band, I’ll sing,’ because what else could I do?” he said.

Clement has been performing in bands and as a solo artist ever since. Today, he regularly plays around the Tri-Lakes area, and he owns his own broadcasting and media production company, Josh Clement Productions, LLC. Along with author Ed Kanze, he produces the Mountain Lakes PBS documentary series “Curiously Adirondack.”

“I have to credit the Getaway,” he said. “When I started playing, I just wanted to be in a band, had no talent, nothing. Couldn’t play guitar or anything.

“The Getaway, certainly that was my opportunity to go into the kind of music that I loved.”

Chris Morris had a similar experience at The Getaway in the late 90s.

“I started going there when I was in eighth grade, and when I went there, it was completely punk rock,” Morris said. “There was no other music that got played there, basically.”

Morris said he fell in love with The Getaway when he and a few friends went to see Snotbox.

“They played classic punk rock music,” he said. “It was loud, and it was obnoxious. They were all really talented.”

Morris soon started singing in a band called Ketchup Knife. While he had a musical background courtesy of his participation in activities like band and chorus, he found there was a big difference between performing for a crowd at a school concert and performing at a punk show.

“The first time that I sang with Ketchup Knife in front of a crowd at a punk rock show, it was an adrenaline rush unlike anything I’d ever experienced,” he said. “The music itself is amped up, and it’s punk rock, and it’s loud, and I’m screaming, and it’s not really singing, necessarily, but the way the crowd is moshing around and going nuts has such a cool feeling.”

Because the musicians he admired at The Getaway encouraged his efforts, Morris said he continued to perform.

“Ketchup Knife, we were not that talented, to be perfectly honest, but that was the fun of it, right?” he said. “The next time you go, you’re a little bit better. It was a cool, fun scene, just a place to get together and play music, and everybody is there for that, kind of like how BluSeed (Studios) does the Open Mic nights now, too.”

These days, when he’s not busy with his duties as communications officer for the Adirondack Foundation, Morris plays trumpet in the funk-rock-jazz band Crowfeather. He credits the shows at The Getaway with fostering his love of performance and shaping his musical tastes during a formative period of his youth.

“It gave me the bug to enjoy playing music in front of friends and people,” he said.

The Getaway came into Christine Collins’ life near the end of its residency on Dorsey Street. Following an argument with her father, she went for a walk, heard the music playing at a punk show and decided to check it out.

“I walked in and was welcomed,” she said. “The level of acceptance there was unlike anything I had witnessed or been subjected to before. It was a very open scene.”

Collins said she soon began promoting shows at The Getaway with the full support of its staff, including Jamie Armstrong, the executive director at the time.

“I did all my own fliers,” Collins said. “In the back room, they provided all the supplies. They were very generous in assisting me with everything I wanted and needed.”

Collins said The Getaway provided her and her friends with a safe space to pursue their own interests. For Collins, that meant networking, writing and marketing, skills she would go on to utilize in her professional career.

“We were a band of misfits, really,” she said. “I was going there to get away from my parents and to really get my own space, my own area.

“I wrote a grant for them while I lived there, and (it) got $5,000 to get a new sound system in as well as staging, lighting and recording equipment.”

Collins said the shows were never the same after The Getaway moved to the Dew Drop Inn building.

“When you start moshing and the floors feel like they’re going to fall in the river, that isn’t exactly a welcome feeling,” she said. “A lot of kids would be like, ‘Ah, we’re just not going to go here.'”

Today, Collins lives in Norfolk and is the owner and “supreme commander” of her company, Regeneration Media, which provides bands and musicians with a variety of services like social media, marketing, marketing management, endorsement activities, publicity and public relations. As a writer, she contributes to Rokbiz Solutions and New Noise Magazine, and she sits on the Board of Directors on the North American Independent Rock Music Awards. Since leaving The Getaway, she said she has worked with multi-platinum artists, and, to hear her tell it, none of it would have happened had she not decided to check out that punk show.

“If it wasn’t for (the staff) believing in me and entrusting me with that space, I wouldn’t be a fraction as successful,” she said. “I had something to do. I felt like I had purpose. I had the ability to grow as a person.

“I’m thankful for The Getaway. Some of my best memories were there.”

The Saranac Lake Youth Center of today bears little resemblance to The Getaway. While its current location on the corner of Church and Woodruff streets doesn’t have the physical space to put on the type of shows The Getaway was known for, it still provides students from grades 6 through 12 with a safe place to hang out. When this reporter visited it Wednesday afternoon, about 15 youths shuffled in to grab a snack, get online, play air hockey, shoot a game of pool, or just get away from the pressures of school and home for a few minutes.

The center is open Monday to Friday from 2:30 to 6 p.m. SLYC Executive Director Diane Roberts said about 175 different students visit it each year, but she never quite knows who will show up from day to day.

“We’re an open group, not a closed group,” she said. “Right now, we probably have about 4,500 visits in a year.

“It’s a place for them to come so that they’re not hanging out in the street or getting into trouble.”

Roberts explained the center’s budget has decreased dramatically since the heyday of The Getaway.

“Back in 1993, this place ran on $61,000 a year,” Roberts said. “Today, we operate on about $34,000 a year.

“I would love for this place to be a lot more than it is right now. I would love to be able to be open on the weekends. I would love to be open in the evenings, but we don’t have the resources to do that.”

Roberts said she has surveyed the students who frequent the center, and the results revealed that the students coming to the center are looking for the same types of things Clement, Morris and Collins were looking for at their age.

“They say, ‘To stay away from the kids we know are doing drugs,’ ‘To be here where it’s safe,'” Roberts said.

Roberts said she would love to provide the kind of shows The Getaway did, but many things would have to change before that was possible.

“It would be wonderful,” she said. “The desire to do it is there. It’s the resources we don’t have. If there are people out there in the community that know where we can get additional funding, that would be great.”

Roberts said she would love to see more people step up and join the center’s board of directors.

“I think what we need right now are some people who understand how to raise money with crowdfunding and things like that to help expand the center from what it is into something even better,” she said.

As for Clement, Morris and Collins, they all said they would love to see the youth of today have a place like The Getaway.

“My son is the same age as (I was when I started), and he plays guitar,” Clement said. “He says, ‘I don’t have anybody to play with,’ or ‘There is no place to do it.’

“I would say that there is room for this sort of thing again. There is no reason why it’s not happening now. It just takes somebody to get it going.”

Armstrong remembered Collins and the shows well. She said she encouraged youths to create their own events, and they took the initiative and ran with it. She recalls having a few off-site shows, such as a battle of the bands at Riverside Park, another show at the Harrietstown Town Hall and a non-alcohol show at the Waterhole, and she hoped students reading this who are interested in publicly performing realize they have options.

“Christine did a lot of it,” she said. “If they’re interested, they should approach local businesses.

“There is a way that it could start again. It doesn’t have to start big. The town hall is a wonderful facility with great acoustics. If you can give teenagers an opportunity to do something they love, they can really rise to the occasion.”

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