When James Popik appears on stage at Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes on Saturday, July 23, he will be celebrating nearly 15 years of performing at the Sourland Mountain Festival.
And while Popik has made more than 2,000 appearances at 150 venues up and down the East Coast, including the White House, it’s the Sourland Festival that has a special meaning for him.
A Hopewell resident for 25 years, he is an avid hiker and an active member of the Sourland Conservancy, the organization sponsoring the event.
Popik, conservancy member Tom Kilbourne, and musician Truman Madison Goines have been credited for launching the first music festival gathering in 2003.
It has since evolved to a community celebration, with this year’s event marking the festival’s return as an in-person event after two years of online-only recordings because of the pandemic.
Popik recalls the day he decided to join the conservancy. There were geologists, botanists, lawyers, scientists, and people with political backgrounds. Not having a background in any of these areas, he wondered how he could help the organization. After getting to know the area residents, he realized that while there were people dedicated to preserving the ecology and history of the Sourlands, there were others who didn’t even know they were living in the Sourland region.
“I realized that getting the word out about the importance and beauty of the Sourlands was something I could do,” he said. And becoming a festival organizer was a perfect way to do just that.
Popik is among a host of festival enthusiasts — educators, historians, naturalists, staffers, musicians, and at least 80 behind-the-scenes volunteers — making this year’s festival happen.
As part of the musical lineup, Popik’s band, James Popik and Supernova, will perform classic and modern jazz led by Popik on guitar and featuring a three-piece “psychic” horn section.
The Outcrops, whose tagline is “Rock & Roll, Blues & Soul,” will also perform their original blend of music, led by vocalist and rhythm guitarist Cassidy Rain and lead guitarist Bryan Schroeder. So will Rainbow Fresh — a band whose spokesman says, “If you pictured Led Zeppelin’s little brother playing Steely Dan songs, threw in a little bit of Latin groove and disco, you’d be close” — and Water Street, a pop/Americana group, hailing from the hills of Blairstown and mixing acoustic guitar and mandolin standards with electric guitar and funk groove rhythm.
In addition to music, there will be a scavenger hunt, electric bike rides, a bird walk, history and education exhibits, wildlife, local crafts, and food from local vendors. At press time, exhibitors include several New Jersey organizations: the Audubon Society, Department of Environmental Protection, Highlands Coalition, Raritan Headwaters, Watershed Institute, SSAAM, the Sankofa Collaborative, Swallow Hill Farms, and the Sourlands Conservancy.
The proceeds from the festival will support the conservancy’s mission to protect, promote, and preserve the Sourlands, a region that comprises roughly 90 square miles of unbroken habitat in Central New Jersey.
One of its critical projects is focused on the ash tree crisis. In 2020 the NJ Forest Service estimated that an invasive species would cause the loss of one million trees within three years. To mitigate this loss, the Sourland Conservancy has planted 11,500 trees and hopes to plant 10,000 more this year if they have the needed funding, says executive director Laurie Cleveland. Alongside tree planting, the organization is actively involved in stopping the progression of the PennEast pipeline and promoting renewable energy and clean energy jobs.
They host and manage about a dozen preservation projects including restoring woodcock habitats, protecting amphibians during their road crossings in early spring, attracting pollinators, working on forest and riparian restoration, assessing water quality through stream monitoring, and hosting stewardship programs.
Popik says he hopes that as people learn about the area and attend the festival, they will want to learn more about the Sourlands region. He recommends reading the works of naturalist Jim Amon and historians Elaine Buck and Beverly Mills.
Buck and Mills coauthored the book, “If These Stones Could Talk: African American Presence in the Hopewell Valley, Sourland Mountain and Surrounding Regions of New Jersey.”
Both women are founders and advisory board members of the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum (SSAAM). Dedicated to a broader understanding of history, the museum is registered with the National Historic Register. Its mission is to tell the story of the unique culture, experiences, and contributions of the African American community of the Sourland Mountain region.
Mills says she hopes that visitors will experience the museum as a sanctuary alive in history and an opportunity to understand the community’s traditions that continue to be relevant today.
Amon is the author of “Seeing the Sourlands,” a collection of 64 essays and more than 100 photographs of the plants, animals and natural processes that occur in the Sourlands region. (U.S. 1, March 4, 2020).
Popik notes that while Amon has a keen and educated eye for detail, he speaks in a way that most people can relate to.
In his essay, “Nature in the Time of COVID 19,” Amon writes: “My approach is not to advocate political action — many people do that better than I can — but to look for things in nature that give me great pleasure and report on them with the hope that my reports will be infectious. I am convinced that there is joy, health and wealth from living in peace with the environment. …”
The complete collection of Amon’s essays is available in a hardcover book, offered through the Sourlands Conservancy website, which also publishes many of his individual essays. Amon is a former board member of the Sourlands Conservancy and also worked as a volunteer and hiking guide. He previously held leadership roles with Delaware and Raritan Greenway Land Trust and the D&R Canal Commission.
Like Amon, Popik hikes the Sourland trails as often as he can. One of his favorite trails is Woosamonsa Ridge, where he finds spacious views at the top of hillside ridges and tranquil scenes along the lower lands that hug the creek.
Listed with the NJ Trails Association, the trailhead is located on the south side of the Pennington Mountain leading into 146 forested acres and almost three miles of trails extending to upper reaches of Jacobs Creek.
Popik, who studied at Penn State and earned his bachelor’s degree from New Jersey City University, traces his love for nature and music to his childhood. His father, an engineer and weekend artist, and his mother, a nurse and homemaker, encouraged his talents and interests. He started playing piano at age 6 and took guitar lessons at age 11. When not pursuing his music education and entertainment, he took frequent nature hikes with his dad.
Sharing a fun fact about his childhood, Popik says, “My parents would take me to visit my relatives who had an old-fashion player piano. It wasn’t electric, so you had to pump it for it to play.”
His father’s interest in art rubbed off on Popik as well. When he isn’t performing, teaching, writing music, hiking, or sustainably landscaping his Hopewell property with native plants, Popik creates handwritten musical scores as works of art. That includes works by Mozart, Bach, Schumann, and Joplin, and custom scores on request. “In the age of computer printing, the hand drawn musical score is more and more rare,” he says. His art is titled “Music of Note.”
Popik’s most recent endeavor is recording his original composition, “Sourland Symphony,” which is inspired by and dedicated to the region. An all acoustic, all instrumental piece, the symphony includes cello, upright base, percussion, and acoustic guitar. Popik hopes his music will convey the magical quality he and so many others experience in the Sourland forest.
Sourland Music Festival, Unionville Vineyards, 8 Rocktown Road, Ringoes. Saturday, July 23, 3 to 8:30 p.m. Adults $30 online and $40 at gate, Children $10 online and $15 at gate. Attendance is limited to the first 1,000 tickets sold. For more information, visit www.sourlandmountainfest.com.
For more information on James Popik, visit www.facebook.com/JamesPopikMusic.
