Just had a call from my good friend Shawn Hall (aka Corduroy Kid) yesterday. I had the good news for him that CRUX, the film that he scored, won ‘Best of Show’ for mountain sports film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. 

He told me he just finished producing a song that I might like called Occupying Army by Vanessa Richards. Some beautiful, reality distilling, planet loving lyrics sung with style. Check it out here!

Also, check out and buy the Crux Soundtrack here.

One of the joys of living in the Vancouver area is that the snow is conveniently located up in the mountains. That hasn’t been the case for the last week or so, it dumped about a foot and half at my house, and that seriously put a cramp in my pre-season trials riding! I don’t really consider building a huge snow fort training. Now I know I am totally spoiled living in Vancouver where most of the winter I can ride outside no problem, and I know a good chunk of the people who read this may be in the middle of a severe winter lock down, I feel you, I really do! I guess I’m just psyched to get riding! It’s a nice time of year for me to ride, my show count is low, so the time and energy I do spend on my bike is mostly fun practice. I am busy booking shows right now, and pretty soon it’ll be full on demo time, and my energy level for extra practice will go down.

Talking about Vancouver weather, and talking about demos, I have some shows coming up in Vancouver for the Outdoor Adventure Sports show. Anyone living in the area that is interested in going can print out the 2 for 1 coupon I have attached below, love to see you there!

One of the most common questions I get about Crux is whether the soundtrack is available. Well it is now through iTunes, just search for ‘Crux Soundtrack’. Corduroy Kid worked some magic on this soundtrack! Here is the announcement directly from the musician himself:

“Okay so I’ve been lending music ahemm licensing music to these outdoor filmmaker thrill seeker types for the last 4 or 5 years right. Well last May, my friends, filmmaker Alex Levigne, and allstar world trials/yoga zen like rider Ryan Leech asked me if I wanted to compose a soundtrack for their film. This film would follow 3 riders from Victoria BC thru to Nova Scotia, and on to Austria on Ryan Leeches summer tour 2007. I had a couple of ideas kicking in my brain bucket regarding tempos after having worked on a couple of Ryan’s previous films. I gave these guys two pitches ‘Sonic Pleasure’ and ‘Mood Ruff’ this in return gave them the inspiration to ride to the new music on their ipods and start filming…kind of a reverse process for soundtracks…but very cool. After the first two songs, these guys mainly wanted Corduroy kid flow with lyrical gravy…which was really really hard for me…. after all, how do you write lyrics about riding a bike etc…without writing lyrics about riding a bike. In the end I think some cool lyrical relationships were formed and it’s a damn good record on its own…so with that said go check it out on iTunes, it’s only $6.00!!

Love to all of ya, Shawn”

On that ‘note’, I’ll sign off for now! Ryan