So last night after work I ran. After the run I finished my post about Steve Strongman, I showered, went to the store, and then ate dinner. All the while I was thinking that I would write about the run in a few minutes. So as the minutes passed, my energy slowly slipped away and before long I was closer to sleep than coherent thoughts and writing!! Which is why I’m sitting here on Friday afternoon writing about it! I maintained a pretty fast pace (for me) throughout the run and my pace time continues to go down. There was one time during the run that I checked my pace and it was 9:06, so I sped up a little and sure enough the pace went under 9 minutes!! Unfortunately, I could only keep up that pace for a minute or less!! My pace, however, through the first three miles was just and shade over 10 minutes per mile!! And overall I ended the four-mile run in a time of 40:19 for an average pace of 10:05. I was a tired but happy camper!!! 
Now I couldn’t think of or find a Prog Rock album to use as the soundtrack for the run, so I selected an Americana album that I’ve been listening to over the last few days, My Rocket Ship from Markus Rill I really like this album. It’s full of great songs, husky, gravelly vocals from Rill and some fine music from his backing band The Troublemakers. Here’s some press from Markus’ website: “If voices were highways, Markus Rill’s would be gravel … like Steve Earle, Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams, Rill excels at songwriting” – PureMusic/USA “Europe’s premier Americana artist” – Rootstime/Belgium Yes, you read that last quote correctly, because… 
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.Markus Rill is a German singer-songwriter.born on March 20, 1970 in Frankfurt am Main. He grew up in Goldbach near Aschaffenburg and won several German championship titles in wrestling and multiple team championships between 1987 and 1993 with the AC Bavaria Goldbach. He studied English, Sociology and Political Science studied at the Julius-Maximilians-Univresität Würzburg. In the course of his studies he spent a year in Austin, TX, where he followed his passion for American music in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, and got his first solo stage experience at Open Mics in the area. Read More
Here’s what Rill says at his website about that time:in his life….
. “I soaked up the music scene, I bathed in it. It felt like I had come home.” The no-BS ethos of the Austin scene appealed to Rill. “Not only did I learn a lot about country music, the blues, about all sorts of roots music, about songwriting, and live performance, I also realized that to be an interesting artist, you have to be yourself.” And as Rill matured so did his artistry. “I no longer re-write Steve Earle songs”, he says with a laugh. “I have my own stories to tell and my own viewpoint to write from.” Not being able to use generic Americana symbolism like highways, diners and pickup trucks has made Rill’s writing leaner and, paradoxically, more universal and more specific at the same time. “If I can create the image of someone sitting home alone at night at his kitchen table, I don’t need to say whether he’s sitting in Texas or Bavaria. The emotion matters more than the location.”
So check out the album! Here’s Markus with the title track “My Rocket Ship”…..oh, by the way it was well worth breaking my only prog rock music on my runs with the great lyrics and music. I had no problems listening, understanding and enjoying Markus’ music and my time was an added bonus!!
