Folk Musician Killed By Falling Tree

AP Photo Courtesy Valentine Gorski
AP Photo Courtesy Valentine Gorski

Philadelphia folk musician Jason Parish was killed by a falling tree while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maryland on Sunday. He was 36.

An off-duty park ranger arrived at the scene of the accident and attempted to perform CPR, but efforts to revive Parish were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Associated Press.

High winds reportedly caused the tree to fall on Parish at the Ed Garvey overnight shelter roughly seven miles from Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where Parish was hiking with two other people.

Ernest Tokay, owner of the Little Spiders Have Big Dreams recording studio where Parish had recorded an album, told the AP that Parish was an avid outdoorsman and a staple of Philadelphia’s folk music community.

“It was his thing,” Tokay told the AP. “He seemed to enjoy what the rest of us would call very tortuous conditions.”

Parish released his debut album, A Mountain and a Hill, earlier this year. According to the album notes, the Delaware-born Parish studied jazz and classical music as a teenager before teaching himself guitar and turning his attention toward blues, folk, and Americana music. He was scheduled to perform a series of shows in Philadelphia next month.

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