Every year more than 1 million athletes globally participate in Spartan Race events, with Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) competitions taking the world by storm. The greater Salt Lake City area will be at the epicenter of the OCR world on July 28-29 when Spartan Race heads to the Nordic Valley Resort. The event will mark the fifth and final leg of the 2018 U.S. National Championship Series, where the region’s best endurance athletes will battle for more than $100,000 in cash prizes.
The race weekend will feature up to 35 Spartan obstacles designed to push competitors to their limits as they conquer the rugged, mountainous terrain of the West. Elite athletes, weekend warriors and even kids will challenge the course with spots still available at https://www.spartan.com/en/race/detail/3450/overview
Utah is the final stop of five of U.S. National Championship races with competitors vying for spots in the North American Regional Championship and the opportunity to qualify for the 2018 Spartan World Championship in Lake Tahoe this September.
With the Utah championship event a few weeks away, I wanted to offer up the chance to interview Spartan leadership and top athletes, as well as additional info on the event to share with your audience ahead of this major OCR championship.
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Rome Hero Foxes
Premieres New Single
"Chest Piece" via Billboard
Sophomore Album
18 Summers
To Be Released July 27th, 2018
Now Available for Pre-Order: smarturl.it/18sapple
Recently Featured on Paste Magazine, Substream Magazine,
Houston Press, The Noise & More
"Titled "Chest Piece," the track follows a romantic, crooning intro with surf-punk power chords
and swells into an angsty beach rock jam." - Billboard
"Besides that guitar-centric caboose, "Lost In A Room" is textbook indie rock, a splashy
summer treat reminiscent of early-aughts Weezer." - Paste Magazine
"Due out in late July, the album proves that sometimes, bands can avoid the
"sophomore slump" when they stay true to who they are while expanding
in the most organic way." - Houston Press
July 18, 2018 - Houston, TX - Houston quintet Rome Hero Foxes is gearing up for the release of their sophomore album 18 Summers with third single "Chest Piece," streaming now on Billboard. 18 Summers will be released on July 27th, 2018 and is available for pre-order at smarturl.it/18sapple. For more information, please visit: romeherofoxes.com.
On the new single, singer C.J. Burton shares: "Much like the song, a hopeless love that begins light and full of heartache only to hit a wall of chaos and betrayal when the truth of that love's intentions are revealed."
Rome Hero Foxes named their sophomore LP 18 Summers, but it more accurately describes the band's beginnings. Shortly after graduating high school, the quintet was discovered in 2016 by Dance Gavin Dance's Kurt Travis and released For When You're Falling Backwards. As far as debuts go, its expanse melded the urgency of post-hardcore with an inward gaze offsetting any chaos. That introspection, bent over swirling guitars and mesmerizing vocal lines, led to reinvention. Instead of baring their teeth through arrangements that spiraled and warped, the band took a self-imposed journey into simpler territory. A pair of twin EPs, I/O and Horoscope, reset Rome Hero Foxes as a group indebted to surf rock and indie pop instead of gnarlier waves, with the latter predicting their shimmering follow-up. Enter the real 18 Summers.
"During this time of writing all of this material, it made me envision all these songs as this sort of time capsule-like void or world where time is slow but life keeps moving faster," vocalist and rhythm guitarist CJ Burton explains. With that definition in mind, it's easy to understand the varied warmth and speeds put to tape here. "Seattle Queen," with Andrew Hagan's percolating keyboards leading the way, places love's angled complexities behind a slice of bubblegum pop. "Chest Piece" splits its pathway between R&B schmaltz and vaulted pop-punk. Other fare, like the Black Mirror nod "San Junipero," heighten interpersonal highs to infectious, but experimental highs. It's the only track that reminds listeners of the band's darker roots, with flecks of mathy guitar flanking verses. This album is as concerned with love as it is with its absence in the face of growing older and growing apart.
18 Summers enters like a dream - abrupt and disorienting - before adjusting to this new state with enthusiasm. This eternal sunshine captures a world where time is relative: sit back, relax, and dive in. Because here, love reigns supreme.
Rome Hero Foxes is CJ Burton (vocals, guitar), Andrew Hagan (vocals, keys), Michael Fox (guitar), Emilio Garcia-Caro (bass), and Adrian Romero (drums).
The band will be celebrating their new album 18 Summers with a hometown album release show at Houston's JNJ BNB on August 3rd. Tickets are now available at bit.ly/2NCfNDd.
For more information:
Website: www.romeherofoxes.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/romeherofoxes
Twitter: www.twitter.com/romeherofoxes
Instagram: www.instagram.com/romeherofoxes
18 Summers Track Listing:
1. Lost In A Room
2. Break Your Own Bones
3. Chest Piece
4. 18 Summers
5. Be Your Side
6. Don't Call My Name
7. San Junipero
8. Don't Close The Door
9. Seattle Queen
10. Good For You
High Res Press Photo: http://bit.ly/2sLoscU (Credit Natasha Bermudez)
Album Artwork: http://bit.ly/2JhnNLf
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DENVER—A new Winning the West 2018 poll released today by the Center for Western Priorities shows the growing influence of the “Outdoor Voting Bloc” in Mountain West swing states.
The Winning the West 2018 poll — conducted for the second consecutive election cycle in Colorado, Montana and Nevada, and for the first time in Arizona and New Mexico — reveals how issues involving public lands, parks and wildlife play an outsized role in moving Western voters to the polls and influence the candidates they choose.
Download the full presentation and topline poll results.
The poll found recent Trump administration proposals on public lands are unpopular in every state surveyed. 74 percent of voters — including a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents — oppose reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. 70 percent oppose opening public lands close to national parks and monuments for oil and gas drilling. 67 percent oppose increasing public land available for oil and gas development by reducing conservation efforts on behalf of potentially endangered wildlife, like the sage-grouse. 64 percent oppose rolling back environmental regulations on oil and gas development
The net effect of its recent policies leaves the Trump administration with a 27 percent approval rating on handling public lands issues with Mountain West swing state voters, according to the poll. Backlash to recent administration actions have taken a toll on the public esteem of U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose approval rating is upside down in all five of the Western states polled, including in his home state of Montana.
“In 2016 we saw the rise of public lands and the outdoors as a wedge issue in several competitive races in the Mountain West,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities. “Now, with a peaking voter backlash against efforts to drill and mine recklessly on public lands or shrink popular national monuments, we expect to see outdoor issues playing an even more decisive role in this year’s elections.”
The poll found Mountain West voters place a heightened importance on supporting the outdoor recreation economy. 81 percent of voters think outdoor recreation will be important to the future of their state’s economy. 80 percent believe the presence of public lands and the local outdoor recreation lifestyle are important to attracting good jobs and innovative companies to the state.
When it comes to energy development, 84 percent of voters — including a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents — favor investments in the development of renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. 55 percent oppose increasing oil and gas development on public lands. Where energy development does occur on public lands, voters want to see common sense safety protections. On public lands, strong majorities support requiring mining companies to pay taxpayers a royalty for extracting minerals (76 percent), increasing the royalties that companies pay to taxpayers for extracting oil, gas, and coal (70 percent), and requiring oil and gas companies to detect and repair natural gas leaks in drilling equipment (89 percent).
While the importance of public lands is found across all voters surveyed, seven groups of persuadable voters — millennial parents, empty nesters, dedicated anglers and hunters, casual outdoor recreation enthusiasts, cable news watchers, social media users, and ticket splitters — emerge as particularly important to candidates looking to win elections in Mountain West states and districts.
Majorities exceeding 80 percent across all seven groups view public lands issues as important in deciding which candidate to vote for. Between 60 and 75 percent said they tend to vote for candidates who align the closest to their point of view on public lands. A strong majority of voters in the seven groups, ranging between 69 and 76 percent, reported they are motivated to vote when public lands are threatened.
“You cannot truly understand the Western electorate without knowing about the outdoor voting tendencies that run strong across all voters,” said Brian Gottlieb, founder and president of Gottlieb Strategic Research, who conducted the poll. “We see those tendencies especially strong among these seven groups of voters, which are less partisan and less ideological than traditional partisan break-downs. These outdoor voters are all persuadable in one way or another, meaning a politician would be smart to listen to their views of public lands when trying to build a winning coalition in the West.”
According to the poll, candidates who listen to the outdoor voting bloc will hear strong opposition for opening up more public lands for energy development, rolling back regulations on oil and gas drilling and mining, and reducing the size of national monuments.
The outdoor voter groups identified in the poll expect their candidates to take a balanced approach to managing conservation, recreation, and responsible energy development. Majorities of voters in each group said they would likely vote for a candidate who says conservation is key to the West's economy, whether that candidate is a Democrat or Republican. Conversely, strong majorities in each group were unlikely to vote for a Democrat or Republican who prioritizes energy development over conservation.
Poll results caution both Democratic and Republican candidates running for office in the Mountain West against moving towards extreme positions on public lands. Majorities in every outdoor voting group, with the exception of millennial parents, were unlikely to vote for a Democrat who says energy resources should not be developed on public lands. And even stronger majorities from every group were unlikely to vote for a Republican who says there are too many public lands.
In addition to the poll, the Center for Western Priorities’ Winning the West 2018 will conduct focus groups with voters and analyze social media trend data from the last two years, looking at the conversations around public lands. The updated WinningTheWest2018.org site along with online issue ads running from July through October are intended to educate candidates and campaigns about how important it is to show support for public lands and access to the outdoors, particularly among persuadable voters in Mountain West swing states.
The Winning the West poll was conducted by Gottlieb Strategic Research. It included 2,500 online interviews of likely 2018 voters in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico in June. The margin of error is +/- 2 percent for all voters and +/- 4.4 percent per state.
The complete Winning the West poll results for each of the five states surveyed are available at WinningTheWest2018.org. To speak with the pollster Brian Gottlieb or Jennifer Rokala from the Center for Western Priorities, contact Aaron Weiss at 720-279-0019 or aaron@westernpriorities.org.
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. To speak with an expert on public lands, contact Aaron Weiss at 720-279-0019 or aaron@westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox.
