Get your mind out of the gutter. The "it" in the headline that Susan Tedeschi, currently on tour with her husband and bandmate Derek Trucks, is talking about is saving the planet. This is a family blog! But it's a great title, don't you think? Maybe if we're lucky, she'll make it the title of her next song.
Susan told me that it was time to stop talking about the planet and start doing something about it during a long, forthright, and at times very passionate interview at Rothbury on July 5. She doesn't pull any punches, and as you'll see, she tries very hard to practice what she preaches, setting up recycling stations on the tour bus, getting her home off the grid, and leading the charge for biodiesel on her tour. What she lacks in a sophisticated green touring campaign she more than makes up for in enthusiasm.
In fact, Susan's so excited about green stuff that before I could even get my first question out, she jumped in to tell me about her solar-powered home, which she shares with Derek and her two children. And when I tried to wrap things up, thinking she must be tired of talking, she turned the tables on me, asking me questions about how she could improve her touring practices. I'm still swooning!
Susan and Derek getting it on.
Susan Tedeschi: Derek and I have a solar powered home now.
Jason Turgeon: Excellent! Well, tell me about it.
ST: Derek actually is the one that knows. We looked at a bunch of different companies, but he's the one who ended up deciding because I had to go out of town. They came and they put 22 panels on the roof, at 31 degrees.
JT: Fantastic. Where is this in Florida?
ST: Jacksonville.
JT: Is it off the grid, or partially solar powered?
ST: It's tied in to the grid, so we use what we need, and the town puts it in a bank, so...
JT: So, it provides more power than you need?
ST: Yeah.
JT: Fantastic. So how about your touring--have you been doing any green touring?
ST: We have been doing a lot of discussing about it. The problem is having 23 people on tour on these buses and not having space. A lot of these buses are already pre-organized, the way the trashcan is or whatever. Our new idea is that we have a couple of drawers at the front, and I'm trying to turn those into recycle drawers. The one thing that drives me nuts more than anything on the road is water bottles and people just throwing them in the trash. Drives me nuts. I'm like, no, we're not doing that. We're putting them in the drawer, and then we're putting them in the [recycling bin]!
JT: Have you guys thought about doing the Rothbury thing where they just took away the water bottles and everyone has to bring a Nalgene?
ST: Well, we would, but we don't have time to go shopping, so people wouldn't be able to drink. You have to have water. But something else I've been thinking about is how to do biodiesel for the buses. I'm friends with Willie Nelson and his wife. Annie is really big on biodiesel. She has it for all her cars and for the tour bus. And I know Dave Mathews does, too, because I do Farm Aid with those guys. Every little bit, though, helps, anything.
JT: [Your publicist] told me that you were interested in Florida rivers.
ST: Yeah, the watersheds. I grew up in Massachusetts, and I was always part of the North River, that was the watershed [group] that I was always involved with and doing work with. And I've been getting involved with the St. John's Riverkeeper, and trying to keep that river healthy and trying to do whatever we can. Trying to write letters to everybody, mostly senators.
JT: Have you done any benefits?
ST: I have, I've done some benefits at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville for [St. Johns Riverkeeper]. They have an oyster festival that I have done a few years. I'm trying to get more involved in it, I'm just really not home at all. I've been so busy, I haven't been home. But Derek and I have always been so curious about environmental things, always trying to look into it, that we've inspired his little sister to actually get on the phone and write letters to everybody from the mayor and governor as well as to the TV stations. She's trying to get all the public schools to recycle and also Alltel stadium, [which] doesn't recycle. So we're working on it.
JT: Have you worked with any of your other venues to get them to try and recycle?
ST: A lot of them actually have been. A lot of the venues are, and if we mention [that a venue doesn't recycle], then we'll get a trash can together and people at least start to try.
JT: Do you get a different kind of fan at your [solo shows] than you do in the festivals? Are they more of a traditional blues fan?
ST: Yeah.
JT: Are they into this stuff the same way that [this audience] is?
ST: Not as hip as the college kids or the younger kids.
JT: If you try to bring it up are they receptive to it?
ST: Some of them are, and some of them get all weird on me. "Why are you spreading your politics on me?" I get that a lot. Whenever I start talking about how we need to save the environment or be more aware. If everyone would take care of their own backyard, we wouldn't have all these problems. I try to get people to read Rachel Carson books. I'll turn 'em on to whatever I can. It's funny how people will try to label you all of a sudden, like "communist"...You're talking about things that are important and good for the planet.
JT: It sounds like you get a lot of resistance. Is it a generational thing or a regional thing?
ST: I do [get resistance]. It tends to be generational, I've noticed. It tends to be sixty and older, they're more set in their ways.
JT: So the message hasn't really sunk in.
ST: They don't believe in it. They don't think that global warming exists, they have their own arguments. It's just a different way of thinking, and I feel like I'm always trying to go up against these people that just aren't open-minded enough to it.
JT: What about when you tour with the Allman Brothers and those folks?
ST: Oh yeah, it's way easier. You know, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, they've been out pushing for these causes for 35 years. When I was out with the Dead, I remember one day [Bill] Kreutzmann [said] we've worked 30 years to get these things in place and George Bush comes in and in 2 years knocks out all the work we've done.
JT: Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. Sometimes that's how you get to the people who wouldn't believe it if it wasn't...
ST: Yeah, but all the way worse? Give me a break! But you're right. Some of the people who used to give me a hard time, now they're at least not...
JT: Would you say that the tide is starting to turn?
ST: I would, especially because of the George Bush years (laughing). I think that has made people rethink things.
JT: In your songs, do you have any kind of environmental message?
ST: Big time. I don't know if all of my songs are going on my record or not, because I've written a lot of songs. One song is called "Until the Earth Runs Dry." That's a song about everybody wanting it, always having it, needing it, but then all of a sudden in our life, in our generation, it's not always going to be there and it's not always affordable. Whether it's oil or water. It's one of those kind of songs. A lot of my songs are kind of political. One is called "Pack our Things and Go." It's about packing up our troops and having 'em come home and trying to take care of our own country.
JT: That's courageous. You're out there pushing that stuff even though your fans have said they don't want to hear it.
ST: Yeah, they don't want to hear it. I don't care. I have another song called "People." It's about people having a choice. One of the verses is "TV screens/corrupt magazines/a man on the radio who thinks he knows what you need/planting seeds/that just mislead/that can't be taken back." Because you have all these people that plant seeds in your head, and people start believing it. And it's not factual. You can't believe everything you read, unfortunately. You have to know who you're dealing with, what your source is. But people aren't even educated enough to know who to vote for.
JT: Do you do any stuff with Headcount or any of those groups?
ST: We used to do the Rock the Vote. We used to say come on and come to our shows and set up a table. Anybody environmental or trying to educate people to vote, that's all good.
JT: How about this festival, what do you think?
ST: I was so impressed, because when I went to catering, [they had] the utensils I love! They have the ones that are compostable, and everything was pretty much compostable or organic. It seemed like they had put thought into everything.
JT: Was that a consideration when you were booking this festival?
ST: I always want to be part of festivals like this, absolutely.
JT: Is Derek on the same page?
ST: Oh, big time. He's always picking on me, like, "OK miss environmental, you left a light on!" He's really big on making me practice what I preach. He doesn't let me get away with anything. Which is good, I like it.
JT: Anything else green you wanted to talk about?
ST: Well, I always have four or five [reusable bags] clipped onto my pocketbook. Look at China, they don't have plastic bags anymore, for a reason. I think it's good for us to be aware, but it's more important for us to actually start putting it into action. Once you start learning about what's good and what's not, let's do it. Let's stop talking about it. Let's get on it!
JT: What's the one thing you're not able to do right now that you wish you could?
ST: In my touring habits, I wish the trash, everything from the utensils--I wish we could get those on the riders. The problem is, we have to get whatever people have in their town. It would be way cooler if we could just [buy in bulk], but there's no room to store it. It would be cool if we could actually get some of those earth-friendly products in every town. I would really love it if we could make all the festivals like [Rothbury]. Some of the artists like Dave Matthews that have a big enough draw, they can make a difference if they start asking for it. It would be good if it was made more mandatory by the artists.
JT: So I think that's it.
ST: Well what can we do, as artists, to help?
JT: Keep putting the message out there. You have a lot of influence with people. Especially, you deal with an audience that's not used to it, you're not preaching to the choir. So if you can find a way to get through to them without upsetting them...it doesn't have to be a left wing/right wing thing. We all have to live on this planet.
ST: I try to move them.
JT: And if you can demonstrate things...if you do a show with refillable water bottles and a five gallon jug, and people see that you're not throwing away water bottles, even if they don't know it, you're having an influence on them.
ST: I have a jug that we got from Montana. Maybe we could get some for the whole band and we could do that.
Let's hope that next time you see Susan, she's got the whole crew switched over to refillable bottles. But even if she doesn't, make sure you see her--she puts on a great show! Here she is, belting out "Hey Jude" at their Rothbury set.
It seems like all of the major U.S. festivals this year are making noise about their greening efforts. Foremost among them is Rothbury, one of a handful of new festivals to hit the scene this year. Rothbury is billing itself as the summer's greenest festival and is touting its lineup of "music, art, and action" with green themes including keynote speakers talking about energy independence.
But what does it mean when a festival claims to be "green?" Does it mean that the festival uses offsets? If so, are the offsets credible? And who decides what "credible" really is? But wait--what about biofuel? It's good, right, or why else would Willie Nelson be so, um, high on it? But if it's so good, why did Time magazine come out swinging against it a couple of weeks ago? And recycling is good, right, but what about composting? Is it better to use a compostable corn cup shipped from China or a petroleum-based disposable plastic cup made in Ohio? Does it make a difference if that compostable cup ends up in the landfill anyway because tipsy fans aren't necessarily the most socially responsible folks around? And can a festival that people have to drive to really be considered sustainable, or do events well-served by public transit like Lollapalooza and All Points West automatically win out?
It's all enough to make your head spin. At the end of the day, most concert-goers, no matter how much we love the planet, really want to be able to relax and enjoy the music. We don't want to leave feeling guilty, and we definitely don't want to be nagged to death by overzealous treehuggers. So what's a festival organizer to do? It's a difficult line--don't do enough, and you risk alienating some fans. Try too hard, and you find yourself bogged down in details like which type of toilet paper is most environmentally friendly instead of doing the fun stuff, like negotiating with Jack Johnson.
Enter Sarah Haynes of the Spitfire Agency. It's her job to help festival organizers ensure that they put on only the greenest of events. It's not an easy task, since the definition of a "green event" is written in sand. But she's had plenty of practice since she put on her first green event, the zero-waste We the Planet in 2003. Besides We the Planet, she's also worked on last year's Virgin Mobile Festival, helped green the National Biodiesel Conference, and guided the Red Hot Chili Peppers through the intricacies of producing a tree-free CD. For her latest trick, she's helping Rothbury's organizers make sure that they live up to their hype.
Sarah and I had a long discussion last week about what Rothbury means when it says it's going to be the greenest festival of the summer. "We're questioning everything," she told me. "We're making every effort to reduce waste in everything that we're doing, and we're looking to make decisions that benefit the local community." When I pressed her for examples, she offered up the festival's offsetting program. Pretty much every festival offsets, since it can be as easy as just writing a check and it's a relatively painless way to wrap yourself in green cred. But at Rothbury, Sarah says that "we're looking very hard to [structure our offsets] in a way that benefits the Michigan community. There are windmills and solar panels in the midwest, but we wanted to focus in on Michigan." She's putting so much time into finding the perfect offsetter that she still hasn't selected a firm to handle the process yet.
Encouraged to find someone else who spoke my language, I dug deeper. She'd mentioned that Rothbury would be running on biofuels. As a scientist with a mixed background in water, soil, and clean energy, I'm naturally skeptical whenever anyone in charge of greening an event starts spouting off about biodiesel or ethanol. Like everything else green, this is a nuanced area. Biofuels can be very green, but as Time points out, they can be worse--much worse--than just burning plain old Saudi Arabian sweet crude. So when I asked her whether biofuels were really such a good thing, considering the tremendous environmental damage caused by traditional corn and soy based biofuels, her response was right on. "This could be an article in itself," she started out, then she went on to explain that Rothbury had solicited only Michigan-based vendors of biodiesel and had spec'd that the biodiesel be made from waste oil. She'd found suitable sources, so the only remaining question was whether or not they could find enough of the good biodiesel to run all the generators needed to keep eight stages going for four days.
Reusing fryolater grease from McDonald's to run your giant, eight-stage stereo system is great, but what about cutting down on fan travel in personal cars, the real source of festival emissions, not to mention traffic and security headaches? To answer this question, Sarah referred me to Carrie Lombardi at Madison House Publicity. Carrie told me that Rothbury had contracted with Mr. Busdriver to get fans to the festival without their cars. And since the festival is only about 30 miles from two different public ferry terminals, organizers are, well, organizing buses from the docks to encourage fans coming from Milwaukee and Manitowac, WI, to leave their cars on the other side of the lake. Shuttle buses are good in principle, but as I found on my recent trip to Langerado, the devil is in the details.
So I did what I do best--I pushed for more details. Will patrons choosing the bus have to sit in the same traffic as people who drive in? Carrie assures me that public transit advocates will get to use a VIP entrance, so they won't get stuck in traffic. Score a point for the bus. What about food? If you don't drive in, you can't bring much food with you. Not only is festival food expensive, but by the end of a 4 day festival most people never want to see another overcooked, overpriced, over-hormoned chicken kebob again. Not to worry, Carrie assured me that the general store will not only be affordable, but it will be stocked with a variety of specials from local farmers every day. Having experienced $5 cans of Miller Lite at the "affordable" general store at Langerado, I asked for a definition. "People can go and do their daily shopping at the general store," Carrie explained. "You'll pay more than you would at Wal-Mart, but you won't pay more than Whole Foods. And we will be selling beer and water by the case." Score another point for the bus.
And what of the fans who do decide to drive? Will they have their emissions offset by the yet-to-be determined local offsetting program? According to Sarah, yes, but only through a voluntary offset program, which quickly led us to a side conversation about whether or not it would have been better to build the fan offsets into the ticket price. "We decided to offset ourselves and to put this on the side of individual responsibility," she told me. "It's the 'give a man to fish' vs. 'teach a man to fish' mentality." The festival's offering one-stop shopping for fans to offset their emissions when they purchase their checkouts, even offering a premium offset which includes donations for the local solar schools project that the festival is sponsoring. And have the offsets been popular? "The first few days [of ticket sales], [fan participation] was 20%," and although it has since dropped off somewhat, the offsets sold so far number "in the thousands."
As Sarah and I kept talking, and talking, and talking, I began to get the feeling that if Rothbury really does everything Sarah's talking about, it just might live up to its hype. There will be a low-cost, (though not necessarily free, a big disappointment) non-bottled source of water for folks inside the festival. There will be fresh local produce. There'll be 500 volunteers manning all of the festival area waste/composting/recycling stations around the clock, and to keep it simple, every single plastic cup, plate, and fork coming from a food vendor will be compostable. And most importantly, there will be a real focus on doing it right, not just as window dressing or marketing.
The danger with any greening effort, as we discussed, is compassion fatigue. It's so much easier to do the wrong thing. Even worse, once people start trying to do the right thing, they discover that there isn't any right thing. There are only hundreds of options, each with their own repercussions, and sometimes the side-effects of doing what seems right are worse than doing things the old-fashioned way. That's why people like Sarah stay in business--to handle the details, prevent green burnout, and let the festival organizers get on with their job. But without full support from the top, even the best consultants won't get anything done.
Rothbury's organizers have done two things right that give them a shot at living up to their hype. They seem to have given Sarah both the leeway and support she needs to make sure that this event leaves the smallest possible footprint on the planet. They've also set realistic but ambitious goals for themselves, so they have something to shoot for. If they can pull it off, this might end up being the summer's greenest festival, after all. But they'll still have some tough competition from some of the other big festivals. And that should be music to everyone's ears.
Seems my passion for all things green and musical is rubbing off on Grist editor Sarah van Schagen, who has reported on the greening of Bonnaroo, given us a good comparison chart of the greenest music festivals, and now has posted an interview with Aussie artist Xavier Rudd, following up on last year's heart-to-heart with fellow down-under heartthrob John Butler. What is it about the Aussies that they keep popping up on the green-music radar?
But Sarah's got more than just a passing fancy for musical men at work--she's got a long and growing list of green music stories, as well as a smattering of Hollywood (ick) coverage and an oh-so-cute affection for alliteration.
So since I've been unable to line up my own interview with the Beastie Boys, I'll point you to her interview with Mike D for another big green concert last year.
How do we compare as green-music bloggers? Like me, Sarah was disappointed in Sasquatch for its halfhearted greening efforts at last year's festival, but unlike me, Sarah was actually there. And while Sarah posted way, way more about Bonnaroo than I did, and got to have interviews with musicians thanks to her all-access press pass, I still think my post on the big bash was pretty good. More recently, we'veboth commented in passing on surfer-boy Jack Johnson. And while we have also both covered BioWillie, she picked up on his book while I picked on him (but just a little) for the questionably sustainable concept of BioDiesel. And neither ofus could make heads or tails of the Virgin Music Festival's decision to use Darryl Hannah as an official spokesflack. But while she gets interviews with fun musicians like Michael Franti and covers important, erm, news like the greening of Maroon 5 (only comment to that story: "such a shame they're terrible"), I dig out the real movers and shakers behind the green music scene with interviews likethese. But I totally whiffed it on the Grammys. Sorry, kids!
Bottom line? It's not a competition, obviously, although I bet I could drink her under the table (a table at Bonnaroo covered in organic beer served in compostable cups, natch). Instead, I'll just continue to clue you folks in whenever she posts another exceptional article, and be glad that someone else out there cares about getting to listen to music without having to feel all guilty about it. And Sarah, I expect to see you at a music festival or 10 this summer. Until then, I'll be watching you!
I was lucky enough to spend an hour with Kelly Viau, Bryan Birch, John Long, and Lucas Erickson for an interview earlier today. Kelly works for two separate companies that share several employees. Not only does she handle sponsorships for Cloud 9 Adventures, the production company behind JamCruise and Caribbean Holidaze, but she also works for Langerado, the rapidly growing music festival coming up next month at Big Cypress Seminole Reservation outside of Fort Lauderdale.
John, Bryan, and Lucas are the three founders of ZeroHero Events, an event greening service based in Fort Collins, CO, that is helping to green both Jam Cruise and Langerado. When they're not greening other people's festivals, they're dreaming up ways to make their own festival greener. Now in its 9th year, the Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair is expected to draw 10,000 people and 150 vendors this summer, and the ZeroHero crew is working hard to draw a few big-name bands to the event this September. Bryan handles the education component of ZeroHero's events, John is the renewable energy guru and founder of Blue Sun Biodiesel, and Lucas works to make sure mountains of waste aren't left behind.
An hour wasn't nearly enough time for me to ask all the pressing questions I had about how the team has tackled the big job of greening these festivals, but we gave it our best shot. Our conversation ranged from the best species of mustard to use for sustainable biodiesel production to the pressing need for condoms on a tiny tropical island off the coast of Honduras. Enjoy!
Jason Turgeon:Tell me about the relationship between ZeroHero and Kelly's work.
Bryan Birch: We came on almost a year ago to help reach new heights by improving to improve the practices of the cruise ship, which was a really interesting venture. We further developed a recycling program and focused on using more sustainable products. The Jam Cruise “Leaving a Positive Legacy Program” was a huge success this year. We offloaded three pallets of school supplies for school kids in Roatan and condoms for an AIDS clinic there working with Trojan as a sponsor. Kelly helped out with pulling sponsors like Trojan in. We're trying to develop a positive legacy with JamCruise. That's also an important part of the process for us in all our work. In festivals, there's an incredible wealth of talent and resources both from artists and passengers. There's a very conscious crowd in the scene, and everyone is always willing to help out.
Kelly Viau: The greening program on JamCruise has been part of the event since the first year, and is led by the vision of Ann Kenworthy. [note: the most recent event was JamCruise 6]. For a number of years we worked with Rock the Earth. This past year we made the move to bring in ZeroHero to bring some of these programs to the next level. It's something that's sort of developed over the last six years.
Lucas Erickson: It's an evolution, it's a process, where every year we try to continue to improve what's taken place next year.
JT: How does your choice of a particular ship or cruise line impact your ability to green the JamCruise event each year?
BB: This year with MSC, they valued us a customer so much that they opened up support for us for the 5 day cruise. They gave us a great deal of access, and we had a lot of support from the cruise staff.
JT: Do you think what you're doing is carrying over to other cruises after your event is done?
KV: I think it absolutely impacts the way they approach other cruises. This will be our fourth year with MSC. We're starting to see littlle changes throughout their other cruises. They're not huge steps for people like us that think about this every day, but they're big steps for an organization that doesn't. A little bit really goes a long way. We're now starting to see at least an open conversation on using biodiesel on cruise ships.
JT: Moving on to Langerado, now that you're in Big Cypress, what do you have planned from a green perspective?
BB: We have a set of messages to help improve the event. With each message there will be a program associated with it. The ZeroHero philosophy is to help create an event that becomes green by having aware attendees. Different programs that we're working with specifically are the Leave no Trace program working with Clean Vibes, and Sustainable Product Sourcing, or SPS. Every year it gets easier. One of the biggest challenges to event greening is to get everyone on the same page.
Renewable energy is a huge program aspect this year. Every light tower, every stage, and all the generators will be powered by biodiesel. It's available to artists as well. We're also involved in fueling at Lollapalooza.
JT: Do you see artists asking for access to biodiesel?
John Long: Definitely. For some artists its pretty important, but access has always been an issue. Each year access grows for artists to be able to fill up on biodiesel. It's a real challenge to find, but pump growth and retail locations are expanding. It's becoming a lot more viable for artists and attendees to expect biodiesel at the festivals.
JT: Will you use biodiesel blends or B100?
JL: Basically we've gotten b20 approved for everything--forklifts, light towers, generators. Some of the artists are very interested in running b100 or something in between for their tour buses.
LE: We'll also be offsetting all the carbon emissions from production as well as all the trucks and buses that artists are bringing. We're partnering with an organization called Trees, Water, & People to help with offsetting. And Langerado already has an ongoing partnership with Native Energy for ticket buyers to offset part of their emissions for travel to the festival.
JT: how does Trees, Water, & People work?
LE: They support self-sustaining tree nurseries in Central America. They employ local people to keep those going, and do a good job of making sure that all the trees that they plant are going to grow up to be a mature tree. They also have a another program that's really good called the stoves program. They go into these very low income communities in Honduras and Nicaragua. They've developed these stoves that take the place of the sort of open campfires that people were cooking over in their houses. A leading cause of death in women and children in these countries is respiratory health. They also offset carbon because they use so little wood to keep these going with little pieces of biomass like twigs and pine cones instead of going out and cutting down trees.
BB: One thing that Trees, Water, & People does is hook up their tree nurseries with their stove program. They have hardwoods and fruit trees which they count towards carbon offsetting, and they also have fast growing fuel wood softwoods that they do not. They won the Ashton Award for Climate Change. One thing that's important to us when we choose an offset program is that there is a lot of transparency. This improves social health as well as the environment.
LE: A very important part of that is the economic sustainability that they offer. We're very proud to be working with them.
JT: Do you tie each of these programs into the education component?
BB: That's right. We combine each one with the idea that simple is good. We'll do a series of simple messages that relate to the attendees that will tie into one of the programs at the event. It's a way that we can tie this into things that attendees can do.
LE: It all ties together into the ecovillage that we're setting up. We're bringing a lot of non-profits and for-profits that all have an ecological goal, plus some cool artwork and really interesting workshops.
KV: We call it Greenerado. There's going to be a stage in there, too. Were going to have the Spam Allstars, the School of Rock Allstars, Trevor Hall, Steel Train, Pete Francis of Dispatch, the Wood Brothers, and the Heavy Pets.
LE: The Wood Brothers are going to be there? That's awesome!
BB: We'll be spending a lot of time in that ecovillage. (laughing)
KV: Greenerado is in the heart of the festival, and metaphorically we do consider that to be the heart. What happens there rays out into the rest of the event.
BB: We'll do some positive legacy programs as well. We're still working out some details on what those will be. We'd like to leave a positive legacy with Big Cypress after Langerado is over. Through greening specifically, we'll try to foster that.
JT: Let me ask you to respond to some of the recent criticisms surrounding biodiesel and the use of monocultures and lots of chemical fertilizers to grow crops. Some people question whether or not that's the best way to reduce our use of fossil fuels.
BB: We feel that biofuels are imporant. They're an important transition to a sustainable economy. It's on a spectrum. There are some practices that are already there, and there are some that are along the way. That's where I feel that biofuels, including ethanol, are. There are a lot of biodiesel alternatives that are coming along right now.
JL: Blue sun biodiesel has been working on this for several years to find crops and methods that are fighting monoculture and high use of chemicals in agriculture as well as irrigation, since we're out in CO, essentially in a desert environment. We've been working for six years with canellina and canola, both plants in the mustard family, that are drought tolerant so that we can move away from soy and even worse, palm, where they are basically destroying the rain forest to grow these crops. It's going to take time, it's a transition now, and it's not perfect. We're using a lot of soy in the industry now, but it's better than using corn for ethanol.
The canola is a rotation crop for winter wheat. We're targeting winter wheat farmers in the western states to grow these mustard varieties that will improve the yield and reduce their water use. Some of the varieties will grow without any additional irrigation and with much less chemical input than are needed with corn and soy. Also, they're all non-GMO varieties that we're using.
LE: The future of algae is another feedstock that's very exciting.
JL: Algae is maybe 2-5 years out, but Blue Sun is very involved with several companies that are doing research on it. Jatropha is another very exciting crop, it's a dry land shrub that's native to Central America. You can grow it in Mexico and the oil can be converted to biodiesel and used here. It can't freeze, so we can't grow it in our backyard, but growing it in Mexico, it's closer to us from a transportation standpoint than the midwest. That crop gets 8-10 times more oil/acre than soybeans do. Some of the big oil companies are using it already.
JT: Like who?
JL: BP is growing plantations in Africa and India. There's not a whole lot of production in Central America yet. It takes 2 years for the plantation to mature. That 2 years is the only time that they need any irrigation. After that, the plant needs no water or chemical input, it grows like a weed. Basically it's a living fence, a six-foot high fence.
JT: Considering your new home is in Big Cypress, and the Big Cypress and Everglades areas are really suffering from a history of poor water management, are you going to focus at all on water at Langerado?
LE: As part of the Leaving a Positive Legacy Program, we will be trying to improve the everglades in some way. We're still working out how.
KV: We will do something positive with the greywater from the event. The uncontaminated water will be used for spraying on the roads to cut down on dust.
JT: I guess it's about time to wrap up. Before we finish, do you mind telling me who you're most excited about seeing at Langerado this year?
JL: I'm old school--I'm psyched for the Beastie Boys!
LE: I'm really excited about the Wood Brothers.
JT: I heard you mention them earlier. Who are they?
LE: It's Chris Wood from Martin, Medeski, and Wood, and his brother Oliver. I'm especially excited now that I know they'll be on the green stage. They're amazing, but not very many people know about them, because they're fairly new to the music scene.
KV: I'm most excited about the bands that I've never heard of, the unknowns and the up and comings. That's what I always like best, finding some new bands that I hadn't heard before and getting to know them.
JL: That's very diplomatic of you, Kelly.
LE: Kelly for President! (laughing)
And there you have it. I wish we'd had more time to spend on this interview, as this was a really knowledgeable bunch of people with some great ideas on greening events. Until next time, here's a little video of the soon-to-be-famous Wood Brothers doing their thing.
Craig Minowa is a busy man. When he's not working at his day job for the Organic Consumers Association, he's running his non-profit CD-packaging business and record label, Earthology and riding a tour bus to get to shows with his band, Cloud Cult. Long-time readers might remember that we linked to an interview of him over at the inestimable Grist about 9 months ago. But with his reputation as one of the greenest musicians around, I thought we should do another interview with him for our legions of fans (that's you!).
I caught up with Craig late last week over the phone from the very pleasant sounding farm in Northern Minnesota that serves as his Batcave, complete with geothermal heating and cooling and a recording studio built from recycled bits and pieces.
Jason Turgeon: Start out by telling me how you got into the intersection of music and environmentalism.
Craig Minowa: It started out academically. I was not sure whether to go into environmental science or music. I decided to go with environmental science. It seemed like a better way to get into the green scene. Eventually that evolved into Cloud Cult and Earthology.
JT: How did Earthology start?
CM: Earthology started as a method to find an environmentally friendly cd package in the early 90's. Out of necessity, I researched the industry and found out how we could replicate cd's ourselves in an environmentally friendly way. Eventually, we started doing it for other folks.
JT: Like who? CM: There have been a lot of people. Some of the names you might recognize are Arlo Guthrie and Built To Spill for their Idaho Green album. We also do consulting for labels like Universal and rights orgs like ASCAP.
JT: Does it pay for itself?
CM: Earthology is not a moneymaker. It was built as a non-profit.
JT: What makes a CD packaged by Earthology different from a normal jewel box?
CM: In the original days, we used strictly recycled jewel cases that were donated by the thousands, collected from college campuses and individuals. People would buy CD's and put them in CD booklets and were looking for something to do with the jewel cases. We reused the ones that we could. The materials are all PVC and polycarbonate, so the unusable ones went to a landfill.
Then we branched off into looking for earth-friendly shrinkwrap. We now use LDPE, but we're branching off into corn-based cellulose. CD's in general are gradually getting into post-consumer waste. All of our printed products use vegetable based inks. More and more bands are interested in our 100% postconsumer recycled paper CD cases, although from a strictly ecological standpoint it's better to reuse a plastic case than use recycled paper. Pretty much the only thing that isn't environmentally friendly is the disc itself, which we're hoping will someday change.
JT: What else sets Earthology apart?
CM: Earthology itself is based on a farm, heated and cooled by geothermal waste. We also do things like figure out the amount of CO2 created by manufacturing and transport, etc., then we offset everything. And we plant 10 trees for every 1000 units sold.
JT: That must be a lot of trees. Do you have any idea how many?
CM: (laughing) It's a small forest by now. The trees are planted all over. We started at Earthology, planting the trees by ourselves, and then we moved into using non-profits like American Forests. It's tough to say how many we're responsible for, because we plant them in different areas and not all of the trees will survive.
JT: You also do work for the Organic Consumers Association. Tell me about your day job.
CM: I analyze new studies in different journals and put that into an easy to digest format for the common Joe and Jane out there. I focus on sustainable agriculture.
JT: And you're also a singer-songwriter with Cloud Cult. You must have a very patient boss to let you juggle all of this.
CM: Everything that I do is over the laptop and cell phone. On tour, I just do it in the van. We travel 6-8 hours a day between shows. It does mean that I don't get to rest as much in the van as I'd like.
JT: Tell me about the other members of the band. Have they been with you since the beginning, or is it a new group of people for each album and tour?
CM: A couple have stayed since the beginning, but we have had multiple bassists and violin players. The cello player and painters have been with us for a long time. The painters have been integrating themselves more musically, but predominantly focus on getting that piece of artwork finished in that 75 minute set. We auction off the art at the end of each set.
JT: You do a lot of driving. I know you use biodiesel, but there's a growing debate around the production of biofuels. What are your thoughts on this?
CM: Biodiesel is an ongoing study of its own. As we shift more towards biofuels, there is more of a debate about the agriculture behind biodiesel. With anything environmental, there is a constant struggle to make things better and making mistakes. It's the same thing with shows. You do a show, you try to do as much to make it environmentally friendly as possible, but 90% of the clubs don't have recycling.
JT: Have you been able to talk venues into doing more?
CM: It's starting to get to the point where we have a draw and get a bit more respect, but for the most part clubs don't want us telling them how to manage their venue.
JT: Are you the only one interested in green, or are the other members of the band involved?
CM: Connie, one of the painters, is my wife. For her day job, she does children's environmental health issues for indigenous people, so she's involved. The rest of the band are concerned about the environment, but not as much as we are.
JT: You do a lot of interviews. What's one thing you wish the media would discuss with you that they don't?
CM: There's still a stigma about being an environmental musician. When people read about it or hear about it, they assume you're a hippie jamband or going to be all preachy. It's actually the opposite. You can try an live your life environmentally and still be an average joe who's not wearing patchoulie. It's tiring to see reviewers who assume that we have 20-minute jams and who haven't listened to the cd. It's nice to see that start to change. Our audience is kind of the college indie-rock crowd, a lot of urban inner-city youth who were kind of cynical about what we were doing. They liked the music but they didn't care about the green stuff. That's changing, too.
JT: You say your audience is mostly urban inner-city college kids. Do you get any crossover into hip hop?
CM: We don't get much of the hip-hop audience. We do have a good variety of people coming to our shows, though. We have a lot of older people who end up coming to shows, sometimes full families. That seems to stem from the messaging behind the music. Connie and I lost our 2-year old son a few years ago. A lot of the music has stemmed from that grieving process. I think people with kids relate more to that.
JT: Filesharing is the most environmentally friendly way to distribute music. Pro or con?
CM: Digital music is the future of music and should be the future. In the early years we didn't mind the file-sharing. It's gotten to the point where we really feel it hit your pocketbook. Our last album release leaked about a month before it came out. It cost us thousands and thousands of dollars.
JT: Do you see it made up in tour revenues and t-shirts?
CM: Partially, but it's hard to say. It's my philosophy that if you listen to it a lot and you really like it, you should pay for it, but if you're just discovering it for the first time it's a good way to spread the word.
JT: What about the various proposals that have been floated to have voluntary music licensing for broadband users?
CM: I haven't heard of those. [JT describes the system.] That sounds interesting. It could work.
That wraps up the interview. Here's a very non-jamband-like video that clocks in at a mere 3:19 for the uninitiated.
Looking over at the upcoming concert list on the right, I see Willie Nelson's name. One of the bigger regrets of my concert career is that I haven't seen him yet. I had hoped to at Bonaroo '04, but he pulled out due to health problems (although he was ably replaced by Steve Winwood, who was frankly stunning).
It's pretty hard not to like Willie. Between the pot smoking, the tax dodging, the charitable concerts, and the forward thinking views he presents to a fan base that isn't known for being so forward thinking, he represents a complex human face in a sea of two-dimensional acts. I've written before about FarmAid's sustainable food practices and how they could and should be a model for all other large festivals. He's also well-known for his love of biodiesel, and over the last couple of years he's gone and started his own line of the stuff, under the brand name Biowillie. He's even starting Willie's Place, a truck stop in Texas, to sell the stuff.
Biodiesel, ethanol, and other biofuels shouldn't be viewed as any kind of a panacea, no matter what Willie tells you. They don't do a thing to improve vehicle efficiency, they're typically mixed with fossil fuels, they usually rely on petroleum-based fertilizer, they do nothing to break the bounds of a continued corporate monoculture, and they are linked to significant water quality issues (PDF link). But all that aside, supporting biofuels as one piece of the solution to fixing our energy woes is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. I'd rather see a tour bus running on biofuels and supporting family farmers than a tour bus running on fossil fuels and supporting ExxonMobil.
For some reason, I can't get YouTube to embed on this post, but here's a clip of Willie on NPR talking about the reasons he got into biodiesel (his wife talked him into it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7LlsahCiLs
