The Green Tour
As a musician I try to run my musical enterprise as green as possible. I started out with making the cover of my debut album out of 100% recycled paper and having it printed with an ecofriendly waterless offset printing technique. Next I came up with bandshirts made of bio-cotton and bamboo. I went even further when I came up with the idea of playing shows on green energy. In the music world, venue and festival shows cost a lot of power. Why not use solar and wind energy instead of cole or nuclear generated power? And while we're at it, can't the crowd deliver some as well?
That's how the Green Tour was born. A tour from festival to festival with a mobile stage, transported by a truck on bio fuel, using nothing but energy from the sun, the wind and the crowd.
I wrote down the concept and started submitting it to several possible collaborating companies. At that time I had already met sustainability artist Erik Groen who creates installations and other creative stuff out of recycled solar panels and such. We hooked up and he got us the solar panels, windmill and bicycle installations used by the crowd. Peter van der Sterre from transportation company VDS Logistics went nuts on the idea and offered his truck on bio-fuel. Audio company Holland Audio Service also jumped right on to the project and delivered an energy sufficient soundsystem that was adjusted to the power output of Erik Groen's material. The stage itself and the LED lights we're rented local per show.
Eventhough this concept was quite unique and the organisation of a green gig quite a challenge, my manager Martijn Crama and booker Ilana Goldstoff managed to get us some gigs. In 2010 we did several bandgigs learning and developping the stage everytime we played. We concluded the tour at the Lowlands festival on the special green area Llowlab, which was a dream come true.
The Green Tour turned out to be a great chance of entertaining and inspiring people in a green way at the same time. And for me personally, it satisfied me in my aim for running my musical enterprise in harmony with the world around.
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