I Want To Ride My Bicycle

Musicians Go Green, Two Wheels At A Time

Musicians talk a lot about "going green" and saving our environment, but the sad fact is that the music business itself - from recording and touring to the physical manufacture of CDs and records - is still firmly stuck in wasteful, resource-intensive models.

But lately some musicians have been exploring alternative, greener means to these same ends, from all-digital labels to recycled product packaging and more. And recently a spate of music makers have embraced the humble bicycle as the latest tool in the ongoing effort to "green" the music biz.

David Byrne:

Last year the ever-innovative David Byrne got the ball rolling with a book based on an addictive series of blog posts written during his recent North American and European tours. The Bicycle Diaries documents Byrne's penchant for toting folding bikes along with the usual touring compliment of guitars, drums, amps, & etc. An avid cyclist at home in New York, Byrne and his band used their bikes to conduct intimate, two-wheeled explorations of the cities they were performing in - often with surprising results.

Byrne draws on art, history, architecture and contemporary politics to weave a dense, associative commentary on the cities he visits. Whether touring local attractions, regional art museums or the abandoned ruins of the industrial age and the new ghostowns of the 21st century (and Byrne seems to be especially fascinated by these last two); Byrne's narrative offers up an extended meditation on how we live in and are shaped by our urban spaces - as well as a cyclist's eye view of some of the world's great cities.

Ben Sollee:

But Byrne isn't the only musician out there on two wheels - Kentucy-based cellist Ben Sollee, who records on the Sub-Pop label, ups the ante considerably by touring all over the U.S. exclusively by bicycle.

"I haven't always been a big cyclist," Sollee explains. "As a kid I spent a lot of time cruising around the neighborhood, exploring back roads, and escaping whatever it is that many kids feel the need to escape? But one day, after seeing an advertisement for Xtracycle cargo bikes on Current TV, the idea that I could tour regionally by bicycle hit me. Of course, by today's standards of professional music touring it was a joke... but I saw it as a beautiful limitation. It was a tool to re-humanize the pace of my touring, make it more community oriented and, hopefully, more sustainable."

So far Sollee, along with tour manager Katie Benson and filmmaker/activist Marty Benson has logged two pedal-powered tours in 2009. The first took them from Sollee's hometown of Lexington, KY to last year's Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, TN - a journey of almost 200 miles. And the second, with the addition of percussionist Jordan Ellis, was a chilly December ride down the East Coast Greenway from Wilmington, NC to Jacksonville, FL, logging over 300 miles.

But those were just warm-ups for Sollee's next ride, the "first ever, trans-American, all pedal-powered music tour," scheduled to take place this August all the way into November. "The routing is from San Diego, CA to Boston, MA with performances at traditional venues, schools, and festivals," Solee explains. "We are using some trains to make the tour a little more financially sustainable for us (three weeks riding through the Rockies would be pretty devastating on the ol' pocket book)."

Sollee stresses what it means to tour by bike from a working musician's perspective. "It's not about trying to be 'green' - whatever that means these days - and saving the environment," he says. "It's about pace of life and re-localizing. I've spent nearly ten years on the road now and the expectations of the industry are enormous. When you get a call the night before to play late-night TV the next day on the other side of the country you do it. If there's a good money gig but it's 300 miles the other way, you do it."

"But not if you're on a bicycle. It's a beautiful limitation, because all the reasons you once thought of to avoid these small towns go out the window and the communities become really valuable to us. And Katie, Marty and myself really hope that these tours inspire other folks to use this tool, the bicycle, to discover their local places. But people need infrastructure (i.e. bike paths and lanes, parking places, respect from other vehicles, etc...) to safely and efficiently use bicycles. That's another reason we're riding. To show we're the weak links are."

As with his previous tours, Sollee will be partnering with Oxfam America and also teaming up with the Adventure Cycling Association to raise awareness about their efforts to build a national bike route system. And while on previous tours Ben's preferred ride was "a trusty Xtracycle Radish," this time he's strapping his cello to a Surly Big Dummy. "For me, with my cello and other equipment, I like having it all in one place," he explains. But he's quick to add "you don't have to have a super special bike to tour like this. You could just get some panniers and a trailer and hit the road."

Mr. Something Something:

Another group that's using pedal power in new ways is Canada's Mr. Something Something. When playing live, the Toronto-based quintet powers its unique blend of jazz and Afrobeat with an even more unique device they call The Soundcycle.

"The soundcycle is a set-up where up to ten bikes are hooked up to bicycle trainers," explains vocalist Johan Hultqvist. "The back wheel of each bike drives a dynamo creating a current, and each bike can produce about 200 watts. The energy generated is funneled into an inverter that turns direct current into alternating current before the power is stored in a bank of batteries."

That energy is used to run Mr. Something Something's onstage equipment - which can be a pretty power-thirsty proposition when the band bulks out to include their "extended family" of horn players, sometimes doubling the band's size.

"Thanks to the batteries," Hultqvist continues, "the energy supply is steady and when our energy demands are low (the louder we play and the bigger the show the more energy we consume) we store excess power in the batteries. If a bunch of audience members get off their bikes at once we can rely on the batteries so that the music doesn't stop abruptly."

And though it takes 5 - 10 volunteers to power the Soundcycle, Mr. Something Something is seldom short of volunteers.
"Audiences love it," says Hultqvist. "The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Most of the time, people bike for 10-15 minutes but every once in a while some hardcore cyclist guy in spandex get up and pedals away uninterrupted for two hours.

In line with Mr. Something Something's ideal of "dance floor activism," the Soundcycle not only provides sustainable, green energy to power the band's live sets, but gets the audience actively involved and inspired as well.

"People will show up and ask us questions about the system and then they get ideas about how to do it better or how to harness power in other ways," Says Hultqvist. "The goal behind the SoundCycle is to encourage reflection on the things we take for granted, like having deceptively cheap electricity at the flick of a switch. To me, the bicycle is becoming a symbol for a quiet revolution, for a shift toward self-propelled individuals and communities."