SSF is excited to be launching the latest issue of SASS Magazine next week; it's all about sustainability and music, and we can't wait to get it out there, so here's a little sneak peek.
Kelley Stoltz, an artist on SubPop Records, made waves in the music industry earlier this year by recording his new album, Below the Branches, using 100% renewable energy. He teamed up with Green-e and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to purchase enough renewable energy credits (RECs) to offset the energy he used to produce his record, a music industry first. We wanted to find out more, so we tracked him down for a chat. The full interview will appear next week in SSF's online publication, SASS Magazine.
SASS Magazine: What gave you the idea to take your gig as a musician and put an eco-friendly twist on it?
Kelley Stoltz: I’d always been conscious of throwing away my trash; I was never a litter bug and was always a recycler. I’ve used plenty of Styrofoam cups for coffee to go and always felt a tinge of guilt about it, so I started just bringing my own along. I was definitely not the most environmentally-aware person growing up, but going to from Michigan to California definitely opened my eyes to different things. I learned that it’s important to care about the world, in a way that isn’t taught in school; if your parents aren’t into it, it’s not always a big issue. Basically, I really started absorbing some new ideas when I moved to California. I’m good buddies with Sarah (Krasley, who works for the Center for Resource Solutions, which oversees the Green-e program), so she and I started talking about it, and, really, I was able to help her live one of her dreams, which is to introduce the ideas of green energy and energy efficiency to musicians, the music industry, recording, and any of the electronic processes, really, that we use. She was the main push behind it. After we talked about what it would take to make it happen, the financial commitment was so little over the 2.5 years or so that I was recording; I record at home, so I have a big tape machine, I have about three amplifiers, and a computer that I use for mixing, and I’ve got all these things on all day long: I start recording at noon and I shut ‘em off at 10 at night. The option to buy RECs was just very easy. It was a matter of doing a little math and figuring out how much we were using. It was really a painless operation.
Want to find out more? Come back next week to read the entire interview.