Ben Sollee, Marty, Katie and Jordon kicked off their tour across the United States, playing shows, seeing fans, friends and family and “re-humanizing” the musical experience. Ride on!
This tour is not about going “green,” even though it will have a smaller over all carbon footprint than a more traditional tour by van. Instead, its about re-humanizing the pace of the road. The bicycles provide the limitation on a local level. However, we have to be real. I have a family and we all have bills to pay so we can’t afford for this tour to be a musical vacation by bicycle. And, it’s important to us to demonstrate that biking to our business can be financially sustainable. We want biking to be a compelling choice to other businesses and artists. So, through some trial and error we’ve discovered a few things.
Our good friend and Cellist Ben Sollee is on his way to the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee this week while riding his Xtracycle RADISH and pulling his Cello along side him through the streets of Kentucky to Bonnarro!
Teaming up with OxFam, Topo Ranch and other like minded sponsors, Ben is riding his Radish Xtracycle cargo bicycle on the 10-day music tour to promote OxFam’s efforts to reduce global poverty.
His bike music tour begins on June 4th - and as he makes his way towards Tennessee he’s stopping at eight different locations to play - starting in Kentucky and ending in Tennessee on June 11th.
Ben was named one of National Public Radio’s Top 10 Unknown artists in 2007 and has made a name for himself over the last few years drawing on his Kentucky roots. NPR described his first album, Learning to Bend, as “an inspired collection of acoustic, folk and jazz-flavored songs, filled with hope and the earnest belief that the world is good”.
We feel pretty proud here at the old XC headquarters - that he’s out there riding one of our own. Check him out…
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