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Hot Buttered Rum: This Band Has Gone Green |
Daniel Steinberg, Community Brand Builder
 Hot Buttered Rum formed in 1999 during a month-long backcountry trip along the John Muir Trail in California as five young men traveled with guitars, banjos and mandolins strapped to their backpacks. The San Francisco-based band went on to create an acoustic sound that mixes rock and bluegrass, while simultaneously promoting the biofuel renaissance. In 2003, they began touring the country on recycled vegetable oil and biodiesel. Last year, the band was nominated for a "Defender of the Earth" award from Rock the Earth, a non-profit organization that is creating partnerships between the music industry and the environmental movement. (Other nominees included Michael Franti, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.)
During their fall East Coast tour, Equal Exchange's Daniel Steinberg caught up with Zac Mathews, who writes songs, provides vocals and plays mandolin for Hot Buttered Rum. (And he's a fan of the Equal Exchange Organic Mint Chocolate bar.)
The two discussed the importance of Fair Trade and the emergence of a green economy - the rapidly growing billion-dollar sector that includes renewable energy sources, organic produce and products, green buildings and sustainable fuels. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation:
Equal Exchange: In the song "Golden Days" you sing, "Better days will be reality when the gold has turned to green." What was the inspiration for this song?
Zac: I recently read the book Plan B 2.0 by Lester Brown, the founder of the Earth Policy Institute. Brown analyzes the life-sustaining, global systems of food, energy and water, and demonstrates that our rapidly expanding population puts us on a crash course with the planet’s ability to sustain us. Clearly, major changes are necessary to avoid environmental catastrophe, yet the status quo continues.
Greed is largely to blame for the resistance to change. For example, wealthy oil corporations cashing in heavily on rising oil prices lobby the government to continue to support big oil subsidies. I often wonder how our country can embrace the "green revolution" and create sustainable systems within the context of free market capitalism. "Golden Days" is a song about shifting our priorities away from monetary wealth (gold) to a more lasting wealth of sustainable (green) living.
The second half of Plan B offers examples of changes that are already well underway in different parts of the world – offshore wind farms in Denmark, sustainable fish farms in Japan fed with algae grown from sewage, etc. It feels like we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift away from the throw-away economy. As innovative, sustainable business models show promise to be highly profitable, our country is quickly embracing the transition. After I wrote the song's chorus, "we need the gold to turn to green," I heard a discussion on NPR about the new green economy and the idea that the "green will turn to gold." There is no reason that sustainability and profitability cannot stand together.
Equal Exchange: How does buying Fair Trade coffee help support a more sustainable future?
Zac: We don't live in a bubble. If you drink a cup of coffee or eat, consume or buy any product, many hands have already touched this product. Some may have put love into it; others may have suffered because of it. The whole idea behind Fair Trade is to acknowledge the people who put so much hard work into a product and to ensure that they are not taken advantage of financially or otherwise. It is similar to your own business model where the top person at Equal Exchange can only receive four times the salary of the person at the bottom of the pay scale. This is also the concept behind Fair Trade: you compensate a person rather than make a huge profit on their behalf - you share the wealth.
Equal Exchange: Hot Buttered Rum is getting more recognition for having a green business model. The band helped promote the biofuel renaissance and you even have a Green Section on your website which includes a biofuels learning center. Why is that?
Zac: Appreciation for the natural world has always been an important part of our music. We are always looking for ways to eliminate any negative environmental impacts of our business. As a touring band traveling close to 100,000 miles a year, our largest environmental impact is our fuel usage. By outfitting our tour bus with a special two-tank waste vegetable oil / biodiesel fuel system we were able to greatly reduce our carbon emissions. As our music career has grown, so too has our public visibility. Through our songwriting and hands-on biofuel workshops, we are able to educate people and to encourage sustainable business and lifestyle practices.
From touring in an earth-friendly bus to writing song lyrics about a green economy, the members of Hot Buttered Rum are dedicated to reaching out to their audience on the importance of sustainability. You can learn more about the band and listen to clips from their new album, "Live in the Northeast" at their website: www.hotbutteredrum.net
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