Pop Musician Ditches the Van for a Bicycle-Based Tour

by Jim Motavalli
You could say singer-songwriter Ben Sollee likes a slower pace of life. Sollee’s music on two recent albums is modern pop, but it’s spare, melodic and played on acoustic instruments–with his expressive cello up front. And if the show you happened to catch started late, it’s not because the band’s van broke down on the highway–Sollee and his percussionist travel by bicycle. Call it the Ditching the Van tour, because they do.
"Going green" for many bands means fueling the vehicles with biodiesel and playing on solar stages. Sollee is from Kentucky, where producing energy often means the environmental disaster known as mountaintop removal mining (a theme that runs through his second album, Dear Companion). That would be reason enough to park the gas-guzzling van, but the bicycle-based tour that begins August 18 is more about thinking and acting locally than it is about reducing carbon footprints.
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The tour starts in San Diego at a combined sushi bar and art gallery, and winds its way through southern California before heading east for stops in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. It’s not about big venues–stops include the Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Festival in Kempton, Pennsylvania, Biller’s Bikes in Havre de Grace, Maryland, the Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C., and the Tour da Arts in Santa Monica, California.
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Read more: https://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/cars-transportation/ben-sollee-bicycle-tour-460810
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