"I feel like I've started this dance - dancing one foot in the redrock and rivers and biking and meeting rural folks and everyday folks everywhere, and one foot in the urban land, on the computer, paying the cell phone bill, updating the blog...
I want to get more and more on the first foot, less on the last"
Using a Human-Powered Amplifier sponsored and engineered by Rock The Bike, Shake Your Peace is rocking shows this month in Utah. The band's 700 mile bicycle-based tour began April 2nd in Salt Lake City, and includes stops at college towns, cities, and mountain towns, not to mention hot springs. Lead singer and guitarist Gabe Dominguez grew up in Utah and feels an ongoing connection to the youth in the state. He tours by bicycle to inspire a new generation about their environmental choices, and to increase the magic of his tour.
There's been a lot of attention lately around the greening of rock tours. Often times this takes the form of bands and promoters buying carbon offsets to mitigate the tour buses and electricity consumed at the show. But these offsets do little to change the mindset of the fans attending the concert. Thousands of people still drive to these shows, park in sweltering lots, rock out, and then drive home.
Shake Your Peace takes a very different tack with their bicycle 'caravan' approach, and smaller shows in venues closer to the towns of the tour, making their shows eminently bikeable or walkable. And their amplification system is completely human powered , allowing the band to tread lightly while still entertaining many thousands of fans across the state.
Gabe Dominguez is so jazzed about the human-powered, bicycle-based tour, that he plans to collaborate with Rock The Bike on a Bicycle Music Festival, to create a series of ongoing outdoor venues for human powered music, and bring the flavor of his Utah tour back to the Bay Area and beyond.