Sound ideas
Like scores of other musicians, mewithoutYou and Adrienne Young help clean up the music industry
by Laura Leebove

MewithoutYou: Philadelphia-based band gives the finger to the petroleum industry by filing up on veggie oil

As a gas prices skyrocket, so does the cost of a band's cross-country tour — unless you're mewithoutYou, a band that uses vegetable oil to fuel its bus. The Philadelphia-based post-hardcore group, currently on tour with Piebald (who also tour on veggie oil), saves thousands of dollars in their '70s-built MCI-8 bus.
In a phone interview, guitarist Mike Weiss says it was his brother Aaron's idea. Aaron, mewithoutYou's singer, researched the process and learned that the band's diesel-fueled bus could be converted to run on grease. "It didn't take long before he found someone that had a whole [conversion] kit ready for sale," Mike says.

A veggie-powered bus has two tanks — one for diesel fuel and a second for grease. Mike says the bus still has access to the diesel tank, in case there's no vegetable oil available or if the bus can't get enough power from it. "We don't use nearly a fraction of the diesel we used to," he says. The band usually gets the veggie oil from "nice restaurants" because they tend to change their grease frequently.

In addition to using a cleaner and greener source of energy on tour, Mike says Aaron is always thinking of "every little detail" when it comes to minimizing waste and energy usage, which extends to the band's potlucks they have with their fans before shows. A post on mewithoutYou's MySpace blog — which Mike credited to Aaron — encourages fans to bring homemade food instead of pre-packaged items, and go to local businesses for possible free leftovers. The post also suggests that fans bring their own dishes and silverware to cut down on waste. "[Aaron] definitely has a very big heart for the environment," Mike says.

Part of why musicians are connected to the environment, Mike says, is because those who make a living by touring are heavily involved in the petroleum industry as consumers. "We have a lot of potential to do a lot of damage to the environment with how much we travel," he says. But, the emissions from a grease-powered vehicle are much cleaner than those coming from oil or diesel fuel. "To really minimize your involvement with [the petroleum industry] gives you a little more peace of mind," Mike says. "It just says we don't have to be dependent on all the things you're doing to get this stuff."

Adrienne Young: The folk musician gets active at the 'roots' of the genetically modified food problem
As a teenager, folk musician Adrienne Young learned about the significant differences between eating processed food and eating food grown close to home. Young befriended a family that owns a farm, and the time she spent helping them made eating "sort of a celebration," she says in a phone interview. "Preparing [the food] was just a very simple, yet sacred, experience that I hadn't known as a child," she says.

Now in her 30s, Young is advocating locally grown and sustainable agriculture, in part through the release of her 2007 album, Room to Grow (AddieBelle). A portion of each record sold will go to the Save A Seed fund, which Young created with nonprofit organizations the FoodRoutes Network and the American Community Gardening Association. Young says the money will be used to provide non-genetically modified seeds to community gardens across North America.

Since 2004 Young has been a spokeswoman for the FoodRoutes Network, which aims to aid organizations in rebuilding local, community-based food systems, according to foodroutes.org. Young says it's a good resource to find locally grown food and learn how to help your community.

Young is currently in the planning stages of a fall tour with help from organization Buy Fresh Buy Local and each of the 49 FoodRoutes chapters. Along with her performances, each tour stop will offer sustainable living workshops and local sponsors in each community. "Preserving cultural genetics and agricultural heritage is the key to true security and self-reliance," she says.

Young says her music has influenced her activism because she feels at peace in nature and wants to communicate those feelings through her music. "In nature I feel like I can remember who I am and so I want to try to offer that through my music to people," Young says. "The activism is just a desire to transmit those images. It's all kind of tied in together."