Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Watts The Big Idea? LIME CORDIALE’s Biggest Experiment Yet

Transcript

Watts The Big Idea? LIME CORDIALE’s Biggest Experiment Yet · HEAVY Music Interviews

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Oli from Lime Cordial and you're listening
0:03
Speaker 1: to Heavy. We've got a festival completely off grid out
0:06
Speaker 1: of Adelaide coming up on April eighteenth, and you can
0:09
Speaker 1: get your tickets at limegreenfest dot com.
0:13
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dollie.
0:14
Speaker 3: I'll let you get back to Well, you've got busy schedule,
0:17
Speaker 3: I imagine with everything.
0:19
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, not today.
0:21
Speaker 4: I'm chilling out today, so yeah.
0:23
Speaker 2: Nice, nice.
0:24
Speaker 3: I've had a couple of backbacks this morning, so it's
0:26
Speaker 3: you're the last one for the day.
0:27
Speaker 2: So I was like, I can kick back now.
0:31
Speaker 3: The absolutely all right, Well, thank you so much to
0:33
Speaker 3: plug my phone and do all that before too.
0:36
Speaker 2: So I've got Ollie.
0:37
Speaker 4: Here is it you do?
0:38
Speaker 1: Yeah?
0:39
Speaker 2: Ali, Ali from Heavy? How are we very well?
0:41
Speaker 4: How are you?
0:42
Speaker 2: Yeah?
0:42
Speaker 3: Not too bad, not too bad. Enjoying the change in
0:45
Speaker 3: the weather. It's not so ghastly hot today. It's raining
0:49
Speaker 3: and windy, so for about the lovely land of Australia.
0:53
Speaker 2: Are you guys residing here?
0:55
Speaker 1: I'm I'm five hours north of Sydney on the on
0:58
Speaker 1: the mid North Coast, so okay, it's pretty perfect here today.
1:02
Speaker 4: Are you in Sydney?
1:03
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I'm on final of course I'm
1:05
Speaker 2: run on the border. So ah right, yeah it's a
1:08
Speaker 2: little bit.
1:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, look probably about four or five hours north of you.
1:11
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's been rating the last two days. It's
1:15
Speaker 3: been pretty mild weather actually.
1:18
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, if we were if we were farmers,
1:20
Speaker 1: we'd say much needed.
1:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is true.
1:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:26
Speaker 3: So yeah, well, you guys got some exciting stuff coming
1:29
Speaker 3: up for the band, I believe.
1:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, some great stuff. Not not too many shows,
1:38
Speaker 1: but yeah, one that we're concentrating on the most and
1:42
Speaker 1: right now in and out of recording, so enjoying.
1:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, exciting.
1:47
Speaker 3: So that's so when you for the is a full
1:50
Speaker 3: album that you guys are looking to put out.
1:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I really been speaking about it because we've
1:56
Speaker 1: just been in the recording mode. But yeah, yeah, like
2:01
Speaker 1: really putting the finishing touches on album number four for us,
2:05
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy to think about. It's been
2:09
Speaker 1: like maybe our smoothest hasn't been like completely smooth. We're
2:14
Speaker 1: definitely not people to get into the recording studio and
2:17
Speaker 1: do it like in three weeks.
2:19
Speaker 4: It's like it takes us like a year.
2:21
Speaker 1: But previously, like it's been you know, two or three
2:26
Speaker 1: years or something. So maybe we're getting slightly quicker. We're
2:30
Speaker 1: just have three doing things and yeah, taking our bloody
2:34
Speaker 1: bloody time.
2:35
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, no, that's that's exciting. So you've the lime
2:39
Speaker 3: the Lime Green festivals. What you guys have got coming up?
2:42
Speaker 3: Tell me a bit what can we look for?
2:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, lime Green is the project we've been working
2:51
Speaker 1: on because we've kind of I guess we came out
2:55
Speaker 1: of COVID and touring kicked back in and we had
3:00
Speaker 1: been like working on this farm on the mid North
3:02
Speaker 1: Coast and getting really honed in on like some of
3:07
Speaker 1: these farming practices that we were learning about in regenerative agriculture,
3:12
Speaker 1: and we were, yeah, just becoming domesticated, localized. And then
3:18
Speaker 1: when we hit the road again, we needed to make
3:22
Speaker 1: up for all this lost time, and we suddenly are
3:25
Speaker 1: flying around the world and we were driving around on
3:27
Speaker 1: these big diesel buses and we kind of went, hey,
3:31
Speaker 1: what the hell, you know, like we were making sure
3:33
Speaker 1: we weren't using the tractor too much because we were
3:35
Speaker 1: burning diesel, you know, and this definitely isn't a big
3:39
Speaker 1: farm at all. So yeah, like now we're just on
3:43
Speaker 1: a plane to the other side of the world. So
3:45
Speaker 1: we just felt like massive hypocrites. And since then we've
3:50
Speaker 1: been on this journey to see what we could do
3:53
Speaker 1: to change the industry and to tour better.
3:57
Speaker 4: At first, we.
3:58
Speaker 1: Were wondering whether we could just go completely carbon neutral
4:03
Speaker 1: and not have any emissions, and then we realize, oh,
4:06
Speaker 1: that's like near impossible in this industry if you want
4:10
Speaker 1: to tour and do anything unless you're you know, just
4:13
Speaker 1: pumping thousands and thousands of dollars into offsetting. And that's
4:18
Speaker 1: a whole nother controversial story in itself, but yeah, we
4:23
Speaker 1: just you know, then we said, well, should we stop touring?
4:26
Speaker 1: And we've been talking to people all over the world
4:29
Speaker 1: in different areas of the climate movement, and I think
4:34
Speaker 1: the answer that we've come to and we've asked everyone's advice,
4:37
Speaker 1: is it's better to kind of look at how you
4:40
Speaker 1: can change things than just stopping and you know, sitting
4:44
Speaker 1: on your couch and doing nothing. You know, we all
4:46
Speaker 1: have a footprint at the end of the day. And like,
4:49
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess I could write songs and not
4:53
Speaker 1: record them, and yeah, I don't know how you'd have
4:57
Speaker 1: absolutely zero emissions, But I think we can do things better.
5:01
Speaker 1: I think everyone in every industry and every workplace and
5:05
Speaker 1: every school can look at where they are and sort
5:09
Speaker 1: of analyze and sort of write up a climate statement
5:14
Speaker 1: of some sort. And I think the first way of
5:18
Speaker 1: doing that is looking at your flaws, yeah, admitting, admitting
5:22
Speaker 1: your flaws, and then and seeing how you can how
5:24
Speaker 1: you can change things.
5:26
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, So how how have you then try inspired
5:30
Speaker 3: that into what you guys are doing as a band
5:33
Speaker 3: moving forward?
5:34
Speaker 4: Yeah.
5:35
Speaker 1: Well, there's been a few things that have been quite
5:38
Speaker 1: successful without touring. One of them is putting like a
5:43
Speaker 1: dollar from every ticket to something that we believe in
5:46
Speaker 1: some cause. And I think it's really important when a
5:48
Speaker 1: lot of you know, a lot of bands do this.
5:50
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to choose something that you
5:53
Speaker 1: believe in that like you connect with, because there are
5:57
Speaker 1: so many things that you could throw money at and
5:59
Speaker 1: you can't throw money at it everything. So if you
6:01
Speaker 1: look at the coast, maybe it's the Great Barrier reef
6:04
Speaker 1: or you know, in Adelaide we're looking at the the
6:08
Speaker 1: algal bloom. Is this climate disaster, so that going on
6:13
Speaker 1: off the coast of South Australia at the moment just
6:17
Speaker 1: algae that stings your eyes when you get in the water.
6:20
Speaker 1: People aren't swimming, people aren't surfing, and all this dead
6:22
Speaker 1: fish washing up in the ocean. So huge climate disaster
6:26
Speaker 1: are going on there that most of Australia doesn't even
6:29
Speaker 1: know about. So you know that that's one that speaks
6:32
Speaker 1: to us there. Yeah, we've toured around on a on
6:36
Speaker 1: a biodiesel bus through Europe which lowered our carbon emissions
6:41
Speaker 1: by like ninety eight percent or something. And that was
6:45
Speaker 1: a that was a massive turning point or checkpoint for us,
6:48
Speaker 1: because we went to our bus company and said, hey,
6:51
Speaker 1: we want to move and go with these guys because
6:53
Speaker 1: they've got a bio diesel bus. It's not to leave
6:56
Speaker 1: in and so and then this company ended up going, no,
6:59
Speaker 1: you know, we want your business, so we will change
7:02
Speaker 1: one of our buses to be able to do this.
7:04
Speaker 4: And so they invested.
7:06
Speaker 1: In this this change to be able to convert one
7:10
Speaker 1: of their buses to biodiesel, which you're essentially driving around
7:14
Speaker 1: on vegetable oil.
7:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
7:16
Speaker 3: I was going to say, what's the changes that they
7:19
Speaker 3: had to make to be able to come into line
7:22
Speaker 3: with that.
7:22
Speaker 4: I don't really know.
7:23
Speaker 1: Some filtration and it had to be specific bus and
7:27
Speaker 1: engine and all this sort of stuff. But yeah, like
7:31
Speaker 1: this was brand new even in Europe, and they were
7:33
Speaker 1: actually saying, you know, you're only going to be able
7:35
Speaker 1: to fill this up with biodiesel like once or twice
7:38
Speaker 1: throughout this whole tour. But as the tour got closer,
7:41
Speaker 1: all of these petrol stations you know, opened this option
7:46
Speaker 1: up for biodesel fuel, and we ended up fueling the
7:51
Speaker 1: entire the entire tour with biodiesel. So that was that
7:55
Speaker 1: was epic. Yeah, and then obviously like traveling electric and
8:01
Speaker 1: you know, using credible offsets when we can, and then
8:06
Speaker 1: just kind of calculating emissions where we can as well.
8:09
Speaker 1: I mean, and there are flaws and obstacles with all
8:13
Speaker 1: of these things that you have to troubleshoot, you know,
8:17
Speaker 1: and then there's being good role models and being activists
8:22
Speaker 1: where you feel like it's appropriate.
8:23
Speaker 4: So yeah, there are.
8:25
Speaker 1: A lot of things that you can do. You don't necessarily,
8:28
Speaker 1: we don't write that many songs about like saving the
8:31
Speaker 1: planet and holding hands and running around, you know, we don't.
8:36
Speaker 1: We don't write reggae either, really that much. It's reggae,
8:41
Speaker 1: but I don't I don't have dreadlocks, and I think
8:44
Speaker 1: that we don't. You don't have to be like annoyingly preachy.
8:48
Speaker 1: I think it's we all want to live in a clean,
8:51
Speaker 1: beautiful world.
8:53
Speaker 2: And yeah, that sounds very Northern Rivers.
8:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
9:00
Speaker 2: Something we're quite an accustomed to.
9:02
Speaker 4: Out and I love you know, and I love it
9:05
Speaker 4: as well.
9:06
Speaker 1: You know, I don't have shoes on, and I'm a
9:08
Speaker 1: bit stinky today as well, so I do have a
9:11
Speaker 1: bit of that. But I think, you know, I think
9:16
Speaker 1: we I think, at the end of the day, like
9:17
Speaker 1: most of us are on the same page here. We
9:19
Speaker 1: like we want a clean, beautiful future. And whether this
9:24
Speaker 1: person annoys us, or whether what I'm saying right now
9:27
Speaker 1: annoys people, and I'm sure what I'm saying is there
9:31
Speaker 1: are you know, flaws and flip sides to everything, but
9:33
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I think we want
9:35
Speaker 1: the same outcome, and if your ethics are right, then yeah,
9:40
Speaker 1: we're all striving for the same thing for sure.
9:43
Speaker 3: For sure, it's bubbing a role model and setting an
9:45
Speaker 3: example to some degree.
9:47
Speaker 1: And yeah, and you know, back to like not yeah,
9:51
Speaker 1: back to not asking anyone to stop doing what they're doing,
9:55
Speaker 1: I think is a is a big one, you know,
9:57
Speaker 1: because if you love, you know, driving around in your
10:02
Speaker 1: full drive, you know, at some point there'll be an
10:05
Speaker 1: alternative there. If you love, if you love fishing, or
10:09
Speaker 1: you love eating meat, you know there's alternatives to all this.
10:13
Speaker 1: You don't have to necessarily stop fishing, you don't have
10:15
Speaker 1: to necessarily stop eating meat, but there's there's better practices
10:20
Speaker 1: and better ways of doing it.
10:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, sure, And so mentioned that you've got one
10:26
Speaker 3: particular get that show that you're focusing on.
10:29
Speaker 2: Tell me more about that it's coming up.
10:32
Speaker 1: That going to be the main I guess the main
10:34
Speaker 1: point here is that it's an off grid festival. Yeah,
10:38
Speaker 1: we don't want to have any emissions battery powered interesting, Yeah,
10:44
Speaker 1: and people have in this industry whenever we've tried to
10:48
Speaker 1: do things with batteries at venues.
10:51
Speaker 4: Or at vestals, they kind of go, oh, slow down here.
10:54
Speaker 1: We don't want to plug our stuff into that battery
10:58
Speaker 1: because we've never done that before, and we don't want
11:00
Speaker 1: our stuff to blow up. We don't want to show
11:02
Speaker 1: to you know, go black halfway through. And what we've
11:07
Speaker 1: found is that like it's no different from plugging into
11:09
Speaker 1: a generator, and like it does have enough power to
11:12
Speaker 1: last for the show. The battery companies know this, but
11:16
Speaker 1: people in the industry don't know it, so we want to.
11:19
Speaker 1: I guess the way to show people that it is
11:21
Speaker 1: possible is like putting on our own festival and making
11:24
Speaker 1: it completely battery powered. Can just then show people that
11:28
Speaker 1: it is easy and it is it can be done,
11:32
Speaker 1: so that yeah, it's it's a case study for everyone really,
11:37
Speaker 1: and maybe in a year's time when we do round
11:40
Speaker 1: two of this in a year's time, that like this
11:44
Speaker 1: is just common knowledge and maybe we've moved on to
11:47
Speaker 1: the next technological advancement.
11:49
Speaker 4: You know.
11:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.
11:51
Speaker 3: It's hopefully assuming that you've given a bit of a
11:54
Speaker 3: road test along the waves and your capacity and you
11:57
Speaker 3: know your limits that you can take on.
12:00
Speaker 4: Well a little a little bit.
12:03
Speaker 1: Comply, not completely though, but we've spoken to a lot
12:07
Speaker 1: of people that are doing this sort of thing.
12:10
Speaker 4: The battery company are pretty confident.
12:13
Speaker 1: But you know, if this does, if there is a
12:15
Speaker 1: blackout halfway through, then I feel like that's all part
12:18
Speaker 1: of the journey, you know. I'm kind of into these obstacles. Yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: and kind of I guess, yeah, bit of you want
12:29
Speaker 1: to push the boundaries, So maybe that's a big part
12:32
Speaker 1: of it, and.
12:32
Speaker 2: You know, you've got plans to televise it.
12:35
Speaker 3: You live somewhere people can like check it and watch
12:39
Speaker 3: the watch with bread.
12:42
Speaker 1: Not necessarily live, but we will be filming this whole thing. Yeah,
12:45
Speaker 1: because we've been documenting our journey for the last couple
12:49
Speaker 1: of years.
12:49
Speaker 4: So that's why we have.
12:51
Speaker 1: Been talking to people all over the world about different
12:55
Speaker 1: things in the industry, because everything has some sort of
13:00
Speaker 1: controversial side or some footprint connected to it. Even if
13:03
Speaker 1: you're listening to music on Spotify. Yeah, so even when
13:07
Speaker 1: you send an email, like there's a there's a footprint
13:09
Speaker 1: behind every email. So yeah, we've been talking to people
13:14
Speaker 1: about every aspect. We've spoken to people about, yes, Spotify,
13:18
Speaker 1: We've spoken to people about planes, and there's people in
13:21
Speaker 1: Brisbane that are working on flying planes with green hydrogen,
13:26
Speaker 1: which is essentially powering a plane with water.
13:30
Speaker 4: Wow.
13:31
Speaker 1: You know there's people in Chicago about this big movement
13:36
Speaker 1: into climate disasters and the I guess different, like, yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: people being left behind and in different what do you
13:51
Speaker 1: call it?
13:52
Speaker 4: What's the word lost? The word?
13:54
Speaker 1: But like you know, the privileged move forward in this
13:59
Speaker 1: sort of where people get left behind, and yeah, it's
14:03
Speaker 1: often you my minority groups and things like that.
14:06
Speaker 4: We've spoken to.
14:09
Speaker 1: Other people that are looking at powering engines with human
14:13
Speaker 1: waste and yeah, and then there have been a lot
14:16
Speaker 1: of there's like Soul Griffith who's from Wollongong and he's
14:20
Speaker 1: leading the way in battery power and yeah, renewable energy.
14:25
Speaker 1: So Australia is actually doing a lot more than you think. Yeah,
14:29
Speaker 1: it's really really cool. Adelaide itself is like run off
14:35
Speaker 1: pretty much all renewable energy that city, and I think
14:37
Speaker 1: the Australians don't quite realize that there are people doing
14:41
Speaker 1: amazing things like that.
14:43
Speaker 4: Yeah.
14:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that for the most part of us,
14:47
Speaker 3: the change will be when our electricity bills are considerably less.
14:51
Speaker 3: It's kind of cost less and it's a pretty a
14:54
Speaker 3: concern for everyone.
14:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think the move for
14:59
Speaker 1: solar for a lot of people have done that. Yeah,
15:04
Speaker 1: it's I mean this guy that I mentioned, Saul Griffith,
15:07
Speaker 1: you know, he really takes the optimistic approach and he
15:11
Speaker 1: breaks things down in a very simple way, and it's
15:13
Speaker 1: like you don't necessarily in your own home, you know,
15:17
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily need to throw out your gas cooker
15:20
Speaker 1: because you're running on natural gas and go on by and.
15:25
Speaker 4: What do you call induction stove.
15:27
Speaker 1: You don't necessarily need to throw out your your heater
15:30
Speaker 1: and get a heat pump straight away, or you don't
15:32
Speaker 1: need to ditch your car or feel bad about driving
15:36
Speaker 1: a petrol car. But like as things get more affordable,
15:39
Speaker 1: like when these things break and look at making the
15:43
Speaker 1: change then because everything has a lifespan and if everyone
15:47
Speaker 1: does that, then like there's this there'll be this huge
15:50
Speaker 1: change happening across Australia. So you know, I'm not necessarily
15:55
Speaker 1: saying that every festival needs to convert to batteries, but like, yeah,
16:00
Speaker 1: being able to show that it is happening. And also
16:04
Speaker 1: this festival will have a whole bunch of other green
16:06
Speaker 1: initiatives as well. So like festivals that we've played played
16:11
Speaker 1: out over the years all around the world, sometimes just
16:14
Speaker 1: simple messaging and and having different bins where people can
16:18
Speaker 1: sort out there recycling and you know, promoting bringing your
16:23
Speaker 1: own water bottle. Like this sort of messaging subconsciously goes
16:28
Speaker 1: down into everyone and those vessels end up like a lot.
16:32
Speaker 4: Cleaner at the end of the day when everyone's packing up. Yeah, yeah,
16:38
Speaker 4: some of them there's just like this tornado or rubbish.
16:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, a gig, like a decent gig. It's just sort
16:45
Speaker 3: of practice, look for it's just hate.
16:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's.
16:51
Speaker 1: All like you know, plastic cans and like you know,
16:56
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's mainly food and drink waste, right,
16:59
Speaker 1: it can at camping festivals. It's it's a bit different,
17:02
Speaker 1: but like if you can minimize that, then you're already
17:05
Speaker 1: getting rid of so much, so much crap.
17:08
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely, And so when is the festival going to
17:11
Speaker 3: be held?
17:12
Speaker 1: When it's April eighteenth, the off the coast of Adelaide,
17:18
Speaker 1: so yeah, coming up very soon.
17:21
Speaker 2: Very excellent.
17:22
Speaker 3: And so capacity wise, what are you guys thinking that
17:25
Speaker 3: you're likely to see and is there any other artists
17:27
Speaker 3: obviously playing with yourselves as well?
17:29
Speaker 4: Up close to you? There's the Dregs.
17:31
Speaker 1: There are our biggest bands on the lineup with us.
17:37
Speaker 1: There's three local Adelaide bands. So there's Alexia who's Yeah
17:43
Speaker 1: Adelaide and she's she's killing it as a band new
17:46
Speaker 1: Hot Little Boys called pash Okay. And then there's a
17:51
Speaker 1: triple j Unearthed winner as well. So nice Adelaide locals.
17:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, quite a few with the good bands come from Adelaide.
18:02
Speaker 1: Five thousand capacity festivals, So okay, that's that'll be like,
18:06
Speaker 1: you know, the biggest battery powered festival that we've seen
18:11
Speaker 1: in Australia.
18:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, excellent, excellent, Well to definitely seeing how that turns
18:16
Speaker 3: out and what comes with it.
18:18
Speaker 2: For sure. It's an interesting social experiment that.
18:20
Speaker 3: You are quite quite niche, which is it's good. It's
18:25
Speaker 3: good to bring different things to not just about music.
18:27
Speaker 3: I guess it's.
18:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the end of the day, it will pretty
18:31
Speaker 1: much be, you know, another music festival and people can
18:35
Speaker 1: enjoy music and you know, we're not gonna we're not
18:37
Speaker 1: going to shout annoying preachy messages and wrote too much,
18:43
Speaker 1: but people will be.
18:44
Speaker 4: Learning and yeah, you know.
18:47
Speaker 1: Just seeing some good music and yeah.
18:51
Speaker 3: Behind it is certainly quite interesting and it will be
18:53
Speaker 3: I'm sure the topic of many discussions after.
18:57
Speaker 4: Which I hope.
18:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's quite at and.
19:00
Speaker 2: So I imagine that it's not been done before that
19:03
Speaker 2: you know of or aware of.
19:05
Speaker 4: There are people doing cool stuff.
19:07
Speaker 1: There's you know, there's one company that's touring all these
19:10
Speaker 1: remote locations around Australia on battery and they're doing but
19:15
Speaker 1: you know, smaller capacity sort of things, and there are
19:19
Speaker 1: elements of different festivals that are running on battery, but yeah,
19:23
Speaker 1: this is this will be the first like completely off
19:26
Speaker 1: green on one.
19:27
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, well I'm sure, well I come to some
19:31
Speaker 3: good outcomes and hopefully fingers cross it we don't getting
19:34
Speaker 3: major blackouts and yeah, everything goes to play for sure.
19:39
Speaker 2: Look, thank you so much for having a chat with
19:41
Speaker 2: us here in Heavy