Music and musicians have been at the heart of the Occupy movement. And while there may not be a single anthem that defines the cause; a notable, and badass artist who has used her voice to stand with the 99% is Amanda Palmer. The founding member of the Dresden Dolls has been performing impromptu ‘ninja gigs' all over the country including Oakland, Vancouver, New York, and in her hometown of Boston. Amanda uses social media outlets like Twitter (@amandapalmer) and her blog to share her travels and ultimately bring new faces to the movement. We got a chance to catch up with the ukulele cabaret punk who shared her thoughts on the power of music and her hopes for what the movement is really occupying in all of us.

What was your mission in playing at Occupy events?

Mostly to bring attention and awareness to the fact that it was happening. I generally do free, spontaneous outdoor shows (I call them "ninja gigs") everywhere I go, and since I had a tour coinciding with the start of the movement, it made sense to gather people at Occupy instead of a random local park. I like connecting the dots. A lot of my fans hadn't been to their city's Occupy site, and this was a good excuse to get them there to experience the site in person instead of just seeing footage on CNN. On top of that, I liked the idea that I could bring some random joy to the actual occupiers... like a traveling minstrel. I played music that was both geared towards the movement and played music that was totally irrelevant and simply entertaining... but that's not actually irrelevant, is it?

The Occupy movement has exploded all over the world. Since your travels to many of the occupation sites, what do you think is really at the heart of this movement?

People are discontent and this was a chance, an outlet, a platform from which to express their discontent. And yes, I think the Occupy movement has had an effect. It brought people together, it tightened communities, and it reminded a whole generation that democracy requires participation to function. If it only leaves a small wave in the ocean, that wave will hopefully grow to a tsunami when today's teenagers grow into tomorrow's leaders and recall the images of people trying to speaks their minds.

How did you see music play a role or place in the Occupy movement? 

I think music and protest are perfect bedfellows. Music can often get to to the emotional heart of a matter much more quickly than speaking, that's why songs are so powerful. Can you imagine the Vietnam War protests without the soundtrack provided by the generation of music-makers? Way more boring.

Do you think music has the power to cause real change?

What kind of change? I think music often changes people more than anything. Even if it's just for a moment. It's funny, I've been thinking lately what the world would look and feel like if music were suddenly removed from political TV ads, from commercials, from films? Imagine this clip about Occupy (my favorite) without the soundtrack. Music provides a bridge into the deeper parts of our emotional beings.

In your blog posts about your travels to the Occupy sites, you mentioned that “what was bizarre was how INCREDIBLY similar the feel of every occupation was; yet how different the energy was depending on the city.” Could you give an example of how the energy was different from place to place?

Oi vey. Sure. The energy at Occupy LA was slightly off-putting... Everywhere I turned people were getting pissed at each other. The main square was pumping techno and people were hula-hooping and playing soccer, but the vibe wasn't very...inclusive? I mean, in a way it was sort of cheerful, but it also just seemed like Burning Man had taken over a city block and people were just psyched for the party. Then again, my experience in all these places was based on an hour or so of walking around. Oakland had incredibly hard-working, peaceful energy around it. The energy in Boston was also very Boston-y, super-intellectual and slightly grumpy. The energy in Vancouver was stark ... A death by overdose had taken place there two days before.

What was single the most interesting thing you saw at Occupy?

i was definitely impressed by the vision of someone at Occupy Oakland providing ice cream en masse for the occupiers and the general public...  and for good measure, here's some beautiful graffiti at Occupy Vancouver: 

Some people think the movement is fading. What are your thoughts on that?  What do you think is (should be?) next for the movement, and the young activists involved?

My thoughts are that the movement will evolve. If it's fading, then it's fading and it's served whatever purpose it was supposed to serve. The real question is whether people will keep voicing their opinions without the romance and the drama of the tents and encampment. One of the best things I think could come of this is the opening of people's eyes to how they can take democracy into their OWN hands. On their own street. Maybe some barriers have been broken down and people will feel less reservations about helping their neighbors. I'd hope that's the case. If we're going to turn this system around, we have to go deep, to the root, and it means letting go of fear. Fear of helping each other. We're so disconnected from each other, and we've been convinced into it. We've all been raised by a culture that lead us to believe that to get ahead, we've got to step on the head of the person beneath us. And that's not really working, is it ...for anybody.

When Roger McNamee and his band Moonalice play “American Dream Rag” at Occupy Wall Street protests, not everyone knows he’s one of Silicon Valley's most successful investors.

Here’s a 55-year old, long- haired guy singing “They took everything we have, but we don’t cry/We can’t afford to drink, but we still get high.”

Would anyone guess that he’s Bill Gates’ self described “sounding board”? Or that he’s an early investor in Facebook? Or manages $1.9 billion in investments with an Irish partner… named Bono?

But the truth is that McNamee, who has spent the last 30 years helping to build technology companies in Silicon Valley, is firmly on the side of the occupiers.

“The country has been stolen,” says McNamee bluntly. “I expect to be involved in getting it back for the rest of my life.”

The Facebook page for his band Moonalice includes posters created for Occupy Wall Street by the band’s artists, including Chuck Sperry and Chris Shaw. McNamee has also appeared on CNBC’s news show “SquawkBox,” explaining to individual investors why they should support Occupy and debunking false reports about the movement.

On the evening when 10,000 protesters flooded the streets of Oakland, he shared his thoughts with us…

On what really happens on Wall Street:

I have been angry about this way longer than Occupy has existed. My first boss told me that “Wall Street is not the world’s highest calling,” but it wasn’t a bad place until the past decade. Irresponsible deregulation combined with unbridled greed has broken the back of our economy. And no one has been held accountable.

On his unique perspective:

I really know Wall Street. At one time my firm was an investor in the technology system that makes NASDAQ work. It wasn’t designed to rip people off, but it’s being used that way now.

On how he came to write “American Dream Rag”:

Somehow we wound up with a two-tiered legal system, where there is frequently no consequence for rich people who do horrible things. Wall Street has been increasingly dishonest for a decade. Wall Street was never an angel, but until recently it also wasn’t the devil. Every step of the way it has been aided and abetted by our government. And the press slept through the whole thing. When none of the major banks had been prosecuted by 2009, I took matters into my own hands and wrote this song in 2009.

His visits to Occupy Wall Street:

I’ve visited Occupies in several towns. My favorite was Philadelphia. I was there on the day they launched it. 500 people who showed up... watching them organizing themselves was a thing of beauty. I loved the simplicity of it. The fact that there was no political agenda. There isn’t any magic to it. It is the American Spring. It is analogous to the Arab Spring . . . and based on the same issues. After all, our income has become as unevenly distributed as Saudi Arabia. This is so disappointing.

Getting caught in a police parade:

In New York, Moonalice had the most amazing experience. We went down in the rain and played the song a bunch of times at Zuccotti. The next day we were scheduled to play a gig at BB King’s, which is a club on the edge of Times Square. It happened to be the day of Occupy Times Square. We didn’t really know it, but the demonstration went right past our hotel. We boarded our bus to go to the gig, and only got around the block when police stopped us at an intersection. While we waited, 8 or 10 paddy wagons turned onto Broadway in front of us. Our bus went up Broadway behind the paddy wagons. They were pushing traffic onto side streets, so our bus was the only civilian vehicle going up Broadway. Next thing you know, we are in the heart of the demonstration. That’s when we began tooting the bus horn. At first the crowd didn’t react, but pretty quickly they figured out we were on their side. That’s when the crowd went CRAZY. We took a really funny video of it. Big Steve Parish, who was Jerry Garcia’s roadie, was convinced we were going to get arrested. I tried to calm down by pointing out the irony of me getting arrested for supporting Occupy.

On New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s comments that Congress, not the banks, is responsible for the financial mess:

He knows it’s not true. There is no question that the government played a huge rule in enabling everything that happened, but the notion that the banks are not responsible is just crazy. The sub-prime market is not the portion of the market that Fannie and Freddie [Mac] were doing. Nearly all sub-prime loans were made by commercial banks.

How this was all inevitable:

History is very clear that when an economy sustains unemployment around 20%, social unrest is an inevitable consequence. The official U.S. unemployment rate is 9%, but an equivalent number of people are either underemployed or have given up looking. More important, America is no longer a land of equal opportunity. A handful of industries have paid for the right to set their own government policy. This has produced a huge change in the distribution of wealth in this country, entirely at the expense of the middle class.

The ‘brilliance’ of OWS:

What Occupy is doing is merely leaning against any obstruction put in its path. So the organization system is really nothing more than that. And therein lies its brilliance.

About the future of Occupy:

When Occupy started, our country was buried in a ridiculous national conversation. One party had pushed our country to the brink of insolvency and was arguing that $10 in spending cuts was not enough to justify one dollar of tax increases. Then Occupy began. Within a month, the national conversation had changed completely. We’re now talking about the right issues: jobs, income distribution, the failure of government, and the limits of capitalism.

The vast majority of Americans support Occupy on the issues, even if some are ambivalent about tents in parks. My hope is that the movement has grown beyond -- and is no longer dependent on -- what happens in city parks.

About the attempts to eradicate Occupy:

There is a story going around that the Department of Homeland Security may have organized a conference call with more than a dozen big city mayors to coordinate the eradication of Occupy camps. If that story proves to be true, U.S. government will find itself in the position of behaving like the dictators we have worked so hard to eliminate. The First Amendment guarantees Americans’ right to peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, mayors and police officers in several major cities seem to have forgotten.

Occupy is not a political movement. It is a protest against overreaching by businesses and the government, which means the more the government behaves like Syria, the bigger the protest will become.

The status quo is bad for America. It’s going to change. It will change peacefully unless the government chooses a different path. I hope our leaders will wake up and engage in a thoughtful discussion about the issues being raised by Occupy.

Tom Hamilton of the bands Brothers Past and American Babies has been hitting Occupy Philly since the movement started. American Babies even performed there. Hamilton sat down with a HeadCount blogger to talk about Occupy and what inspired him to get involved - primarily, he says, the it was the fact that so many of his friends can't find jobs. (for more, check out  Part 2 of the interview here on Sensible Reason, where he discusses  Brothers Past, the new American Babies album, and why he supports HeadCount)

Tom, you’ve been a supporter of the Occupy movement since its early stages. How does it make you feel that the protests have spread not just around the country but also around the world?

I think it's awesome, I think it’s a great thing. In theory, at least right now, it’s a great thing. There isn’t a clearly defined message yet, which kind of … you have this thing rising up everywhere but it's not quite unified. Everybody is just pissy, but everyone is not pissy about the same thing. I’m hoping that it starts to come to a head, sharpen the point, and to get behind the same message. Obviously Occupy Wall Street has a pretty definitive thing. For starters there’s the 1% vs. 99%. You know, getting corporate money out of our politics or letting our politicians govern instead of playing politics. Which is what I totally believe, which is why I’m such a fan of the movement. It’s exactly what I feel and what I want to happen.

But it’s not necessarily that same message everywhere. Even on Wall Street it's not that same message everywhere. Everybody has their pet cause. Down here in Philly it's pretty fractured still. You have people that are talking about the original message to people that are there because they want marijuana legalization. And it's like, “I get it but let's keep our eye on the prize here." It's going to be interesting to see how it goes. I think it needs to become something more focused and get more powerful and make a statement that actually affects what’s going on, that actually affects policy, affects politics.

So you’ve said you have been almost a constant presence down at the Occupy Philly movement. What are you personal grievances, what are you down there for?

Well fortunately I'm a musician and I can still find work wherever we can find it. But that being said, I have a lot of friends. Most of my friends aren’t musicians and are collecting unemployment. Not because they are lazy people who want to live off the government, but because they can't find a goddamn job. It's an awful thing to see people you’ve known your whole life struggling. You know people with law degrees waiting tables, electricians and contractors, they can't find any work doing anything. And it’s a goddamn shame. And I like to be there [Occupy Philly] and be supportive for all of the people that are in these situations. That are on unemployment. These people just can't find work because there are no jobs. For the people that lost everything when the economy collapsed. It's awful, it's infuriating. You know when this whole thing started in '08 I was paying very close attention to what was going on and seeing it affect my friends and family. Most of the new American Babies album is written about this stuff and for these people. So I feel like if I’m going to be writing about this stuff and using it in my career and trying to be a voice for these people, I should be down there with the movement. Showing solidarity and putting my instrument where my mouth is.

Do you have any concrete ideas to address these issues or do you think it should be left to the policy makers who are there right now to come up with solutions?

Well, everybody has an idea. But I feel that within the movement what people should be doing is educating each other. I feel like a lot of people are angry and upset about what’s going on, but they are not completely informed as to why they are where they are, why things happened and how it got to where it is. Within the occupation they should be educating everybody on what the banks did, what Wall Street did, how the government bailout affected them. To give them a very real understanding of what’s happening. I also feel there should be something set up at the occupation where people can go and tell them where they live and somebody give them the phone number, the email, the Twitter, and every kind of contact information they can for their representative. So they can write them or call them and tell them, "I’m your constituent, I’m who you're working for and I want you to govern. I don’t want you to sit there and just play politics and go golfing." There’s more than one way to go about protesting. You know, while you're out there having civil unrest you can also work within the system to try and change it. And I feel like that should be happening.

So I’m wondering, what does “constant presence” and involvement mean. What have you actually been doing while you’ve been down at the protest? Just talking to people, holding a sign…

Yeah I’m always just talking to people. To see why they are there, to see what they think is going on, how long they’ve been there, where they are from. Just trying to get to know people, their stories. And inherently that always leads to conversations about what do they think should be going on and what do they think about what’s happening. Just talking and finding out their situations. As I’m talking to people I’m telling them things they don’t know and other people are telling me things I don’t know. It’s a great learning experience in that way.

One of my really close friends is a comedian and has a radio show that we do down here in Philadelphia called The Panic Hour. We play music, but he’s a comedian so it’s a comedy thing. It's basically me and him and 3 or 4 other people. Before the occupation it would be a weekly thing where we would sit around and in a pretty light way just talk about the news and what’s going on in the world. The range of the people on the show go from extreme conspiracy theorist to more rational people. So it's basically just a pissing match between all of us and we just sit around and bust each others' balls and talk about politics and the world and whatever. His name is N. A. Poe and he’s in charge of the media branch of Occupy Philly. He’s been living there since day one. And so when I am there that’s who I’m with; I’m in the media pen a lot. He goes around and interviews everybody he can find from random people that are down there for the right reasons to people that are obviously there for the wrong reasons. Like the trust fund kid with dreads that wants to just smoke pot and play in the drum circle. We interviewed the previous mayor of Philly when he was down there, the chief of police; we kind of run the gamut. It's looking at what’s going on, interviewing people and getting information out there. But we don’t have an agenda, like I said there’s everyone down there. There’s hippies, there's anarchists, there’s all of these people down there that have their own agenda and they are always pushing things one way or the other. My buddy N. A. Poe, he’s just a comedian, but also really believes in this thing that’s going on as much as I do. We’re trying to get the message out, get that content out, because the press isn’t reporting on it. So we’re going to get it out there and make it unbiased. You know, what the media is supposed to be doing, but also funny at the same time. You can check out the hundreds of interviews he’s done on his YouTube channel, which has gotten a huge number of hits so far. And I think it's because he’s just telling it how it is and being an unfiltered voice. That’s why I like being down there. Just trying to help as much as we can. And do things the way we feel is the right way.

Do you think the real problem is Wall Street and big business or do you think the real problem is the politicians and bureaucrats who regulate them?

Or don’t regulate is another way to say that. For me it's lobbyists really. I feel like that’s the problem, big business gets lobbyists into D.C. and there are all of these backroom deals being cut. And that's not the way its supposed to go. Even as the 99%, we don’t have lobbyists. We can't afford lobbyists. This is about lobbyists, that’s not what the government should be about. It's supposed to be about “we the people” and what we want. And that’s what should be going on, what's in the best interest of the country and the best interest of its citizens. And if you have been paying attention to what’s going on in Congress and the Senate right now you know that nothing’s going on, nothing's happening. Because there’s this fucking mandate that the right has put out that says that nothing that comes from the left -- especially the president -- goes through. And it has nothing to do with Americans. And has everything to do with some pissing match that’s going on in D.C. And we're suffering for it, and a bunch of guys [are] sitting there measuring their dicks, and it's like “hey man, that’s not governing.”

Is there a politician that you support that you think can get American where it needs to be? Or at least someone that has ideas that you agree with?

It's not something that a politician can fix. That’s not the solution. It's not a person, it’s the system itself is cracked right now. Some will say broken. And as for who I personally support politically, I'd really rather not say. I don’t think that that really matters. The system is what’s wrong. And that’s what needs to be addressed.

One of your projects, American Babies, performed at the Occupy Philly protest. How did it make you feel to “entertain the troops?"

It was an absolute honor. And that’s exactly how I looked at it, as entertaining the troops. These people are down there freezing, getting rained on, getting snowed on. They put themselves out of their comfortable homes into this situation, to try to make a difference and change things for all of us. The least I can do is strum a guitar and make them smile and dance for an hour.

Part 2 of the interview continues here on SensibleReason.com

Fans of moe. and Guster can feel pretty good about the bands they love. Both have been model citizens when it comes to supporting causes and various organizations. Guster's Adam Gardner even formed his own non-profit (Reverb). So it's no wonder that when Patagonia launched the Patagonia Music Collective, they were two of the first bands on board. The Collective raises money for environmental organizations through the sale of downloads.

In a pair of videos produced by HeadCount, members of each band talk about the songs  they donated and the organizations they chose to support.

The video with moe. also features a live performance of their song "One Life," played at the All Good Music Festival this past summer as part of a "Challenge Set" - a bonus set played to reward fans for downloading the track at least 1,000 times. Proceeds from "One Life" support the Rainforest Action Network.

Guster's track is a live recording of "Satellite" from a performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gardner and bandmate Luke Reynolds speak of the performance and of Reverb, which downloads of the song support.

Also included here is a video with G. Love and Samantha Stollenwerck that we released over the summer.

So enjoy the videos. And if you like a tune, throw down a buck and download it. You'll feel good every time it comes  up on your iPod.

Click here to download tracks.

It was not too long ago that artist, teacher and mother Gwen AP was painting in the crowd at concerts and festivals. Through a rapid turn of events, she now finds herself painting on stage with her favorite musicians. Here, she tells how it all happened.

You have been producing art for some time, but have only recently begun live painting. Can you tell me about how this began and what you experienced in the transition from painting in a studio to performing in a live environment?

I have always loved painting and music is definitely a big inspiration. Live painting kind of just happened at Bonnaroo this year. It was my first time painting in front of a large population of strangers. It was great. People really seemed to like it and the responses I got were almost entirely positive. I ended up working with another artist who approached me while I was spray painting out in a field and we ended up doing some collaboration throughout the festival.

When I live painted at Camp Bisco it felt very natural and at times surreal. My live painting has developed lately and I feel like it's - just a really big wave I'm riding of - artistic progression.

You painted quite a bit at Bonnaroo this summer. Could you perhaps describe some of the insight you gained from this experience, it being your first time performing live painting?

Well last year I had entered the Bonnaroo logo contest and my husband had made a bunch of prints of my design to bring with us and sell. I thought he was crazy, because my art had always been very personal to me, and I had never tried to sell it before. But all of my prints sold really well, so this year we upgraded and decided to vend my artwork. That was very scary for me because my paintings are very personal, so it’s definitely putting myself out there for everybody to see. It was putting my soul on display - you like it, want to pay for it? The experience ended up being really cool because even though it was so scary going into it I got a lot of really positive feedback from the crowd. People were really excited about my art.

At Camp Bisco I saw you in the crowd and you were painting with the general population, but I know that you live painted on stage with Dirty Paris and the Disco Biscuits. Could you tell me about this experiences and perhaps how they differed?

This year I requested an artist pass to see if I could paint on stage. It was great. Brownie was so nice. He hooked me up with a guest pass and I wasn't really sure what that meant at the beginning of the weekend. It was cool. I enjoyed going back stage and talking to different artists and different people.

I ran into my friends in Dirty Paris who I had done some album and other miscellaneous artwork for, about 20 or 30 paintings.

When I ran into them at Camp this year I told them that I would be live painting on stage with the Biscuits and it just so happened that their time slot was directly before the Biscuits day set that I would be painting during. You know how pretty perfect is that? So I said, "Hey can I paint with you guys?" and they said, "Yeah, of course!" So I painted on stage with them, which is cool because I know those guys, and even camped with them at this and past Camp Biscos. That was a very comfortable experience, they are friends of mine, so being on stage with them was very awesome. A lot of my friends were in the crowd supporting them and supporting me. Which is great to just hear people cheer for you, yell your name.

When the Biscuits came on I just kept painting. Brownie came out, he tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a high five, went out and said 'Good Morning' to Camp Bisco and introduced me to the crowd. I remember looking out at the audience and it was very surreal seeing how many people were out there, it looked like a sea of people, it didn't seem like it ended. Being able to look over at Barber jamming on his guitar, just a few feet away from me, Magner getting into it or being able to see the gloss on Allen's face: that all was very intense but cool at the same time.

I felt like I warmed up with Dirty Paris but really got into it for the Biscuits. The whole thing was one of the best experiences I have had. It felt nice and exciting. When it was over, Brownie introduced me to his mom who was watching from the side and I ended up meeting his wife and kids. The painting ended up being awesome. Brownie actually helped me name it.

You recently went to New Mexico on an artist retreat to collaborate with artist Mike Rohner, who you met at Bonnarro. Can you tell me what that experience was like, what you did and what it was like collaborating with another artist?

Collaborating with another artist was great. I met him while painting at Bonnaroo while I was painting in a field a few days before they let the general population inside. I was just laying down some spray paint and he said 'Can I show you a couple things?' It turns out he is an amazing spray painter from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Right off the bat we became really good friends. Throughout the weekend he ended up live painting with me on multiple works. I felt like his style really complimented mine. He would lay down some spray paint and the I would go on with some splatter, or he'd try some spray paint and then he would sketch something out. It seemed like we had a really nice flow to what we were doing.

We became such good friends that he actually gave me a piece to take home and do some work on. Through the course of the next few weeks he ended up sending me 5 or 6 paintings that he laid down some spray paint and some sketching and then I laid down some of my ideas. They all turned out really well so he end up inviting me out to a Girls Inc. show that he was doing on the plaza in Santa Fe. As soon as I got there he had some paintings prepped that he wanted to work on. He has some really cool concepts of a female image that we ended up collaborating on that we used a model friend of his for. Overall I think our styles very much compliment each other and it was definitely fun to feed off of each other's creative ideas.

Did arts education play a big role for you developing as an artist or is it something you came to on your own?

I've always drawn, and art class was always my favorite. I always took art class very seriously much more so then I think I did any other class. But it was fun because I had a tough childhood and so for me art was my outlet. It was how I could express myself. There were no rules and it was just whatever you wanted it to be. So I think that always had a very big impact on me because that was my way to express myself. But the only type of art education I ever had was kindergarten through 12th grade.

As a teacher as well as an artist. Perhaps you can give some insight into how important arts education is to a child's development.

Arts education, well of course it's very important. I have a 4-year old daughter so of course I see her -- every day -- developing her fine motor skills. I think for a lot of kids art is a little bit of a release. It’s not like science or math where its hardcore facts and figures. Art gets to be interpreted in any way you so choose. So there’s no right or wrong in art. In art the spirit is that you tell everyone that they did a good job and that everybody's an artist it’s just a very positive type of experience for kids. I think art is just as important as music or anything like that. And it's sad that sometimes those things are overlooked when it comes to budget cuts.  The district I was in suffered a big budget cut the last school year, which is why in pursuing my art a little more then I am my teaching at this point. I think one day I will have a good teaching job but in the meantime I'm going to pursue my art.

Continuing on that note do you think anything can be done to stop the defunding of arts and music programs in American public schools or do you see that as the first thing to go when a district has no money?

I can't say I know enough specifics to say what the first thing to go is. But I know I saw a lot of teachers in our district react very negatively to different proposals our district put out. Cutting jobs, cutting programs, it’s sad. I hope that something can be done about it. But it's gotta - you have to have enough power behind that, enough people have to support it and you have to really really try to make a stand and do something about it, and hope that the people in control recognize it.

Back to you live painting, you painted with Conspirator on the 27th can you tell me how it went?

It was awesome, it was a lot of fun to meet everyone and hang out with them. I got to have a little one on one time with everyone in the band. The whole thing had a really good vibe and I thought the painting turned out really well. It was really fun. I always enjoy listening to their music and getting to be so close to it was phenomenal.

I’m looking at a picture of your painting right now and it seems very dynamic and organic but still has a raw energy to it, can you tell me how this manifestation came about?

It does have a lot of energy. It was a great experience where they put me right up front next to Magner's keyboard and it was intense and awesome. I think the painting reflects all of that energy I felt. It was definitely tough painting because I was trying to dance and paint at the same time, but still keep my lines nice and clean. I wanted it to be a little bit raw but still crisp and clean in some spots. I feel like I soaked up a lot of the energy coming from the band and the crowd. At one point I asked Mike Greenfield [from Lotus] what color he thought I should add next. He said purple and I said ooo yeah purple, and when I added the purple to it, it changed the dynamic of the painting. I asked a bunch of people for name suggestions, which is always my favorite part. As people see it develop I ask them for name suggestions and I got a lot of good ones which for me is one of the fun parts.

[Gwen's painting is now on sale through her website. Gwen has pledged all of the proceeds from the sale as a donation to Headcount.]

This is the third in a series of interview of artists who paint to live music. Previous interviews featured Kris D and LEBO.

This marks the first of a series of interviews with artists participating in the Patagonia Music Collective, appearing on both the Patagonia and HeadCount.org blogs.

Blitzen Trapper’s roots-driven folk is a living, breathing homage to the musical and cultural heritage of the United States. It’s no wonder then, that they care about preserving natural resources and the American landscape. The band was one of the first to donate an exclusive track to the Patagonia Music Collective, with all proceeds from downloads going toward SOLV . We caught up with the band’s lead singer Eric Earley, to learn more about the track, the charity, and the natural link between music and protecting the earth. [Download "All the Stones" here.]

HeadCount: So tell me about the track you donated for the Patagonia Music Collective.

Eric: The song “All The Stones”, it’s actually a pretty old one. I wrote that maybe 10 years ago. I was like 21 or something like that – maybe over 10 years ago. I never recorded it and I always liked it. So for the last record I recorded it, but I didn’t put it on the record. But I still like the recording a lot. I really love the song. It’s nice to put it out in some form.

Have you gotten a nice reaction from it?

Yeah, lots of people like it.

What made you guys want to get involved with the Patagonia Music Collective?

We’ve gotten involved in stuff like that before. It’s kind of natural, you know getting involved in something with that’s better than just an endeavor to help us out or help our careers or something, you know? I think in our position as musicians and writers it’s good to look outside of yourself, as much as possible anyway. It’s not like you’ll make tons of money, but it’s definitely good to look outside yourself and try to give in different ways.

Tell me about SOLV, the organization that you’re supporting.

It’s like a volunteer thing. It’s mostly cleaning up water resources, watersheds and creeks and streams and stuff. Anybody can get involved in it and volunteer for the different crews that do the projects. A lot of it is picking up trash or cleaning out different areas that for whatever reason have gotten damaged or trampled on by humans. Yeah, it’s a cool thing. They have tons of projects.

I’d imagine that as a Portland-based artist, the environment and beautiful surroundings must inspire creativity. Do they?

Yeah, I think it does. I mean, there’s definitely a lot of rain and bad weather here. But that bad weather is what makes it so green and so lush here. So it’s kind of the good and the bad. It’s sort of an inspiring thing to live in. I moved here from Hawaii so I don’t know much different myself.

I just read a past interview that you did about "Furr" and you were talking about one of the songs being about the economic chaos and America changing. Has sort of bigger picture issues often affected your song writing? Is that in a lot of your work?

Yeah, occasionally. I think there’s a time in my life where it has been. I think it really depends what I’m thinking about, what I’m involved in.

What have you been thinking about lately?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this new record ("American Goldwing, to be released Sept. 13th) and doing videos and working on that kind of thing. But a lot of the new record is sort of me remembering where I came from. A lot of the songs are about the town I grew up in – sort of the things that we did, the way things were, relationships I had. It’s a little more personal I think, not quite the big picture.

With kind Americana throwback music, folk-inspired music, there’s so much history there. How do you see your influences in a historical context in terms of music being something that inspired change?

I think music is pretty influential in every area of life. But I think a lot of times it’s on a level that we don’t really see, that is invisible. And whether it’s for good or for bad, I think it goes in both ways. All the music I grew up playing and listening to was a lot of old stuff: Dave Shelton and things like that. And those guys were working this in – our economy and a way of life that was pretty drastically different from what we have, but in certain ways it’s similar I guess. I mean those guys are all successful guys and they’re singing songs about work, and about mundane down-to-earth things that people cared about. And then they all used to sing about spiritual things that people cared about.

What issues are you paying attention to right now? What kind of stories on the news grab your attention?

I listen to the radio a lot. So for me I listen to a lot about - I guess, modern news likes to sort of focus on sort of disaster-related things. What’s going on in Japan and Alabama, but I guess you can’t really help it, to see those things. But it’s interesting to see a lot of the help that goes – America helps people around the world so much. I mean probably more than most countries in the history of the world. I mean I give a lot of money to different organizations that help in disaster relief around the world. So for me I’m always kind of following different disasters and now I’m just paying attention to who’s helping out and who’s sending what aid and stuff. It’s just interesting to me.

Download "All the Stones" here for 99 cents and support SOLV's volunteer efforts to protect natural resources.

Photo by Todd Roeth

At most major concert festivals, there's one person in charge of coordinating non-profit organizations (NPOs). Usually, he or she has a few other responsibilities, and has to juggle NPO's with food vendors, second stage programming, or sponsor services. Then there are a handful of festivals that actually have one individual totally dedicated to NPO's and the message they bring. Gathering of the Vibes (July 21-24, Bridgeport, CT) is just such a festival, and the man in charge is Harry Moran.

This affable, mustached festie veteran has amassed one of the most vibrant non-profit lineups of any music festival on earth. In doing so, he has helped turn Gathering of the Vibes into a positive reflection of the music community itself. We caught up with Harry on a busy day as another Vibes approaches.

What can attendees of Vibes expect in terms of non-profit presence, social conscious raising activity and things that just go beyond the music?

We’ve got a tremendous, diverse group of non-profits and one of the main things that we offer are some high visibility exposure in our non-profit village, which we call our sustainability village. We gave them a place to setup and talk to attendees right in the thick of things.

And who will be there?

In terms of some of the people we’ve got coming this year we’ve got the ACLU of Connecticut, more locally we’ve got Bridgeport Community Landtrust and the Regional Business Council. We’ve got both of our solar buses coming back. The Solar Motion Bio Bus which is a mobile bio lamp for kids and teens as well as the solar bus that does Solar 101 classes and charges peoples cell phones for free and bake solar cookies and all kinds of fun stuff. Connecticut Community Boating is helping us with our shoreline safety and security and at Seaside Park again. Connecticut Clean Energy Fund is there to promote awareness of clean energy programs that are available in Connecticut and elsewhere. Family Centers which is more of a social services, education, human services group. Deerfield County. For the first time this year we’ve got Greenpeace with us, which is gonna be very cool. They’re bringing a solar truck, which is gonna be involved with powering some of our Green Vibes World. So we’re excited to have them with us. New England Organ Bank promoting organ donation awareness will be with us. Another exciting first time attendee in terms of non-profits is Oxfam America, the international relief and development organization.

You forgot one.

And of course we’ve got our long time friends and partners at HeadCount.

That is quite the list. I had no idea it was so many. It seems that it’s a real priority for Vibes – almost that you’re trying to create an experience and a message that is really integral to the festival.

Absolutely. This has been something when my period of doing this with Vibes which goes back to 2002, this has grown from having 4 or 5 non-profits of a more local kind of nature to now this incredible lineup. I think people have really come to expect it to be a major integrated part of the event.

What do you think it brings to the festival?

I think what it brings to the event is that it lets everyone know that sure, a part of it is about getting together and having a great time, but at the same time we know that we live in a world where there are things that we want to change and we have tremendous power as a community to get together and bring about change.

Is the Vibes fan base receptive to it?

Yeah. I think of course it’s a large crowd and everybody is different, but we’ve seen really good traffic through the non-profit village – particularly over the last couple of years. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from the non-profits that they have people coming to visit them and that people are genuinely interested in what they are doing.

I can definitely second that. I think what we find is that the demographics at Vibes are fairly mixed – there’s a pretty large age range. You have everyone from the older Deadhead where social consciousness has been a big part of their life and they really identify themselves that way to the younger kids who are just really excited about all the new things at their disposal and all day we’ll have just different types of people and different kinds of conversation at the booth. I think you guys really have an audience that does buy into the bigger picture so to speak.

That’s great to hear that. That’s what it’s about and I think we’re getting more and more traction with that every year.

You mentioned so many non-profits – are any doing things that are particularly interesting or fun that fans should know about in advance?

Well one of the things that I should mention here would be the Terrapin Foundation which is the charitable arm of the event if you will is sponsoring our annual food drive. Last year we were able to collect over 5,000 pounds of non-perishable food items which went to Bridgeport Area food banks. And this year we’ve been really promoting this well in advance and we’re actually hoping to double that number. From the information that I’m hearing from our contacts at the food banks, times are still very tough and their shelves are pretty sparse, so this is gonna be a huge difference in terms of keeping food on peoples tables. So that’s a big part of the tangible outreach of the program.

So people coming to Vibes should definitely bring some canned food for the food drive?
Absolutely. We really appreciate that and our message is if everybody can bring one pound of food, it’s gonna make a huge difference in a lot of people’s lives.

What would you love to do in the future if everything continues to gel for Gathering of the Vibes what would you like to see happen next with the non-profit area?

Well I think that really what we’re doing is working pretty well overall and getting your feedback is encouraging too since that’s what we’re always trying to do is to reach out to people and see what’s working and what’s not working. I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel with anything. The one area that we’re working more and more on is working with our non-profits to do some cross promotion so we can help each other in terms of getting the word out. And I think that’s been becoming very effective. And of course with social media we’re able to do so much more than we were a couple of years ago.

Two years ago, Rothbury appeared to be on its way to becoming a mainstay on the festival circuit. Famed for the “Sherwood Forest”, its environmental bent, and incredible amenities, it was a unique, high-end and highly conscious event. But financial issues with the host resort (along with trouble attracting top headliners) put Rothbury on ice last year. Then co-promoter AEG Live stepped aside. No fear though. A new July 4th weekend festival is back on the same site in Rothbury, MI. Like Rothbury, it’s organized by Madison House, the company that manages String Cheese Incident. But this year there’s a new addition – the nation’s top electronic music promoter. We caught up with Madison House’s Jeremy Stein to discuss Electric Forest and the unique partnership behind it.

HeadCount: Why don’t we start with Rothbury. Two years ago you had what seemed to be a very successful festival and model. What happened between then and now and how did we end up with Electric Forest?

Jeremy Stein: Well you know there was kind of a little bit of a perfect storm there a couple years ago where that site had gone through bankruptcy. The old owners who were no longer on the site and a state trustee had taken over and new buyers had not yet surfaced and the site was nonoperational. So for the second Rothbury we really had to take over everything and that really wasn’t the original intention of doing this. The vision was to get the very rare situation where we were combining a resort with a festival in a way that we’d never seen done before – definitely not been done in the States before where so many camping festivals are essentially in a field. So this was a chance to have real infrastructure and lodging and all the things that come along with the Double JJ Resort. Then they go bankrupt and they weren’t operating. Combine that with difficulties in booking and our confidence in getting the lineup of the integrity that we wanted and a million other little issues that were going on at the time. It’s gonna be a lot better to protect the pristine nature of what we’re doing there then to put too much risk on it where we could actually hurt a really good thing. So that’s where we took the year and all the things we hoped that would happen, happened. New ownership came in, they got the place up and running again, and they’ve had a good year under their belt, they’ve really learned all the ins and outs of the resort. They’re fantastic to work with and we had great talks right away on how to get things restarted. And what made the best sense right now was to have an event like Electric Forest where there was – we had to have a lot of building out at the site and changes in landscaping so that we could do different sized events there. There are different templates for everything from a 5,000 person – 50,000 person event or more. And so this is kind of the first installment of that.

And where does Electric Forest fall into that 5 to 50,000 range?

You know we’re right now in the 15,000 range, it could certainly grow. That’s the beauty here. We can create a venue of almost any size and scale the show to it at anytime. So this one is more in the 15,000 range, we could easily call Electric Forest any size we want in the future, or we could bring back Rothbury, or we could even do both, or we could do something totally different. You know I always talked about different genres being able to go into the site as well. If anything I wanted to get things back up and running. We get e-mails galore about people wanting to go to the site pleading to do any show there and we felt the same way. It’s too great of a site to just let it lie, so it was time to try to pick up the pieces and make it happen.

Why did you decide to not call this festival Rothbury?

Well, that partnership was with AEG and AEG has gone through a lot of really good and positive changes, but they’re not involved with this event. And the Rothbury name is one that – the intellectual property on that is between AEG and Madison House and us so we had to change the name. But really this isn’t the same event with a different name, it’s actually quite different. And there’s a chance in the future Rothbury comes back.

What are some of the differences?

That’s a good question. There are a lot of little things. Some of them are certainly advances on Rothbury. We’re upgrading probably the most spectacular part of what Rothbury was – it almost made it famous on its own –the forest, and really pushing that to a new level. There were some really big headliners at Rothbury – I think there’s great bands involved here too, but there seems to be a common thread here that’s really a scene unto itself.

How would you describe that scene?

There’s definitely more cohesiveness to the nighttime music. I think a lot of folks that are interested in that dance-jam crossover; they know a lot of the players involved at night. Daytime I found what worked really well here, especially July 4th weekend is when we’re doing things like bluegrass, reggae, or just kind of straight on rock n’ roll for people just looking to have a good time. It’s almost like there’s two events – there’s the daytime and the nighttime and they take on very different characteristics – especially in the forest. Where daytime in the forest it’s either more of a relaxation hangout zone, it’s really social, people can just hangout, but nighttime it turns into something really mysterious and alive.

You’re partner in this is Insomniac, one of the top dance and electronic promoters out there. How did that come together and how will that be represented in the festival?

Yeah, I don’t know if there’s necessarily specifics that are one way or the other, it’s the Electric Forest team, you know? They’re traditionally more dance-oriented and I think that’s good to get a good critical eye when we’re all booking things together. I think marketing-wise it’s been a really good experience for everybody to be very experimental and trying a lot of new things, especially on the social-networking side. It’s hard to really delineate what we did and what they did. It’s really just the Electric Forest team at this point.

A lot of people probably don’t realize that some of the largest live music events in the country, or maybe the largest, are from your partners in this event and that the electronic music scene has totally blown up.

Yeah. I think that’s a big part of the story that I don’t think no one has really talked about. Madison House has some really rich history not only in the jam world, but also in camping events and special events and events like Rothbury or New Years events with String Cheese and on and on. And it’s a really grounded well-known group for what it has done in the past. And then you get Insomniac based out of Los Angeles and now expanded nationally and has either eight or ten festivals they’re working with right now - Electric Daisy in Vegas being the biggest one, which moved from Los Angeles. Last year that festival did 180,000 people and when you look at – it’s funny to me because when you look at events like Coachella or Bonnaroo that are similar in size and a lot of folks never even heard of Electric Daisy, yet it’s doing as many if not more tickets on a daily basis. I find that fascinating because in a way I remember those days too when some of the bigger events like Bonnaroo started in year-one a lot of folks were surprised by how many people came. That’s what happens when scenes grow, it’s almost like they grow independently and I think it’s really exciting to see that Electric Daisy’s moving to Vegas and it’s still having pretty much its best year. Bringing those two groups together, there’s a melting where a lot of what was termed the jam world over the last decade has kind of melted into this pot with the dance world where some of it mixes really well and other times the genres, the niche genres, are too specific and different. But unquestionably the crossover is tremendous and that’s a core reason that we got together on this show is that recognition that no one’s really crossed those worlds together. It’s been talked about, but no one has really gone all the way with it yet.

Are you concerned at all about the crowd, about drugs, about safety? Because I know those have been issues at some of the large electronic music events.

Not as much. We have incredible systems in place. We have a great history with Rothbury with the medical teams out there with the state police will work with us. There’s a really good system in place to ensure safety and honestly safety always has to be number one. I have a lot of things that are 1a, 1b, and 1c, but if safety isn’t in place you’re just not gonna be able to do events like this anymore. So, I always ensure that first. I feel great about it and I don’t really foresee that many issues. A lot of times when people look back on dance events histories with the word “rave” which I think is an antiquated word at this point for the people that don’t understand the differences between a lot of different events. But a lot of times the greater history with issues is actually an urban environment. Camping festivals create a whole different sense of social action of people getting together. It’s a longer stay, people are there for four days. It’s not this intense burst of energy around an event for five hours one night in the city, it’s a very different experience.

Rothbury had a very defined mission. A lot of it was about taking the shared energy of the music experience and turning it into something that drives the greater good and an environmental angle and socially conscious angle. Are any of those elements transferring over to Electric Forest?

Yeah, I think almost all of that is just a little understated this time around. Partially because when Rothbury came up four years ago a lot of what we were doing then, especially operationally for the sustainability, were relatively new. It wasn’t necessarily that we were the first innovators, but we might’ve been the first one bringing all of those elements into one place. And now it’s starting to become standardized practice to the point that it isn’t really a headline for folks to talk about. I’m saying standardized across not only just music, but you’re starting to see it in sports arenas and just large events in general – especially things like college football games. So I’m happy about that. Our practices for sustainability through operations – camping and waste management with compost and recycling, that’s all the same. Biodiesel in the generators, etc. There’s a difference this year, we don’t have the Think Tank on board that we had at Rothbury for some really interesting talks. I think that was more a specific vision of what Rothbury was about and if Rothbury continues we would get back to that for sure. Otherwise, what I’m most focused on is the social contact and the way people connect – partially with the camping, but definitely in the forest. There’s a lot that goes on in Sherwood Forest on this site day and night where a lot of people meet, a lot of lasting friendships, and even business relationships start. It became a place where almost anything is possible and we’re looking to foster that in a lot of different ways – I can’t talk about all of them, but a lot of them are related to our art projects that will happen in the forest – where it’s not just four days in the forest that is actually just the manifestation of 365 days of maybe virtual reality through your computer, but it comes actually to real life in the forest.

I can imagine one of the more fun things will be kind of watching the faces during Tiesto or String Cheese and you might be able to see that someone has really come from one side and how they react to the other.

I’ve done this before where we’ve experimented on a little bit of a smaller level. We did String Cheese New Years in San Francisco in a place called the Concourse, we did that two years in a row. Half the room was very dance/Burning Man oriented and half the room was kind of devoted to String Cheese and it was fascinating watching people cross between both worlds because by the end of it they were definitely all one.

In an era in which some combination of video screens, LED lights and lasers is standard fare at large concerts, there's still nothing quite as visually compelling as watching David ‘LEBO’ Le Batard paint at the side of the stage. Representing the self-proclaimed movement of “Postmodern Cartoon Expressionism,” an application of cartoon imagery combined with rich colors and unique linear composition, LEBO has been seen live painting with acts such as The Beastie Boys and Thievery Corporation, and has created official art work for the Langerado Festival and the Latin Grammy Awards.

Most recently, he took to the stage during the Disco Biscuits' performance at the Ultra Music Festival. His work that night is being auctioned to support The Philadelphia Young Playwrights, a charity founded by the late mother of the band's keyboard player, Aron Magner.

I caught up with LEBO to talk about everything from his creative process to the voting system in his home state of Florida. The conversation was as colorful as his distinctive work.

I recently saw you live paint for the Disco Biscuits at the Ultra Music Festival.  I was wondering how that collaboration came about.  I understand you have worked with them in the past on one of their album covers.

Yeah, yeah. I started out probably about 5 or 6 years ago through a mutual friend of ours for a benefit; I did a live piece for one of their shows in Fort Lauderdale. Then, shortly after that, I did a couple other things. I did something up at Camp Bisco with them, and the album cover for The Wind at Four to Fly. Over the years - basically, if they are in town or if I’m somewhere where they are performing, we usually just hook up and do something together.

How did you enjoy the Ultra performance? I was up front. It looked like you were having a lot of fun up on stage.

Yeah, for sure. At this point it's nice with the Disco Biscuits and with a couple other bands - Thievery Corporation and Spam Allstars and some other bands - I've done stuff with them for a while, and there’s a certain amount of looseness to it, and there’s just kind of a certain chemistry that’s just there inherently when you do something a few times with somebody creatively. So it kind of clears away any rough spots there might be otherwise, and it just allows for a real creative train of thought to be able to facilitate itself.

When you live paint, what’s your method? Do you have a plan before the performance, or do you just take the canvas and see what happens?

Over the years, I've tried to utilize a bunch of different approaches. The one thing I don’t try to do is to come with a really pre-set plan, because I've always felt that if you're going to do something live, it needs to really engage what’s going on live. It’s not about just showing up and doing what I would normally do in the studio, or something like that. So what’s seemed to work best over the last couple years is to have a rough blueprint of what it’s going to be, and to kind of have a general idea of it. But then also to let sort of the organic method take place and fuse that together. So then there’s a bit of structure and a bit of improvisation, and that tends to yield the best results. It's more fun doing it that way, and then the finished piece comes out more whole.

The live painting that you created on stage with the Disco Biscuits - I understand it is currently being auctioned to benefit the Philadelphia Young Playwrights (PYP). Can you tell me a bit about what this organization is and what it does, and how you got involved with it?

Yeah. That was actually founded by Aron’s mom, the keyboard player, and it's basically to encourage creativity in places up in Philly that normally wouldn’t get it. It brings in the schools, inner city schools and places that kids wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to exhibit that part of themselves, and it gives them a place to do that and gives them the means to do that, and to actually perform pieces and see them come to fruition. So this is basically what that project is, and it's something that I was glad to help out with, something that we've done together.

You can bid here in the auction online to benefit the Philadelphia Young Playwrights. The action ends on Tuesday May 17^th.

As a working artist, how do you feel about the need to defend art education in America?

In my experience I've never really relied on the government for anything and I don't believe in the government for anything. I think that anything they usually have their hands in kind of turns to shit. So even though it's unfortunate, I don’t think (a) it's a surprise and (b) I don't think they were doing that good of a job to begin with. I've never relied on anything from the government in my art career, and I didn’t go to public school. And even the school that I did go to, they were more private schools for working-class people, so they didn’t have arts programs.

So ideally, I think it would be great if we valued art and the resounding effect it can have on our intellect outside of the art world. It’s like learning how to play chess: you know, you may know how to play chess really well, but the advantage comes in that it helps all of your other modes of thinking. And I think art does that too. But to me, this country and the government, they stopped caring about people a long time ago, and art is just one example. We can go down the list - whether it's medicine or even our road systems, they just don’t do a good job. So while it’s disappointing, it's not surprising at all.

In the lead-up to the 2012 election. what issues are important for you, and what issues do you think the pubic should be aware of?

Well, I think we should have a third and fourth party, to begin with. I think the fact that we live in a two-party system is a joke. Is there nothing else you can think of? In this world, that’s not diversified anymore. And you have systems in like Italy and in other places where there can be too many parties, but at the same time, those parties - the way they work is by voting! So if you have 15 parties running, they have an election, and then the people vote for the party that they want to vote for, and then they have another election. And then it’s really, it’s really a voting system. And it’s flawed in its own ways, but it’s not as limited. Whereas here, people want to put it in black-and-white terms, and it's either you're Democrat or you're Republican. Well, I’m not either of those things; I've voted independent for as far back as I can remember. Because I never feel like either party speaks for me, and I think a lot of people feel that way. On the front end of it, I would love to see more diversity and more-informed voting. Rather than this kind of drive-through voting that we have in this country. People kind of want to encapsulate these kind of broad issues into sound bites, and that’s where it starts.

After the whole Bush debacle that happened in Florida, it needs to be revamped in a way that makes a lot of sense, but how that gets done I'm not sure. Because if you go to a method that really uses technology, then you can always get hackers that can mess with that system too. If you have, like, a ballot system like it’s been, we've seen the flaws with that. So I'm not really sure. My emphasis and what I focus on is really looking outside of the two party system, because that’s something that I just don’t think works anymore.

What role do you think art plays in affecting this change that you are talking about?

The obvious example in terms of art is the recent example of Shepard Fairey stuff with the President. But I think the cool thing about art, especially if you do public art - and I've done a lot of murals growing up and stuff like that - is that it really is one of the most democratic ways to deliver a message. So whether it's with voting or it's whatever you happen to believe in. We still have the right in this country to go and put an image on the side of a street, where everybody can see it and everybody can have an opinion about it. Nobody needs to pay for it to get something from it, and it engages. And then it’s open to whatever it’s going to be open to, but you can still deliver your message. So I think the role of artist is, is to take whatever it is they believe in, and put it out there so the public can see it.

Some of it should be in the gallery system and the museums, but I definitely think some of it should be available to people that aren’t interested in any of that stuff. Because to me, being an artist you should -- for my method, I'm not saying all artists, but in the way that I try to produce art, and that’s part of the reason I do live stuff too -- you should try to be egalitarian about it, you should try and reach as many people as possible. Because I wouldn’t just want to reach people on a street level either. I like to have my work sometimes in an intellectual forum, where I am able to discuss it and I'm able to validate it and show the thought behind it. As well as put it on the street and have nobody even knows who did it or maybe its signed or whatever but they don’t really know who I am.

So I think that art really plays an important role in communicating a message, and if that message happens to be about voter empowerment or diversity of parties or whatever it happens to be, art can definitely qualify.

Going back to the live painting for a bit - how different is it, painting in front of audience, from the studio experience? Is your form any different? Do you find yourself painting in a different style because you find yourself consciously aware of an audience?

For sure, I think the solitary studio experience was one that I’m way more comfortable with, because I've been doing that since I was like ten years old I guess. When I was a kid, I had a drafting table in my room, and I worked at it all the time. So that was my studio then, and to me it’s kind of like a sanctuary in a way. And because of it, for me it tends to be a more analytical experience, and it has the gut sort of feeling to it as well. The predominant feeling is more cerebral, and I'm doing a lot of research, I'm developing a lot of sketches. It's really more about craft and really honing whatever physical skills I can, and then layering message and meaning into that.

Whereas to me, the live music part is taking all of that experience and just kind of putting it on the back end, where you are still able to rely on it but you are really reacting more from a gut level. And to me that just draws out something different; I tend to work a lot faster.

I really try, by and large, the pieces that I'm done with that I'm doing live, I generally bring 'em back into the studio and kinda tighten them up so they look more refined. Whereas it might take me a week to finish a painting in my studio, when I do a live piece I'll work on it for an hour - maybe two hours at most - and then I'll bring it into my studio for maybe two or three hours and its done. A lot of times, I think the live pieces end up being more successful then studio pieces and vice versa. It’s a real nice symbiosis. It’s a way to sort of, its like being in bamboo rather than oak. Rather than doing something the same way all the time, I constantly try and challenge myself to do things differently and by doing that my craft becomes much more fluid.

Can you elaborate bit more on the message that you're trying to convey through your studio work these days, the works that you're taking your time on in the studio, and putting a lot of thought into them?

I think there’s an underlying message in what I do: it's a message of hopefulness. I really try to explore that in as many ways as I can. One main way that I do and that I'm doing now as well is really studying natural principles. So that can be studying botany, or organic science, or astronomy and really trying to extract the things that make us who we are by studying those different things and magnifying those things. The things that make us the same, basically, verses the things that make us different. Which is what I think I spend a lot of time doing. When I in my teens, it was all about, you know, "Well how am I different?" My way of thinking is like this, and these people's way is like that and so forth. So over the years I've kind of had a real strong penchant for philosophy, for the past 15 years. And I think the more I have come closer to that the more I have become interested in the things that make us the same, and particularly the positive things that make us the same, and those are the things I tend to really explore over and over again.

So what other musicians have you performed live painting with?

I have been doing it now pretty actively for about ten years. I'd say some of the highlights on my personal list would definitely be the Disco Biscuits, Thievery Corporation, Beastie Boys would be up there, Burning Spear, Willie Nelson, The Dead, Femi Kuti would definitely be up there, Arturo Sandoval - a real famous trumpet player that’s still alive that goes back, I mean Dizzy Gillespie got him out of Cuba in the 50s. Les Claypool. I've done stuff probably three different times on Jam Cruise, which has been cool. I'd says the Jam Cruise experience in general, too. I'd almost put that as an entirely different entity from what I've done.

Is there anything else that you would like to say that you want the world to know?

I’m really grateful to be able to practice what I have been practicing since I was a kid. And to see it go through all of its different manifestations, and to be able to really have direct contact with people of like minds through my craft is a really humbling thing.  It's something that I'm only more grateful for the more that it moves forward. It’s nice because it never stagnates. It always is kind of changing and processing in different ways and it keeps me very vital and keeps me young in a way. But at the same time I feel like I get a little more enriched spiritually and mentally with each thing that I do.

Honest, techy, and unabashedly "heady," Headstash debuted about a year ago as a way for DC jam and electronica fans to find shows and each other. In the brief period since, it has quickly become an underground voice for the most passionate enthusiasts of bands like STS9, The Disco Biscuits, and countless up-and-coming acts. Today (er, 4-20), Headstash reveals it's 2.0 version, with new regional message boards and a special archival page dedicated to each concert it covers.

The founders, Alan VanToai, Andrew Duch, and Nick Rhodes bring just the right mix of entrepreneurial spirit and love of music to this endeavor, which isn't paying the bills but could become a lasting institution if all goes well. While they say they're not directly trying to compete with anyone, they are clearly trying to up the ante in the world of online music media.

Headcount: So, what is each of your roles with Headstash?

Alan VanToai: I’m doing mainly outreach, partnerships, marketing, branding, design, and some of the social media kind of stuff like that. And also just brainstorming general direction and strategy kind of stuff.

Andrew Duch:  I’m pretty much in charge of all the technical stuff. So basically building up the website, just managing our back end infrastructure and supporting either Nick or Alan with the content or the marketing. So anything along those lines. Also hopefully doing some mobile development. So pretty much anything technical and I’ll guest write a News-Nug every once in a while too.

Nick Rhodes: I’m in charge of the magazine and the news section.

So how did you guys get to meet and how did you get to start Headstash?

Alan: We were in a student group together, the [University of] Maryland Music Business Society. And we’d all kind of interacted in different capacities. Towards the end of our time at the University of Maryland we wanted to create a project that we could carry on after college into the real world with us. So Duch [Andrew] and I started working together on that, came up with a name.

Andrew: And we all went to a lot of STS9 shows together, so…

(All laugh)

So the music scene brought you all together?

Andrew: Yeah, I think that’s definitely how Alan and I connected was both through the music scene and the business school. I think we both had that relationship, which is kind of rare to a certain extent. I know a lot of people in the music scene and I know a lot of people in the technology business, but it’s kind of rare to find somebody who has the same interests on both fronts – so it was a really cool match.

Alan: I love you man. (High fives Andrew)

(All laugh)

So when you first envisioned Headstash and what it was gonna be, is it the same as what it is today? What was your original vision?

Alan: Actually, when we first started brainstorming, the first idea was a blog with a message board attached to it. Duch [Andrew] was the one who took that idea and was like “well what you actually want is like a magazine with a social network engine attached to it.” So as I originally pictured it, it was one thing, but it’s definitely become the reality that Duch [Andrew] imagined when Duch put his spin on it and it’s just been working to that.

Andrew: Yeah, I think the original goal was to write a very simple blog and just building a brand around this blog and this message board. And then I obviously wanted news content, but Nick made that reality. Without him, we really wouldn’t have anything. I wasn’t a journalism major, Alan’s not a journalism major, so I think I had what I wanted in my head, but Nick basically created it. And I guess my part was then more transition to thinking about the technology behind it and how were gonna integrate with social media and the big point of 2.0 is really trying to rethink how fans can interact via the web and via technology – how fans can interact and talk about the bands and about the shows and communicate and this whole idea you know of couch tour that you see on Phish message boards and all those kinds of things. We’re trying to build that up and I think there’s a lot of room to grow in that area.

You mentioned the launch you have coming up on April 20^th. Why don’t you guys tell me a little bit more about some of the features that you’re adding, some of the things that you’re building upon for that launch?

Andrew: You know I think with the original Headstash we had this idea, ok, we’re gonna kind of replicate what other people have done – we’re gonna build a message board, we’re gonna try to integrate some social media to some extent and Facebook-like features. But we realized, we really need to take it a step further and think about how do fans actually want to interact and talk about shows and how do they want to connect and do they want to talk to their friends or do they want to just talk to anybody online who’s a Phish fan and those kinds of things. This 2.0 what we’re really trying to do is redefine how a user interacts with the show. The show is such a point of focus, right? We’re gonna have a shows database essentially and every show is gonna have its own page. And essentially what we want that show to be is its own little universe that has media connected to it – photos and videos and has discussion connected to it and also has connected to it what friends are going and what other fans are going from the community and all those kinds of things. In that way, before the show it’s just one entity, it’s this thing where people are talking about the show and get hyped up about it, during the show it becomes this living organism that set-list updates come in, photos come in, videos come in, people are talking about it. And then after the show you kind of have this representative archive of what that show was in terms of the people that went, in terms of the people that were talking about the show and reviews that came after it.

Alan: Also, on a simpler level we’re also doing the regional boards. We have the message board section on our website that hasn’t really gained much traction. There’s a lot of homogenous communities like The Disco Biscuits fans and the Phish fans are on Phantasy Tour. Umphrey’s fans are on Umphreaks, Sound Tribe fans are on The Lowdown. So there are a lot of separated communities, isolated communities. There’s no reason why anybody would leave those message board communities and come to Headstash based off bands alone. So we want to try something in the jam scene, which is segmenting by region. So we’re gonna start in five cities that we’re already popular in and hope to gain some sort of traction with regional communities as well. And we think in doing that – you know a lot of New York heads can for example, New York heads can rally around the New York boards whether its for the Disco Biscuits, or for actually Younger Brother last week or anything that’s happening regionally. So we think that that is something that is not being done right now in the jam scene, so we’re looking forward to that on 4/20 as well.

Do you foresee yourselves sticking to the jamband genre going forward?

Nick: Absolutely.  That’s one of the most important things, sticking with something that we think our readers really care about, are passionate about.  You know, we’re not trying to dictate them to like this band.  We’re not saying, look at this band, you may not like them now, but you will.  We want to cover things they like, they want to read about, they’re interested in, they’re passionate about.  Stuff like that.

What is it about the jamband community that drives your personal passion?

Andrew: The tunes. [laughter]  I think for me, it kind of became more apparent in college than it did before that no matter what to some extent I was going to have to go down that normal life path of getting a job, having that 9-to-5 thing going on, one day having a family and that kind of thing and the jamband thing for me is kind of this alternate reality. It’s this other part of my life that I can kind of escape to, that I feel like nobody can really touch because I feel really connected to the music and everybody there is so friendly, much more open than the people you meet in real life.  And to have that duality is just awesome.  I know I can go there and it’s this place where I can be the other half of myself to some extent.  And talk to other people who love music, live, improvised music, who like to have a good time, go out and have adventures and everything.  You’re going to festivals, camping out for four days, and you’re not at all connected to the outside world, you’re sort of shutting it all off and living in this little contained universe.  It’s something that, going to festivals for years and years now, I still find extremely exciting and I’m always looking forward to the next one.

Nick: And on a more superficial level, I think I speak for all of us when I say that the music is actually the music we think is the best out there right now.  It’s stuff that we really love listening to.  And I think a lot of the jam scene, there’s not a lot of people who just casually listen to it.  When people listen to it they get engaged, they’re passionate about it.  I think it’s really innate with the jam scene to get so enveloped in it and love it so much for all the reasons I’ve said.

Yeah.  Do you expect to make money on this, and is it the entrepreneurial spirit that brought you to this point, or is it just the love of the music, and you don’t really care if you make any money?

Alan: We were just talking about the kind of luxury we have where we’re not pressured to make this a business in any way.  It’s got the luxury right now of not being anybody’s support like – one day.  We’re all working on this, we’re our own outside investors so we’re not pressured for profit right now, and we have our own investment in it.  We do see that kind of potential and we’re obviously excited for that, but we’re also enjoying that…  We know people who are working on entrepreneurial projects right now that they’re doing for a career, and it’s a very hard pressure to be in.  Headstash has the benefit of not.  But we’re trying.  What do you think, Nick?  I definitely want to hear what you think about this.

Nick: I actually don’t have another job right now because I’m not in the business world.  I’m in the journalism field.  It’s not like I’m even trying.  Ultimately I’d like to make this my career, but am I feeling pressure?  A little bit.  But it’s not like I’m hounding them every day to be like, let’s make this a business, let’s make money, it’s really not about that, and I think that’s important.  That’s why we could ultimately succeed, because we’re not feeling that pressure, because we’re not rushing things, we’re not making rash decisions based on what’s going to make us a quick buck.  That’s not what the scene’s about, that’s not what we’re about, and ultimately that’s not what Headstash is about.