When twin brothers Blake and Joel Atchison had been rising up in Nashville, an digital music scene did not exist.
The town is named an iconic bastion of nation music, however at the moment, the phrases “Nashville” and “EDM” had been hardly ever utilized in the identical sentence.
The Atchison twins spent their childhoods taking part in within the river and visiting file retailers, till they snuck into the first-ever Bonnaroo Music and Arts Pageant. Little did they know, they’d go on to play a pivotal function within the growth of Nashville’s EDM tradition because the progressive founders of Deep Tropics.
With backgrounds in sustainability, they all the time harbored a imaginative and prescient for fusing the worlds of environmentalism and music. In school, they studied agriculture, inexperienced vitality and metropolis planning and even acquired an EPA grant to run a biodiesel venture that powered the Appalachian State buses.
Blake first started producing digital music occasions in Nashville in 2008 and went on to create the manufacturing firm Full Circle Presents, which organizes exhibits that includes music in home, drum & bass and different sub-genres of digital dance music.
The “Decompress” occasion sequence, which has hosted the likes of John Summit, Justin Martin, J. Worra and extra, started on this time. At first, the events occurred each month to 6 weeks. Now, they run thrice a month.
“Consistency really helps the growth of the scene,” Blake Atchison tells EDM.com in an unique interview. “Now, we have multiple options for shows to go to, like a normal city. But, it hasn’t always been that way. Even 10 years ago, that was unheard of.”
“I think what makes Nashville really unique and special with the culture here, is there’s a scarcity of shows and parties in this scene,” he continues. “So, I feel like everyone here really appreciates it. I think artists feel it. They’re surprised when there’s a scene and when there’s people that know their music. It’s a really cool time in the city.”
Full Circle Presents now throws between 200 and 300 exhibits every year. All through the method of cultivating an EDM tradition in Nashville, one of many greatest hurdles they confronted, Blake recollects, was an absence of correct venues for the digital exhibits.
“We were going into rock ‘n’ roll rooms, bringing in extra supplemental sound, video walls and lighting, then having to sell the agent that this is an acceptable place for their artists to come play,” Blake defined. “Now, we have venues like The Office and Cannery Hall, with a Void sound system in the small room, a PK Trinity in the main room and The Hennessy sound system in the middle room. It’s unbelievable to see the growth in production value with the venue ecosystem.”
The factor that makes all of it price it? Group, the brothers agreed.
“That is what makes our organization special, that we are all like-minded and we’re doing this for the love of the music, and for the love of the community,” Blake says with a smile. “To see the diversity in Nashville and the richness of the culture, how it’s growing, that’s what fires us up and what makes it all worth it.”
Austin Friedline
The primary concepts of designing a music competition got here to life in 2016, a time when town “didn’t have a proper electronic festival,” Blake stated. “It rose out of necessity for Nashville culturally.”
Blake and Joel spent every week within the Northern Californian woods, discussing every little thing from expertise to sustainability. After the artistic brainstorming session and a “serendipitous meeting” with John Hanna, a Nashville-based DJ and investor, Deep Tropics was born.
“Nashville is Music City, it’s more than a country city,” Hanna tells us of why Nashville was the proper location for Deep Tropics. “Country has taken the limelight, but even back in the day, Jimi Hendrix was writing his album here. People outside of the country lane have historically existed here. Just over the last 10 years, with the influx of different cultures, we’re starting to see a rise in much more than just country music. We’re happy to help that come about.”
Moreover bringing a large-scale digital music competition to Nashville, the place a thriving scene was now craving a much bigger occasion, the crew’s aim was to deeply infuse environmentalism into its bedrock. Sustainability has all the time been on the core of the imaginative and prescient for Deep Tropics; now, it’s thought-about “the greenest festival in North America.”
Final 12 months, Deep Tropics changed most of their diesel turbines with electrical turbines and batteries. Their aim for the 2024 competition is to ditch them utterly and energy the occasion absolutely on renewable vitality along with a modicum of ancillary grid energy.
In line with Deep Tropics, the competition’s crew diverts a staggering 96% of competition waste from landfills. In addition they yearly offset their carbon footprint through a large tree-planting initiative.
The important thing to this eco-friendly success is by meticulously stewarding the competition’s sourcing, the crew defined. They solely use supplies which can be compostable—with none single-use plastics—they usually additionally reuse as a lot materials as potential, even on the subject of artwork and decor.
Via a partnership with a recycling enterprise known as Terracycle, “impossible items” like microplastics and cigarette butts are capable of be reclaimed. Different sustainability efforts at Deep Tropics embody an “infinity cup” program by which attendees make use of a chrome steel clip to reuse their cup for all the competition.
In addition they applied an eco-band program, which affords prizes whereas benefiting nonprofits and serving to plant 10 bushes by a partnership with a company known as Timber for the Future. All year long, Deep Tropics additionally affords alternatives for individuals to plant bushes themselves.
c/o Deep Tropics
“This year, we’ve taken a couple trips to the R.A.N.C.H. Project so people have an opportunity to actually get their hands dirty and plant trees and work on a farm,” Joel Atchison tells us. “That’s what gets us the most excited, is providing opportunities in our own community. We provide outlets for people to connect with other nonprofits and organizations that are doing cool things. So in addition to promoting artists, we’re also promoting organizations that are doing amazing things in the community.”
The competition’s sustainability initiatives are all made potential by Blake and Joel’s group, Deep Tradition.
“Deep Culture supports harm reduction and safety and champions consent and boundaries,” Joel stated. “People really act differently when there’s zero trash cans on-site, there’s not trash all over the ground. Our intention, to promote personal growth and holistic wellbeing within the event, is definitely a distinguishing aspect from other festivals.”
Deep Tropics hosts a wide range of dynamic workshops and wellness experiences, like ice bathtub activations, runway exhibits and clothes swaps in addition to discussions about regenerative agriculture and sustainable trend.
“We really go all out to make sure there’s plenty of places for people to rest and get educated. We see Deep Tropics as a bridge between party and purpose,” Joel gushes. “We push for sustainability, wellness, anything that is going to inspire people to connect, build community or champion values like consent, equity, human health and resilience. Those are the ideas that we’re certainly trying to get across.”
When requested why it is essential for occasion organizers to advertise sustainability, Joel says that music festivals characterize particular probabilities to attach with individuals and foster change.
“There’s this mainstream narrative that we are separate from nature,” he defined. “When we realize that caring for the Earth is connected to caring for ourselves and our communities, there’s a huge paradigm shift that happens. If there’s no planet, there’s no people. The science is out—we have a major social and ecological crisis going on and so it’s just our responsibility. And I think it’s a really unique opportunity for the festival promoters and event organizers to incorporate that. You’re catching people and at a moment where their minds and their hearts are maybe more open than they will be for the rest of the year. So, what a great opportunity to educate.”
c/o Press
The crew shares a long-term imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Deep Tropics, which they see increasing right into a week-long convention in Nashville, just like Miami Music Week, SXSW or the long-lasting Amsterdam Dance Occasion.
“We want to go beyond this festival model, which is a great example of making this weekend event as sustainable and regenerative as possible, and go in beyond that, to make Nashville the most sustainable city that it can be,” Blake stated.
The crew is taking a step in direction of that aim by advantage of Deep Tradition’s Sustainability Summit, which is scheduled to happen on the Thursday earlier than Deep Tropics 2024. The occasion will moonlight as a convergence of trade professionals and authorities officers throughout totally different sectors, from meals and farming to infrastructure.
“We really want to showcase regenerative solutions and innovation,” Hanna says. “There’s a lot of great stories to tell. So, we’re going to take a crack at our first annual Sustainability Summit this year and see if we can inspire Nashville.”
The Deep Tropics crew leaves us with some recommendation for any occasion organizers who hope to undertake sustainability at their very own exhibits and festivals.
“Move beyond the mental block of the cost-prohibitive nature, and understand the responsibility that we have, and the power and inspiration that the music industry has,” Blake urged. “From a sponsorship level, people probably wouldn’t be involved or give the kind of money that they do, if we weren’t doing some cutting-edge stuff. I think people gravitate to that on a sponsor level. With a reusable cup program, there’s great organizations that have been doing that for a while now, where you’re creating a revenue stream for the festival. In turn, they can offset the cost of composting and recycling. It’s a journey and we are figuring it out as we go along, but we’re always down to share ideas and what we do with other organizations.”
For Joel, the largest recommendation is to embrace the facility of collaboration.
“Definitely hit us up,” he stated. “We bill ourselves as the greenest festival in North America, not because we want to be the best, but because we want to inspire people.”
“The message that I’d like to give to festival producers is, people care more than you think they do,” he provides. “By taking these steps, it will inspire a different type of behavior. There’s not another place that generates as much inspiration as the music industry. So by making a difference at an event, you’re going to be inspiring a lot of business owners and inspiring the world at large. If we could make the music industry across-the-board more sustainable, I think the whole planet will follow suit.”
Deep Tropics 2024 will happen August 16-17 with performances by RL Grime, Kaskade, Elderbrook, PEEKABOO and lots of extra. Tickets can be found right here.
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