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Image courtesy: Dar Williams
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Singer songwriter Dar Williams has been a staple on the modern folk music scene for years. Her distinctively heartfelt vocals, reflective lyrics and rich acoustic guitar playing tell stories that resonate with her many fans. Music is in Dar's soul, and environmental activism is what fuels it.
Dar is aiming her earth-loving commentary towards solutions that face the future of our planet. I sat down with Dar to talk about what's currently rocking her environmental core - a passion for living local.
Planet Green: You seem to be jazzed about how your personal and musical life has "gone local." Are you a locavore?
Dar Williams: I'm not sure I'd call myself a locavore. Maybe I'm a local, but a new kind of local. I heard someone in an NPR story report that this planet would be sustainable if everyone lived the way they do in Europe, but not the United States. I thought of those pictures of people on old bicycles with French bread and flowers in their baskets. I thought, "That's not so bad. That's just hanging out where you are and eating food that's grown nearby with your friends." So that's what I'm working on. There's got to be a lifestyle attached to sustainability, and "European" has a very comfortable feeling. Your life has to be the better for the smaller footprint, or else how can you live it, let alone advocate it? And my life has gone local.
PG: How is the impact of living local a better choice for you and those who care about the environment?
DW: I love the fact that I live in a village where I can walk my son to school, walk to the supermarket, library, bank, and post office. I've been gardening with my neighbors, and the inadvertent advantage of this is that now most of my friends are in walking distance of my house, too. Gardening and farmer's markets also lead to another inevitable European life-enhancer: attention to regional and seasonal food. Beyond that, I am very committed to French wine, but that, alas, doesn't count as a plus. Also, I don't have a bike. I DO take the train into New York City a lot, instead of driving, and that's made my life better in countless ways.
PG: Does your music support the localvore movement?
DW: I wouldn't say I write environmental music, but what I do in my life feeds my music. In 2008, I had a CD release party for Promised Land at Spire Art Studios in Beacon, close to home. The booklet inside the CD has art by different Hudson Valley artists. Their works were hanging at the show. They were stunning. A real star in the food world, Felice Ramella, also a neighbor, went local and seasonal on the menu, and we had huge bouquets of white hydrangeas from my yard. It was amazing. It felt like the crossroads of the locavore movement, friendship, art, and music. That's got to figure into whatever resonates with me and inspires my music. None of this is dry politics for me.
PG: Speaking of the political, your philanthropy for causes you believe in seems to go hand in hand with your music. Since you've used your stature as a musician to spread the word about causes that matter to you (Dar's auctioned guitars for the Institute for Musical Arts, sang to help Barack Obama get elected as well as local congressman and fellow musician, John Hall, raised money for Habitat for Artists and Ecoartspace, sang at local school benefits and recently took to the stage for Pete Seeger's birthday benefit for the Hudson Valley Sloop Clearwater at Madison Square Garden), what other ways have you supported causes?
DW: In 2005, instead of doing fundraisers per se, I did something called The Echoes Initiative. Local groups of my choosing (and it was fun to learn about them and choose them; mostly community gardens) received some funds, tabled in the lobby, and, most importantly, sent a representative up on stage to talk for a minute during the concert. A minute was all it took. It was the highlight of the year for me. Hearing these people speak about all this cool stuff and seeing their communities rally around them. Now I try to incorporate things like this into concerts as I go. I also do a certain number of straight-ahead fundraisers. Out of guilt, the right words from persuasive friends, or love of the environment? I would say...yes.
PG: Lately, what's been fueling your environmental activism?
DW: I just listened to an audio book of David Owen's Green Metropolis, and it kicked my ass! One of his main points is that green is a context, not a single landing point. If you're not looking at your overall lifestyle, especially how you use your car, you're probably kidding yourself. Being the narcissistic "I am the Microcosm of All Things" that I am, I shouldered his message pretty heavily. To ease the burden, I decided to go back to my European model: I determine what is most sustainable by what I call "positive proximity," both physical and social. Am I walking distance from what I need? How much do I like my neighbors and does this create a chain effect of shared resources and local projects? What is the quality of life in my city and can every age and ability do well there without cars or McMansions?
PG: So, does that mean moving back to the city?
DW: Owen suggests that if you want to make things more sustainable, cheer for dense urban centers, like New York and improve the quality of urban services like senior centers. I'm not all the way there. We live in a single-family home on a tenth of an acre. But, the energy of the town goes into and out of a pedestrian village center, occasionally getting sucked out to the outskirts by the need for a new toaster oven or computer cable.
PG: What other things can you do to offset for not living in a dense urban area?
DW: Speaking of our tenth of an acre and the gardening we do on it, Owen also slashes the tires on localvore sanctimony, shaking his head at the sprawl and wastefulness of decentralized food production, especially when it's used to justify leaving the beautifully functioning urban hives of high-functioning cities. I will meet him halfway. I'll recommend "Food Not Lawns". If you're going to have some property, if you're living in a place that has a certain amount of dirt and you're going to landscape it anyway, go ahead and landscape with food. Perennial herbs and raspberry plants are just as pretty as most ornamental plants, an excess of tomatoes fuels community dinners and neighbors who like you, and what you grow in basil will pay for all your efforts in about four months. Kale, too! It's awesome for you. But better than that, you can do a whole month of touring and come back to it thriving. It's practically indestructible, and very pretty. Okay I'll stop. Can you tell I never had a garden until 2004? Passions of the newly converted...
PG: Is there an area of green that challenges environmentally-minded musicians?
DW: One inevitable admission I can't get away from is the huge carbon footprint of plane travel and car rental when I travel to gigs, but there is a lot of human scale industry in my work that I....well, rationalize to myself. I don't have a large entourage on the ground. Most of the industry around a traveling artist's work is non-material and non-traveling.
Also, if we are going to peg an environmental value to a neighborly, pedestrian town with a strong Main Street and great local communication networks, then where I play factors in to the big picture. I could really rhapsodize about the revamped, revitalized old theaters I've played in that bring cafes, markets, bookstores, and galleries within a three block pedestrian radius. I've seen this everywhere from Skowhegan, Maine to San Francisco. If we see this phenomenon as reliably sustainable and important, I need to do less carbon calculating and more vocal warm-ups so I can sell out more of these shows. Ha! Fancy that.
Check out Dar's music and videos.
More Green Music:
The Green Musician: The Industry's Guide to Sustainability - an Interview with Ryan Mintz
Greening The Music: Solar Studio To Debut In New England
5 Reasons New Yorkers Are The Most Eco-Friendly People
