GreenNote unplugs Seattle Center for sustainable festival

Before inviting national powerhouses to take Bumbershoot's stages in September, the Seattle Center will welcome local music unplugged in July.

The first, all-acoustic GreenNote festival will take place on July 24 and 25 and aims to be a more earth-friendly, sustainable music festival.

"Seattle and Portland are at the forefront of the environmental movement in urban spaces," says Egan Orion, producer and festival director of GreenNote. "It'd be great to combine what's great about the Northwest from an arts perspective and where it's at from a principle perspective."

The first show and anchor event is a $25 benefit concert featuring Amos Lee, Star Anna and Ian Moore. Proceeds for this show will go to the Sierra Club, People for Puget Sound and People's Waterfront Coalition.

But the GreenNote festival is not meant to be just a benefit to check off what Orion calls "the environmental to-do list"—after all, the rest of the festival is free. Rather, Orion says, the goal is to be "celebrating sustainability" and practicing it through things like composting, guiding food vendors toward using green practices and powering partly through solar energy.

The festival also plans to host green gardening demonstrations, speakers and a fixed gear bicycle polo competition as a way to celebrate bike culture.

"Parts of sustainable culture are thriving in Seattle, but not everyone knows about them or appreciates them," Orion says. "This is just a chance to highlight those things so they get exposed to more people."

The music is certainly reason enough to go, however. Look out for the rolling, soft-spoken folk of Rocky Votolato, catchy indie rock of Grand Archives, EMP SoundOff! winners Great Waves and one-woman harp folk act Hooves and Beak. Only headliner Amos Lee comes from outside the Northwest.

"There's a big local component that's essential to sustainable culture," Orion says. "No one is flying in an airplane except Amos and his manager."

Prior to the festival, GreenNote will be sponsoring Seattle Lights Out on July 10, where participating restaurants will prepare three-course meals from locally grown, sustainably raised ingredients and serve it up by candlelight alongside live music.

"Really we're just connecting artists, people and some good practices together," Orion says. "If we're able to throw a successful acoustic music show, raise some money for environmental non-profits and be able to change festival standards in Seattle to make them a little more sustainable, that's a success to me."

Mary Pauline may be reached at entertainment@su-spectator.com