There are a lot of organizations working hard to enlighten the music industry on environmental and social causes but in the past year Rock The Earth has been at the forefront of the movement. There’s a good reason, too. Since music biz veteran Shawn Kilmurray took over as the Denver-based group’s executive directors he’s used his extensive connections and years of industry experience to make advocacy easy.
With high-profile appearances at major festivals like Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, partnerships with several big-name touring acts, and support from the Gibson Guitar Corporation, Rock The Earth has turned saving the planet into a cause music fans can seriously get behind. Before speeding off to yet another concert, Kilmurray spent some time sharing some of his ideas about activism and rock and roll.
How did you go from selling records to saving the environment?
I was an executive at Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. But I got laid off last year because the record industry is in freefall. When there are no record stores and the biggest retailer of physical product is Amazon that doesn't inspire people to get behind bands. So I was looking to utilize my 18 years in the business without going back to the sinking ship. I could probably get another job in the business but it's another seat on the Titanic. So I was contemplating doing something in the green space. I'm on the executive board of the Sierra Club in New York, Surfrider and the US Green Building Council. It's something I believe in but I didn't have the time to be involved until I was out of a job. I was also inspired by the election last year. I got myself involved and organized a concert in Long Island for Obama. The fact that I could do that inspired me. I pulled it off and started thinking this is maybe where my energy and passion and connections can pay off doing good versus just helping a corporate bottom line.
Why did you want to get involved with Rock The Earth?
It’s a five-year-old environmental advocacy group where I felt like I could merge my professional values with my personal passions. I was also into the entrepreneurial aspect of growing it. The personal payoff is getting it to the next level by bringing big players like Gibson to partner with us. My goal is to turn it into a Sierra Club for the music industry.
What are some of the things you’ve accomplished since taking over in January?
The thing that took priority was building brand equity. We want it to be a household name in the music community. We want to do things that consistently put our name out there but in a way that isn't forced. So one of the things was presenting the Going Green Film Festival at Bonnaroo, which featured environmental documentaries. We also did the mobile booth recycling at the Outside Lands Festival.
At Oustide Lands you offered music fans incentives for dropping off their old cell phones. How did that go?
I wanted to create something simple that fans could do. One of them that was easy and had a lot of ammunition was collecting the phones. The average life of a phone is 9 months but less than one percent of the 1.3 billion phones out there gets recycled. I wanted to create something that would make fans going to a concert bring their phones so I got Music Today to offer 20 percent off their merchandise for every person that brought a phone. And Gibson gave me a guitar for each of these big festivals to award to one of the people that brought a phone.
How did you get involved with Gibson?
Gibson is a very philanthropic company. They give money to various charities but Rock The Earth is an instant synergy partner for them because we work with artists and we’re at concerts. We've gotten guitars to auction off. We’ve gotten tickets to the Gibson Amphitheater to auction off. That’s the community I'm looking to build. Gibson is helping us and they’re getting good karma back. They're gathering eyeballs. It's like a pebble in a pond that creates bigger and bigger ripples as it grows.
Are the musicians you approach generally supportive of the cause?
They're almost always receptive. Most people in the music world are forward-thinking and want to try to do something good. There are exceptions to the rule -- Ted Nugent and Toby Keith would probably punch me out and call me a hippie. But I'm not a hippie. I'm a businessman. I feel a burning passion inside me. Walking away from allowing a company to put cancer in millions of people is worse than the mass murder. That has really got my goat and made me want to forge ahead and do everything I could. The music business side of things, because it's my background and I used to market these bands, it's like developing platforms that can bring companies together and they can also benefit from the sexiness of doing good. It's a perfect fit. It's positive publicity. It also helps to market their product instead of just shilling a new record. They attract more people by giving to charities.
What keeps you motivated?
When I was a little kid growing up in San Francisco my dad would take me backpacking through all these national parks. So I have a thing about preserving our wilderness areas. It touches me in a spiritual way. Even when I moved to New York and I became a yuppie I still had an inspiration for nature. Seeing the disregard for the environment was not cool. It touched me in the same way I would see somebody getting mugged. I felt like I had to do something. It was on my watch. I want to make sure the same mountains I backpacked with my dad will still be there by the time my 4-year-old could make that hike.