BYU NewsNet - Folk band shakes Utah with ‘Utahpia’

Folk band SHAKE YOUR PEACE! is wheeling through Provo — on bikes.

The band is currently on a 600-mile bike tour of Utah, and will be stopping in Provo this Saturday.

SHAKE YOUR PEACE! was formed in San Francisco in 2004 by Gabe Dominguez, the lead vocalist, originally from Orem. The band is one of the first to tow all their gear by bicycle and use a pedal-powered PA system.

What is it that motivates these musicians to haul 200 pounds of camping gear, CDs, food, water and music equipment on their “Xtracycles,” as opposed to touring on a bus?

“When we’re bike touring, there’s no more ‘life onstage’ and ‘life off-stage’— it’s all just living our art,” Dominguez said. “A bike-touring musician doesn’t only feel free when they’re onstage, they feel and are free all the time. You just can’t experience your surroundings when you’re locked-up in a four-wheeled can.”

Alongside freedom, the band holds a reverence for the environment and “inventive musicianship,” Dominguez said.

This is their fourth annual bike tour through Utah, and this time they have dubbed their tour “Utahpia Now!”

“Utahpia is a vision of a more utopian and sustainable Utah — a vision shared by anybody who’s ever imagined bikes where cars and car accidents now are, gardens where parking lots now are, and orchards where The Orchards Shopping Center now is,” Dominguez said. “It’s a vision of Utah that has danced through the head of almost every Utahn at some point in their lives, whenever they’ve looked around and seen something that could be made better — more just, more peaceful, more sustainable and more beautiful.”

SHAKE YOUR PEACE! fans echo the band’s sense of environmentalism, freedom and fun.

“I went to one of their shows last year, and loved that their sense of environmentalism came through in their music,” said Andrew Leondardson, a senior from Longmont, Colo., majoring in economics.

All band merchandise is made with eco-materials, and shirts are printed with non-toxic ink.

Aside from eco-merchandise, the band has a wind- and solar-powered Web site, plants one tree for each CD made, and packages their products with soy ink on 100 percent post-consumer recycled cardstock.

“The band’s goal is to, in the words of the great folk singers, ‘get happy,’ ‘walk the freedom highway,’ and ‘make a living, not a killing,’” Dominguez said.

The first of their three shows starts at 11 a.m. at the Provo Library. From 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. they will be at Pioneer Park, and from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Rock Canyon Trailhead Amphitheater. All shows are free and open to the public.