152

Minneapolis, Minnesota's Cloud Cult continues to take a unique path to success in the indie rock world. Over the past couple years, the band has aligned themselves with an eco-friendly corportate sponsor, Esurance, which has helped foot the bill for their tours and has placed their music in it's commercials. But money never seems to be the focus for Cloud Cult. In all that they do, they attempt to go as green as possible. It is as important to them as the actual music they create. Maintaining a minimal ecological footprint is always the first focus of lead singer Craig Minowa. He runs an organic farm, where from his basement, he records much of Cloud Cult's music - the recording studio is built from recycled and salvaged materials and all parts of the farm are powered by geothermal power and wind energy. His label, Earthology Records, is also attempting to take all their album sales digital to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Minowa foresees show patrons simply bringing their iPods to the merch table at shows and downloading the latest Cloud Cult record straight to it. While touring in support of their The Meaning of 8 album, the band planted ten trees for every 1,000 records sold. All their CDs are made from hand-cleaned reused jewel cases with recycled cardboard and paper. Their tour van even has solar panels. Cloud Cult's live shows incorporate some amazing multimedia and visual elements. The band often features two live painters producing work during the show. The paintings are auctioned off after every performance. In an odd turn, seemingly just as they seem to be reaching a larger audience, the band plans to take a hiatus, maybe even a permanent one, to focus on family in 2009. In late April of 2008, the band stopped by our, then, 91.7 WEEM radio station at Pentleton Heights High School to record this session. It was also one of our first to be videotaped. A local newspaper photographer requested to be on hand to document the event, but he just didn't seem to get that we wanted him to stay the eff out of the shot! While we appreciated the coverage, it was pretty frustrating. We also had an a/v sync error, that at least for the moment seems to be unfixable, during the third song, The Story Of The Grandson Of Jesus. So, we have all three songs from the session for download, but only two videos.