Song and environmental awareness will be sharing the stage in an acoustic fusion when Murray Gable headlines a Greenpeace benefit concert at the Howe Sound Inn and Brew Pub on Saturday (April 11).
The lead singer and songwriter for Prince George band The Pucks, Gable is slowing down the threesome's folk vibe to help raise money for Greenpeace initiatives around the world. Meanwhile, Greenpeace Great Bear Rainforest campaigner Eduardo Sousa and oceans campaigner Jessie Schwartz will be speaking on issues particular to the West Coast.
Fighting for the environment through music has been a common practice for Greenpeace ever since it was a fledgling organization with Joni Mitchell headlining a 1970 benefit concert in Vancouver to help launch the organization's first activist voyage, said Schwartz.
"It's just something that brings people together and is a really great way to highlight the issues while appealing to people's emotions and their passions as opposed to just the facts," she said.
"Music is something that comes from your soul and when you're using music to connect to environmental issues it reaches a different level, I think."
Gable was prompted to perform the benefit concert by his daughter Katie, who has been living in Squamish for about six years. She wanted to combine her interest in environmental issues with sharing her father's music, she said.
"My idea was taking a musician and pairing him with a cause. Everyone benefits from it," she said.
Gamble takes on environmental themes in some of his music and has always had a deep appreciation with the outdoors while living in northern 小蓝视频, he said. The concert allows him to do what he can to give back to the natural world.
"I've always thought that if I was ever rich I'd do something for the environment, but lately, I've been thinking maybe I'm never going to get rich," he said with a laugh.
"So I'll just go ahead and do what I can."
Gable's biggest gig came when The Pucks played on the main stage in front of more than 50,000 people at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria. The group is releasing its fourth album at the end of April.
Local bluegrass/folk band Venus in Furs, made up of Ryan Kobylka and Chas Schlitt, are opening the show.
Tickets cost $10 and half the proceeds go to Greenpeace initiatives. One topic Schwartz will be speaking about is the group's Out of Stock campaign, which educates people on the effects of commercial fishing and fish farming on wild stocks. There are 15 species on Greenpeace's "red list."
"We're just trying to get people to be aware of what they're buying and to not buy species on the red list," she said.
"It's basically talking to people about their choices when they go to the supermarket: what kind of seafood are they buying, where is it coming from, how is it being fished and what sort of impact is that seafood having on other communities, on the environment, on other species."
Doors open at 8 p.m. and show starts at 9 p.m.
For more information on Greenpeace projects like Out of Stock visit www.greenpeace.ca.
