How the Team Behind Deep Tropics Festival Infuses EDM Into Nashville With a Sustainable Twist

When twin brothers Blake and Joel Atchison were growing up in Nashville, an electronic music scene didn't exist.

The city is known as an iconic bastion of country music, but at that time, the words "Nashville" and "EDM" were rarely used in the same sentence.

The Atchison twins spent their childhoods playing in the river and visiting record shops, until they snuck into the first-ever Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Little did they know, they would go on to play a pivotal role in the development of Nashville's EDM culture as the innovative founders of Deep Tropics.

With backgrounds in sustainability, they always harbored a vision for fusing the worlds of environmentalism and music. In college, they studied agriculture, green energy and city planning and even received an EPA grant to run a biodiesel project that powered the Appalachian State buses.

Blake first began producing electronic music events in Nashville in 2008 and went on to create the production company Full Circle Presents, which organizes shows featuring music in house, drum & bass and other sub-genres of electronic dance music.

The "Decompress" party series, which has hosted the likes of John Summit, Justin Martin, J. Worra and more, began in this time. At first, the parties happened every month to six weeks. Now, they run three times a month.

"Consistency really helps the growth of the scene," Blake Atchison tells EDM.com in an exclusive interview. "Now, we have multiple options for shows to go to, like a normal city. But, it hasn’t always been that way. Even 10 years ago, that was unheard of." 

"I think what makes Nashville really unique and special with the culture here, is there's a scarcity of shows and parties in this scene," he continues. "So, I feel like everyone here really appreciates it. I think artists feel it. They're surprised when there's a scene and when there's people that know their music. It’s a really cool time in the city."

Full Circle Presents now throws between 200 and 300 shows each year. Throughout the process of cultivating an EDM culture in Nashville, one of the biggest hurdles they faced, Blake recalls, was a lack of proper venues for the electronic shows.

"We were going into rock 'n' roll rooms, bringing in extra supplemental sound, video walls and lighting, then having to sell the agent that this is an acceptable place for their artists to come play," Blake explained. "Now, we have venues like The Office and Cannery Hall, with a Void sound system in the small room, a PK Trinity in the main room and The Hennessy sound system in the middle room. It's unbelievable to see the growth in production value with the venue ecosystem."

The thing that makes it all worth it? Community, the brothers agreed.

"That is what makes our organization special, that we are all like-minded and we're doing this for the love of the music, and for the love of the community," Blake says with a smile. "To see the diversity in Nashville and the richness of the culture, how it's growing, that's what fires us up and what makes it all worth it."

The first ideas of designing a music festival came to life in 2016, a time when the city "didn't have a proper electronic festival," Blake said. "It rose out of necessity for Nashville culturally."

Blake and Joel spent a week in the Northern Californian woods, discussing everything from talent to sustainability. After the creative brainstorming session and a "serendipitous meeting" with John Hanna, a Nashville-based DJ and investor, Deep Tropics was born.

"Nashville is Music City, it's more than a country city," Hanna tells us of why Nashville was the perfect location for Deep Tropics. "Country has taken the limelight, but even back in the day, Jimi Hendrix was writing his album here. People outside of the country lane have historically existed here. Just over the last 10 years, with the influx of different cultures, we're starting to see a rise in much more than just country music. We're happy to help that come about."

Besides bringing a large-scale electronic music festival to Nashville, where a thriving scene was now craving a bigger event, the team's goal was to deeply infuse environmentalism into its bedrock. Sustainability has always been at the core of the vision for Deep Tropics; now, it is considered "the greenest festival in North America."

Last year, Deep Tropics replaced most of their diesel generators with electric generators and batteries. Their goal for the 2024 festival is to ditch them completely and power the event fully on renewable energy in addition to a modicum of ancillary grid power.

According to Deep Tropics, the festival's team diverts a staggering 96% of festival waste from landfills. They also annually offset their carbon footprint via a massive tree-planting initiative.

The key to this eco-friendly success is by meticulously stewarding the festival's sourcing, the team explained. They only use materials that are compostable—without any single-use plastics—and they also reuse as much material as possible, even when it comes to art and decor.

Through a partnership with a recycling business called Terracycle, "impossible items" like microplastics and cigarette butts are able to be reclaimed. Other sustainability efforts at Deep Tropics include an "infinity cup" program in which attendees employ a stainless steel clip to reuse their cup for the entire festival. 

They also implemented an eco-band program, which offers prizes while benefiting nonprofits and helping plant 10 trees through a partnership with an organization called Trees for the Future. Throughout the year, Deep Tropics also offers opportunities for people to plant trees themselves. 

"This year, we've taken a couple trips to the R.A.N.C.H. Project so people have an opportunity to actually get their hands dirty and plant trees and work on a farm," Joel Atchison tells us. "That's what gets us the most excited, is providing opportunities in our own community. We provide outlets for people to connect with other nonprofits and organizations that are doing cool things. So in addition to promoting artists, we're also promoting organizations that are doing amazing things in the community."

The festival's sustainability initiatives are all made possible through Blake and Joel's organization, Deep Culture.

"Deep Culture supports harm reduction and safety and champions consent and boundaries," Joel said. "People really act differently when there's zero trash cans on-site, there's not trash all over the ground. Our intention, to promote personal growth and holistic wellbeing within the event, is definitely a distinguishing aspect from other festivals."

Deep Tropics hosts a variety of dynamic workshops and wellness experiences, like ice bath activations, runway shows and clothing swaps as well as discussions about regenerative agriculture and sustainable fashion.

"We really go all out to make sure there's plenty of places for people to rest and get educated. We see Deep Tropics as a bridge between party and purpose," Joel gushes. "We push for sustainability, wellness, anything that is going to inspire people to connect, build community or champion values like consent, equity, human health and resilience. Those are the ideas that we're certainly trying to get across."

When asked why it's important for event organizers to promote sustainability, Joel says that music festivals represent special chances to connect with people and foster change.

"There's this mainstream narrative that we are separate from nature," he explained. "When we realize that caring for the Earth is connected to caring for ourselves and our communities, there's a huge paradigm shift that happens. If there's no planet, there's no people. The science is out—we have a major social and ecological crisis going on and so it's just our responsibility. And I think it's a really unique opportunity for the festival promoters and event organizers to incorporate that. You're catching people and at a moment where their minds and their hearts are maybe more open than they will be for the rest of the year. So, what a great opportunity to educate."

The team shares a long-term vision for the future of Deep Tropics, which they see expanding into a week-long conference in Nashville, similar to Miami Music Week, SXSW or the iconic Amsterdam Dance Event.

"We want to go beyond this festival model, which is a great example of making this weekend event as sustainable and regenerative as possible, and go in beyond that, to make Nashville the most sustainable city that it can be," Blake said.

The team is taking a step towards that goal by virtue of Deep Culture's Sustainability Summit, which is scheduled to take place on the Thursday before Deep Tropics 2024. The event will moonlight as a convergence of industry professionals and government officials across different sectors, from food and farming to infrastructure. 

"We really want to showcase regenerative solutions and innovation," Hanna says. "There's a lot of great stories to tell. So, we're going to take a crack at our first annual Sustainability Summit this year and see if we can inspire Nashville."

The Deep Tropics team leaves us with some advice for any event organizers who hope to adopt sustainability at their own shows and festivals.

"Move beyond the mental block of the cost-prohibitive nature, and understand the responsibility that we have, and the power and inspiration that the music industry has," Blake urged. "From a sponsorship level, people probably wouldn't be involved or give the kind of money that they do, if we weren't doing some cutting-edge stuff. I think people gravitate to that on a sponsor level. With a reusable cup program, there's great organizations that have been doing that for a while now, where you're creating a revenue stream for the festival. In turn, they can offset the cost of composting and recycling. It’s a journey and we are figuring it out as we go along, but we're always down to share ideas and what we do with other organizations."

For Joel, the biggest advice is to embrace the power of collaboration.

"Definitely hit us up," he said. "We bill ourselves as the greenest festival in North America, not because we want to be the best, but because we want to inspire people."

"The message that I'd like to give to festival producers is, people care more than you think they do," he adds. "By taking these steps, it will inspire a different type of behavior. There's not another place that generates as much inspiration as the music industry. So by making a difference at an event, you're going to be inspiring a lot of business owners and inspiring the world at large. If we could make the music industry across-the-board more sustainable, I think the whole planet will follow suit."

Deep Tropics 2024 will take place August 16-17 with performances by RL Grime, Kaskade, Elderbrook, PEEKABOO and many more. Tickets are available here.

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