INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Hot Buttered Rum

w/ The Giving Tree Band
The Music Mill, 3720 E. 82nd St.
Friday, May 9, 9 p.m., $15, 18+

Hot Buttered Rum formed while potential band members were hiking in their native High Sierras, and their specialty is jam-band rock played with bluegrass instruments. The band also names their buses. Their current bus, Seana, may be the most special yet, a 40-foot, 1983 TMC Crusader II MC-9 with a Detroit Diesel 8V-71 engine that has been converted to run on vegetable oil. Seana will bring Hot Buttered Rum to the Music Mill, where they’ll be joined by the similarly green-friendly Giving Tree Band.

It makes sense that Hot Buttered Rum takes its place in our eco-system seriously. Back in the early part of this century, the band was figuring out how to reduce their carbon footprint before most people had even heard of the concept. In 2003, Hot Buttered Rum bought their first veggie bus off of eBay, coined it Buster and has been educating fans, industry people and other bands on the virtues of petrol-free touring ever since.

Mixing pleasant originals like “Return Someday” and “Limbo in Lovelock” with covers of the Beatles, Grateful Dead and, um, Leo Sayer, Hot Buttered Rum takes delight in offering up intricate arrangements that rely on the tight interplay of guitarist Nat Keefe, mandolinist Zac Matthews and fiddler Aaron Redner.

Meanwhile, Chicago’s Giving Tree Band is set to record in June what press materials are calling the “world’s greenest album.” They’ll be recording in the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center in Baraboo, Wis., the first carbon neutral building certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program of the U.S. Green Building Council. From there, CD packaging will contain 100 percent recycled materials, and to offset emissions created during the shipping process, 10 trees will be planted for every thousand CDs sold.