Deep Tropics Brings Environmental Responsibility

Anyone who has ever been around at the end of a club night, rave or festival knows this inherent truth: Humans are gross. When the sun comes out or the house lights go up, no ground score can minimize how trashed a location is once the party stops. Walking to the exit is an exercise in not tripping over water bottles, food wrappers and every variation on VapoRub you can imagine. Bodily fluids (and occasionally solids!) appear in places they should never be. When people gather to celebrate, things get grimy. And gooey. And, “God, what did I step in?”

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if we, as party people, could leave the world a little better after the last notes fade out? That’s the question electronic music festival Deep Tropics, returning this weekend to Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, is trying to answer.  Billed as “the greenest festival in North America” and promoted with a stack of sustainability initiatives as deep and exciting as its lineup, Deep Tropics makes environmental stewardship as much of a priority as partying hard. 

For festival co-founder Blake Atchison, it is the summation of 18 years of promoting electronic music events in Nashville, carving out a niche for these sounds in a town where neither outside nor inside forces expect them to thrive. The first Deep Tropics took place in 2017 — a relatively recent development in that span, but still almost a decade ago. While Atchison has earned the right to be jaded, when I reach him ahead of the festival, he is bubbling over with excitement in a way that belies his professional experience.

“The show’s mental — it’s fucking sick,” says Atchison. “I’m pretty fired up, man. This is year seven and [I’ve] got a great team that’s come together, and eight directors, and [standard operating procedures] and systems and admin — just treating this thing like a real business. So it’s more support than I’ve ever had, and I’m pretty pumped up. Think we’re going to sell this fucker out too.”

When I first met Atchison, his company Full Circle Presents was essentially him and whatever friends he could rope into handing out flyers as the clubs emptied out. Like Music City’s electronic scene itself, Full Circle was small and scrappy, fighting for respect in a town that was not ready to fully embrace its cosmopolitan nature. Despite Nashville’s long relationship with electronic music — from when Gil Trythall dropped Country Moog in 1972 to the ’90s legendary underground rave scene and beyond — Dubya-era clubs weren’t exactly champing at the bit to book a DJ and let the bass blast. The fact that Deep Tropics has made a massive public space in the heart of the city its home is evidence of just how far the whole scene has come.

“Deep Tropics was born out of a desire to create something that’s more than just a party,” Atchison says. “The whole program is insane, and I think it just creates another level of meaning for attendees. The show has a life of its own at this point, and I think Nashville’s grown up throughout that time, and I think this scene is finally here to support it. It’s been beyond blood, sweat and tears. It’s been a journey. [We are] booking artists from six continents that are in the electronic realm. We’re trying to do something culturally in Nashville that is a bit different.”

One component is a Sustainability Summit on Aug. 14 at East Nashville’s Studio 615, which will include presentations on environmental topics as well as music, food and drink. But the core of the team’s efforts revolve around the main festival site.

“Recycling, that was a priority from the jump,” Atchison recalls. “Composting is where we started, but now there’s zero single use-plastics. We don’t have trash cans on-site. We have a partnership with TerraCycle where we’re recycling the impossible items like cigarette butts and microplastics. We are carbon neutral. We do tree planting to offset all of the energy use. We have eco surveys we send out to everyone — staff, vendors, artists — that track our carbon footprint and then offset it, and a lot of local initiatives.”

Beyond the carbon credits, recycling and composting, cultural conversations and creative endeavors, there is in fact a big, huge party happening. From stage designs to security details, Deep Tropics aims to make the experience of environmental stewardship as much fun as getting your face melted while you ride the rail. The lineup slaps from top to bottom, and it’s a mix of big names and gonna-be-big names from across the globe. Saturday headliner Subtronics has one of the hottest tours of the summer, and recently announced an October appearance at Las Vegas’ King of Enormodomes, The Sphere. Meanwhile, the undercard is stacked with see-’em-now, brag-later acts like Amémé, LF System and Maddy O’Neal — not to mention local party starters like Afrosheen and the back-to-back combo of Prince Slender and Figman. There are after-hours shenanigans as well, at late-night parties scheduled for Cannery Hall and Studio 615.

“We believe that caring about the planet is also caring about oneself,” Atchison says, “and that’s kind of this vibe that we’re trying to just infuse into every aspect of the festival, whether it comes to art or the materials we’re using. When you’re at a festival, your hearts and minds are just more open, I feel like. So I think we inspire people in that moment. It seems to have a huge impact.”