Lime Cordiale: In a Shade of Lime Green
Hailing from Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Lime Cordiale are bringing more than their sun-soaked surf rock to Adelaide this April. Beneath the cheeky grins and peace signs, the duo are serious about the planet, launching a climate action music festival, Lime Green, proving that music can be environmentally mindful. We caught up with guitarist Oli Leimbach to chat about the fest and why Adelaide was the perfect place to host it.
Interview Millah Hansberry // Image supplied
You’ve launched Lime Green festival for April 18 in Adelaide! What inspired you to create the festival with such a focus on sustainability?
We’ve been trying to bring down our carbon emissions with all of our touring for quite a few years now. We've found that after booking, it's too hard to convince a festival to switch to a battery when it's not your festival; they often don't know anything about it, so are scared of blowing up their PA system or lights or something. Then the only things that we can really do is donate money or try and get an electric car every now and then. So, we were like, “okay, we need to do it ourselves, create a case study so we can show that you can run a festival on a battery.” It's been done on smaller scales, but never to this extent.
We’re pretty excited to be the guinea pigs. At Harvest Rock festival, you helped plant trees to offset the festival’s environmental impacts. Are these the types of initiatives you’re constantly looking to support?
Absolutely. The people that put that together, FEAT., are involved in this festival. We've been working with them for years, putting a dollar from everyone's ticket sales from Australian shows towards some sort of climate initiative.
It's really cool doing it with FEAT. because you can choose what you're passionate about. It’s overwhelming in the climate space because you're like, “oh shit, the Great Barrier Reef's dying, there's an algal bloom in Adelaide, we want to close some coal mines,” – there's too much to cover for one person. With FEAT., we choose what we want to do each tour; we've planted rainforest trees up around the Byron area, we’ve put money towards converting a bus to biodiesel in Europe, we’ve supported Surfers for Climate. This one will be towards the algal bloom. You only need to do one thing, but if everyone was doing just one thing, it would make the biggest impact.
Could you talk us through how you’re making this festival as green as possible?
The main thing is that it’ll be battery-powered – the first big event that we know of in Australia that's doing this. We’re also trying to look at every aspect of the festival. You see too many of these festivals leaving behind this apocalyptic scene – cheap Kmart tents left behind blowing around, rubbish everywhere, there's no sort of recycling – that's not what we’re going to do. One of the biggest emissions is people's travel to festivals as well, so we want people to get on board and get there in some alternative way, like the train or the bus. We're going to drive there in electric vans from Sydney. It’ll be an adventure!
The Conservation Foundation Australia is one of our big supporters as well. We've got Adam Bandt, who’s their CEO and used to be the Greens leader. He's doing a DJ set, so that'll be mad.
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Lime Green Festival features The Dreggs, aleksiah, PASH, Adam Bandt DJ set, Tonix and Sticky Beak. What made these acts the right choices for the lineup?
It's so cool to have so many great locals on the lineup. It makes sense on a footprint side of things to have more locals! Outside of SA, The Dreggs are a pretty massive band and we've never played with them before – it’ll be very cool doing that for the first time. And aleksiah is blowing up! We just saw her support Maisie Peters in Melbourne – that was mad.
Why did you decide to land this in Adelaide?
Adelaide is leading the way in Australia with climate action. It's kind of crazy; The City of Adelaide is all run on renewable energy and you guys were the first ones to ban those tiny plastic fish you have with your sushi rolls. As you’re doing everything before everyone else, it makes sense to have it in Adelaide. We wanted to support the cause and bring more attention onto the algal bloom. I don't think people even know about this in other cities. It’s getting compared to the bushfires as a major climate event, yet it's just this hidden thing because it's under the ocean. It’s devastating. We could be selling more tickets if we had it on the bloody Gold Coast or something like that, but it's cool doing it somewhere else. We know so many artists skip Adelaide and you guys get so passionate about being skipped. We wanted to give you a bit of attention.
We’ve heard some whispers that you're putting finishing touches on your upcoming fourth album. Are the rumours true?
They are. The only thing that we're waiting on right now is Louis' vocals. He’s been on vocal rest because we’ve had a hectic year last year - he got sick and he kind of kept losing his voice. So, the only thing that we haven't done on the album is Louis' final vocals. As soon as he gives us the green light, the album gets finished. Then we can start releasing! So, that'll be exciting.
Will this be marking a new sound for you?
It's really hard to know from our perspective. I'm always like, “is this good or is this just more of the same?” But then, often people go like, “whoa, this is a sick new direction”. I'm very excited to hear what people think.
Are you planning on playing anything new on April 18?
We will have a few surprises for sure...
Catch Lime Cordial at Lime Green Festival at Adelaide UniBar Cloisters on Saturday 18 April. Tickets on sale now via axs.com.
