St. Charles Musician Organizes Farms Rock! Concert for Organic Farm

Adam Gillespie, 29, is the 2012 Artist-in-Residence for EarthDance Farms, an organic farm located in Ferguson, MO.

During the day, the New Town in resident works as a lawyer and in his free time, he enjoys writing songs, pulling weeds and spending time with his wife Katrina and family. 

St. Charles Patch: How did you get involved with EarthDance Farms? 

Gillespie: I got involved through Katrina. She was in their apprenticeship program. That's their main program for educating people about sustainable farming methods. (Editor's note: EarthDance Farms offers people interested in organic farming a chance to apprentice on the farm for a year. Learn more here.)

I got roped in through that and got interested myself. I applied to be their Artist-in-Residence. I’m a musician, I do signer-songwriter stuff.

So I offered to write some song sspecificaly tailored toward what EarthDance does, and to organize a benefit concert for them. That’s what we’ve been workign on for the last few months. 

St. Charles Patch: Tell me about the benefit.

Gillespie: It's at the Old Rock House. They generously let us have the venue free of charge. All tickets are $10 to get in. Proceeds go to EarthDance. The idea is to feature local music as well. It’s as much about the music as it about EarthDance. I wanted to get local bands who make original music. They are all lending their talents and were generous to donate their performance. A lot of local businesses have donated, it has a whole local vibe to it — business, music and farming.

St. Charles Patch: Were you interested in organic farming before this?

Gillespie: Katrina’s interest in it rubbed off on me. I had volunteered on the farm a little bit and that had started my own affection for what EarthDance does. It has an acronym: Food Art Relationships Music and Sustainability. The music part struck me- I hadn’t necessarily seen a whole lot of musical aspect of it. I thought my contribution might be to emphasize the music aspect of what EarthDance does. 

St. Charles Patch: Tell me about the songs you are writing as the Artist-in-Residence

Gillespie: It's been different. Ususally when I write a song, it’s a very selfish activity, I’m thinking about myelf and my own feelings. It can get kind of boring really. It’s kind of neat to have a specific purpose and something bigger than myself to write about. I wrote a song about farming, a song about bugs. 

As far as organizing the event I had never done anything like that before.

Gillespie's band, Black Bears, will perform for the Farms Rock! event on Saturday.  

Event details: Aug. 11, Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th Street, St. Louis, MO 63104. Doors at 6:30pm. Music from 7:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. 

Featuring local bands, local beer from 4 Hands Brewing Co., raffles and more. Bands include The Bible Belt Sinners, Black Bears, Scarlet Tanager, Peach, Fight For Midnight and Barn Animals.  Check out the Facebook Event Page.

Do you know someone we should feature for our occasional 30 under 30 column? Email Kalen Ponche at kalen.ponche@pach.com with your suggestion.