Eco Lopez Interview, ex vocalist of The Ginger Ninjas band
During 2007 the Ginger Ninjas became the first band in the history of rock and roll to tour by bicycle, unsupported by vehicle. On a 8.000 km tour from North of San Francisco to Chiapas (Mexico).
They promoted transportation cycling while they explored the best horizons of the United States and Mexico also pedal- generating electricity, using their own bikes to power a hyper – efficient sound system. The system allows the band to play off-grid anywhere. When they played their songs the audience also participates getting on stage to pedal the bikes to make the sound. The group started with 15 people, the band members, the lead vocalists Eco Lopez and Kipchoge Spencer and a chello player “Chello Joe”, including the support crew people that carried extra stuff and an engineer who designed the pedal power system. By the end they were 8 members, they did everything by themselves with no manager, they worked as a community. The system and touring style enable them to avoid generating close to 60,000 pound of CO2, of 95% of what a similar sized band creates in a tour. They did all by their own body and effort. And are looking forward to make it a World tour. Sooner you will have the movie of this great experience, every movement of the first tour was recorded by the award-winning Argentine director Sergio Morkin. We got in touch with Eco Lopez, ex vocalist of The Ginger Ninjas band, she showed me her world and this fantastic experience, where they challenge the impossible and were able to make it so real.
Let´s see her story:
How was the beginning period of the band?
“I met this guy named Kipchoge Spencer, when I lived in Hawaii and he had a band called The Ginger Ninjas and I went to see the band because I really liked the name Somebody told me that the band Ginger ninjas was playing, so I went to see them. I really liked what he was doing I thought he’s a really great poet. So we connected musically immediately, we played music together; it was like instinct the voices blended really beautifully together. He told me about this idea that he had, to go on bike with no support vehicle, just bicycle, from California all over the way to Mexico”.
How many kilometers?
It’s 8000 km, from a little bit North of San Francisco to all the way to Chiapas, that was the idea that also called my attention, It was like a very good adventure, I didn’t understand how we could carry all the instruments until I saw the bike, he was with this company Xtracycle (utility bicycles, a company started by Spencer) and it’s a bicycle that it´s made to carry over 200 pounds It’s a really magical bike It’s like a long bike. it’s really good invention, you can carry people, you can carry your guitar you can carry anything you want. And when I saw the bike It started to make sense: “you can do this”. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do this, but I never doubt it doing it. Even dough I wasn’t sure if my body could do it, I was like let’s do it! Let´s go!
Do you have any fears before beginning this experience?
I wasn’t really scared, but I was more interested than scared, I never really got scared, and I thought maybe my body will be tired; I was worried that I could physically do it. I moved to California with the band and we played some shows together and we started training and moved to the hills of California and I rode my bike for a year, and that year we started getting sponsors and we made a record so that we would have the CD to sell. The name of the record is the Pleasant Revolution which is the name of the tour, It’s LP only seven songs and we made the seven songs in California together and we kept preparing for the tour, calling people getting the bike, just like that.
Tell me about your music, what kind of music do you play?
I never changed the music, my dad is a musician, he is a writer from Uruguay, “Pato Lopez” a very underground a very good musician, so I was raced with music my hole life, I feel I have the ear for it, that I never really, really trained, until I stopped acting and then I started making music, It was like it flurried from there, It’s like passion hard that comes out, songs that I write that comes from somewhere else. I like to experiment with electronic music and I like Jass a lot, very like soft infusing, so that the rhythm in the beat can be really strong that the vocals are very soft infusing. I like the contrast of a very strong beat and a woman. When I joined this band they were like a Rock and Roll band I just kind of stick my vocals in and I sang in Spanish a lot, I could mix the English with the Spanish and I kind of put my stamp on the song and stared discovering my style, being in that band just made me stronger, because when I played with the rock band as a star you have to be very strong, as a woman you have to be very present, so I started discovering my style with the band and now I’m going to do tours by my own, that is what I wanted to do.
Tell me any great experience that you lived in this tour.
The whole tour is a life changing, from the beginning to the end. It’s very difficult when you do a tour or you have an adventure it’s like you have to download all the information, it’s so much information and so many things happened. But I can say when we went from Toluca to Mexico City, Toluca it’s a town and there’s a hill and a super high way and when you go up the hill is like 50 k up hill and fuels and gas and cars, I didn’t think I was going to make it, I said: “I hate this I don’t want to do this anymore”, we spend like 6 hours going up hill, and then when we got to the top of the highway there are two: la “libre” y la “cuota” in Mexico, and there are five huge lanes! “Ruumm rumm”! (making the sounds of the cars passing by) So we get to the top of the hill and It’s like 8 bikes and we take the whole lane of cars, 8 bikes is like one car. So we take the whole lane that is the way that you want to do it, you don’t want to ride by the side, you want to be very present, but I was really scared! And I was the only woman in the whole group and I didn’t want to be the one in the back because you make a small circle and you don’t want to be the one in the back near a car so I stayed in the middle. When you have a lot of weight your bike moves a little bit, so you have to put your knee against the rail and you have to hold it because it kind of shake, so my bike shook at one point and my heart was biting very fast, I could hear my mum saying “If you die I´m going to kill you!”…and we went through a highway tunnel and we merged all the way down to Mexico City It was an unforgettable moment that only the people that are with you really understand. And when we were at a red light we all stopped and we looked at everybody with crazy eyes, couldn’t believe what we just did! Some times you sleep under a bridge or sometimes you sleep in a huge mansion.
What´s the thing that you learned the most in this trip?
The thing that I learned the most in this trip is that the power of manifestation it really, really exists and the mind is so powerful that when you put your mind to something the Universe response. It’s sounds crazy but it works. I have an example: when we were in “Baja California” we were staying at this horrible beach, it was really ugly we have no where to sleep, it was like under a bridge, it was really uncomfortable. So we went to have “Margaritas”. The drummer and I sitting there having Margaritas and there is a Tour guy book, and the cover of the Tour guy book had this beautiful beach shack, that it looks very pretty with the Ocean and the blue sky and there is this surf boards and sand; We looked at each other and we say: “Where is that place I want to go there!” and we laugh about it. A month later we arrived in Todo Santos and we were playing a show, and this woman arrived and she was like an Indigene women wearing a white fur coat and she offered us to stay at her home. And again I had to convince everybody to do this… I really trusted this woman, I had an instinct that I wanted to go to her house. So we go to her house, to this beautiful ranch, two blocks from the sand like a beautiful place, I’m walking to the beach and I see the shack that was on the cover of the book, it was her beach shack, her beach shack is the shack from the cover of the Baja California Mundo. It’s the mind, you know. The drummer and I couldn’t believe it… In this trip kept happening like that…the more open you are the more receptive the Universe is to you, so that is the really powerful lesson to me… and sometimes you have to be very clear with what you want, if you are confused it’s harder, but if you are clear like this is what I want and every possibilities are completely open, to leave, to go, to make money, everywhere is anything to be make and there is family everywhere in the world, from here to China there is people that you are going to meet that even if you don’t speak the same language you are going to feel like they are your family.
Why did you decided to leave the band?
Well I’ve been on tour for almost a year and doing a tour it’s really intense, you are living with people in your face all the time and it’s intense on your body, on your spirit and everything, even ought it’s really magically how it’s turns on you. So after the tour ended I just had a vision of coming to Uruguay, kind of settling down my body a little bit, downloading all that information so that it could go back into the world and do something like that again. It’s hard to make it a way of life because you need to find the balance. So when the tour was over I decided to come and find my own balance. It’s hard, I still think about the bike, I can still hear the spinning of the wheels, I like the adventure! I go for the webpage and I could see that they are near Chiapas and the cool people they are meeting, stuff like that. But I thought that was a really good opportunity to find my own voice and trying in a band that I wasn’t completely in love with. So being in Mexico and understanding the audience, understanding the music gave me a lot of strength to have the guts to be able to do my own thing. So that kind of my inspiration for leaving was to be able to give myself space, so that I could hear everything that I have to give, to offer musically and that would be so mixed with the bike and the tour. I needed to take some space so that I could understand what I was going to do next.
