Michael Franti of Spearhead on TH Radio

TreeHugger: How are you feeling about people who are being brought on board? His choices for his cabinet?

Franti: I could look down the list and say, "Oh, I'd pick a different person here, a different person there," but the thing is, he's trying to surround himself with a team of people who are from both parties. He kept Robert Gates on from the Bush administration as the Secretary of Defense. At first I was kind of like, we're trying to end these wars, why are we going with a guy who's been perpetuating them? But then I realized there's nobody on the ground who knows more about it than Robert Gates does right now. So if Barack can work with him and his staff to get up to speed as quickly as possible, then that's a good thing.

So if you go down each of the people, you can probably suggest somebody different, but at the end of the day, he's putting a very wise team of people together and we'll just have to see. History will tell.

TreeHugger: Where are you going to be inauguration night?

Franti: I'm going to be in Washington, D.C. We're actually playing two different inaugural balls, one on the 19th and then on the 20th, the day of the inauguration. We've written a song for Barack Obama. It's called "The Obama Song" and if anybody goes online and just Googles "Obama Song" I'm sure a free download will come up. Or you can YouTube the video as well. So we'll be playing that song there as well as our own set of music.

TreeHugger: Tell me this: there's been a lot of hope that Barack can bring together green issues with issues of social equality, social justice. What do you think is the key to getting this to work?

Franti: I think the key is jobs. If we really want to invest in the future of our country and in sustainability, then we have to put money into green business. And we have to make sure that people who are most in need of jobs can find jobs in sustainable companies, in both the high-tech field as well as building the infrastructure that we need for sustainable energy in this country.

I know he has a plan to do something like that, like what was done by FDR, putting people to work on a massive scale to build power facilities that run on wind or that run on solar energy, investing in the auto industry and jobs that are making more fuel-efficient cars, and any other realm of agriculture or anything else that can be more sustainable than it is.

And those are good things, but I think as long as people are at work, as long as businesses are making money and the economy keeps turning, then the green revolution will be able to work hand-in-hand with social justice.

TreeHugger: Do you do things in your own life and in your own career to minimize your ecological footprint?

Franti: We do. Two years ago we did something on New Year's Eve that has been really… it was remarkable to my family. We decided that we weren't going to use any more plastic bags. It sounds like a small thing. We used to have this big cupboard under our sink and every time we opened it, hundreds of plastic bags would fall out onto the floor that we never really did anything with.

And when we decided not to use them and use reusable bags, suddenly this collection of bags disappeared. And it made us be more aware of everything that we use at the store. So we went into the store not just having a reusable bag, but reusable bottles that we use for olive oil and we fill up from bulk olive oil in the store, or vinegar, or agave. Bringing bags to the store to fill up with granola, or cloth bags for rice or beans. Any of these things. We just started to be more aware of the products that we're using and the packaging that they come in.

In my house we've always recycled, but we didn't do it on tour. And now at all the venues that we play at, we require that they have recycling. And some of them just bring it in for the one night of us, and they don't have it the rest of the time. But some of those venues have told us they brought in recycling containers for our show and then kept it on at the venue beyond us.
Also our tour bus runs on biodiesel. And we've also eliminated plastic water bottle from our tours. Everybody on tour, both on stage and off, carries a reusable bottle that we just fill up from filtered water from the tap.