…. and we’re off! Hello everyone. My name is Jenni, and I play the bass with Christina Perri. We are currently on a two-month U.S. tour supporting Jason Mraz, and I will be making it my business to write about my experiences on the road and share them with you here on the Girl Rock Nation blog. I hope you come back and check out our progress along the way!

First things first: this is a summer tour, and we are currently hitting some of the hottest parts of the country. We’re also mostly playing outdoor amphitheaters, which, let me tell you, is no joke when temperatures are averaging around 90 degrees. Luckily our set is a manageable 45 minutes, but suffice it to say that the heat is definitely adding a shocking degree of difficulty to what would normally be a complete breeze of a show. We’ve already sweated our way through New Orleans, Dallas and Houston (the latter being somewhat of a highlight thanks to the air-conditioned outdoor stage, if you can believe it), and are now preparing for tonight’s show in Tampa, Florida.

Girls hard at work! On stage in New Orleans

One remarkable thing about this tour that I wanted to mention specifically is that Jason and his team have partnered up with an environmental non-profit organization called Reverb. The aim is to reduce the carbon footprint of our organization (tours are notoriously un-eco-friendly thanks to the massive amount of gear and people being hauled around, amongst other things), as well as to engage fans to participate in local environmental programs. What this means for us is that instead of going through thousands of plastic water bottles, we all have personalized, re-usable bottles that we can refill at the numerous backstage water stations. All the backstage catering is also sourced from local farmers, everything possible is recycled, and there are interactive online programs that fans can use to carpool to the shows. Having personally witnessed the incredible amount of waste that a touring company of this size generates daily, I can only applaud these efforts. Jason also spends his days off literally planting trees in various cities as part of this program. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!

Jason Mraz knows that where lasers are concerned, more is more.

Off to soundcheck! Check back here for regular tour updates, and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for daily nuggets. Even better: if you happen to come to a show, get in touch and let me know what you thought! I can’t wait to see you all and make new friends all over the country.