The Soil & the The Sun is a Grand-Rapids-based 7-piece band playing what they call “corn-fed, Michigan-made, experiential spiritual orchestral rock” and they recently released a new album titled Meridian. As part of that release, they collaborated with our partners at MadCap Coffee, also in Grand Rapids, on a limited release coffee “Meridian” coffee, chosen by the band.
The Meridian release features five unique labels, each a slice of the album’s cover art. The art comes from Grand Rapids Painter Jeff Kraus, whose art is currently also being featured in MadCap’s cafe.
We reached out to Ryan Knapp from MadCap, who shared more with us about this collaboration:
The idea of the project began as a sponsor gift on their Pledge Music Campaign, which is like Kickstarter for musicians. One of the gifts was a collaborative coffee by MadCap that was roasted by their drummer Mr. Benjamin Jones Baker Jackson, who was actually a production roaster and barista at MadCap for 4 years before leaving last year to go full-time with the band. Although, the more we discussed the concept and designed the label, we decided we wanted to do a larger limited-run to offer online and in our coffee bar.
To choose the coffee, I had the band come in and we did a cupping. I worked mostly with Ben on trying to select the right coffee. We wanted to make sure we chose a coffee that captured the rhythm and vibrancy of the new album. After cupping a few coffees and tossing around the idea of a blend, we settled on a single origin coffee from Kochere, Ethiopia. It’s a lovely coffee loaded with jasmine, oolong tea, and strawberry and is extremely complex. It’s a coffee we haven’t offered as a single origin this season but have been using in our blends Summer Solstice and Oktoberfest, so we were excited to get the opportunity to let this coffee shine on it’s own.
You can find The Soil & The Sun at their official website, on tour this fall, on Facebook and on Twitter. Pick up a copy of their new album Meridian, and grab yourself a bag of MadCap’s Meridian coffee here.