XyloVan – to our knowledge the only musical instrument that gets 9 mpg – began life as a bus for a sober living facility, then was reincarnated as a gig van for punk bands.
By the time we found it on the street, we saw something bigger: We had this crazy dream of building a musical mutant vehicle for Burning Man – an art car / instrument that anyone could come up and play.
We hand-built xylophones for it out of T-6 bar aluminum and SpeedRail, fashioned gongs from discs of scrap left over from 10″ and 15″-diameter logs of aluminum, and tubular bells made from anodized aluminum tubing.
We bolted the whole thing together, wired it up for lights and sound and – lo and behold – people played the living hell out of it, from Black Rock City to Maker Faire and dozens of schools, parties and benefits in between.
Kids wail away with abandon, concert vibraphonists tap out jazz and Bach with double-mallet grips, and a wild variety of average humans regularly blow us away with a full spectrum of experimentation, from Christmassy tinkling to feral percussion.
But four years of touring and playa voyages burned out XyloVan’s motor and vibrated its steering gear to near-scrap.
So now we’re raising funds on Indiegogo to give XyloVan a heart transplant, a facelift and a slew of weird, experimental new instruments. Hope you’ll consider making a donation (Give big, and we’ll hand-machine an instrument for *you!*) and please – spread the links!
