Living Green

Echo Project founder has big ideas

Nothing about Nicolas Bouckaert exactly screams Woodstock.

Think outdoor music festival and what immediately comes to mind are performers who ingest funny mushrooms and flambé their instruments onstage — and promoters who behave even more outrageously.

Yet when 30,000 people and 80-plus musical acts descend upon 350 acres of rolling Georgia farmland next month for the inaugural three-day Echo Project, the man at the center of it all will be Bouckaert, a calm, almost laconic 25-year-old who majored in romance languages in college and who runs a company that recycles and sells industrial products related to the carpet industry.

With its strong environmental focus and eclectic lineup of electronic jam, reggae, rock and "We've been on 'The O.C.'!" bands, the Echo Project is creator Bouckaert's maiden voyage on the high seas of major music and arts festival promotion.

But hold on to your life preserver — for Bouckaert, creating a rock festival from scratch is just a warm-up act. Next spring, he'll set off on a round-the-world sailing expedition with three college buddies. There will be periodic trips home for business and personal reasons; still, the four expect to be at sea for up to five years.

"Nicolas has got big ideas," says his father, Carl. "He doesn't do things that are too normal."

Normal can be overrated. Unpretentious and quietly can-do when it comes to even the most "you cannot be serious" undertakings, the lanky, sandy-haired Bouckaert comes across as easy to like. No matter how much you'd like not to, given everything else he's already got going for him:

He's well-spoken in four languages, not including the Latin his Belgian-born parents made him and his three siblings learn while growing up in Dalton. He's well-educated, with an undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee and a master's in marketing from — take a deep breath — the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium.

His family is well-off. The site of the Echo Project is Bouckaert Farm, a 1,500-plus-acre gem spot of sun-kissed meadows and lake views that is remarkably peaceful and unspoiled, considering its location just 15 miles south of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The family business, Dalton-based Beaulieu of America, was established by Nicolas' parents, Carl and Mieke (they're now divorced), in 1978 and is currently the No. 3 soft-floor-covering producer in the world.

But you'd never know any of it waiting for Nicolas to talk about it, friends say.

"When we found out that his dad was, like, the carpet king, we all gave him grief about it," recalled Willie Thompson, 25, a college roommate of Bouckaert's and one of his future sailing mates. "He does not come across as putting on airs or thinking that his situation in life automatically affords him a better view."

Indeed, it doesn't even afford him his own room.

"We go places, and I still split a hotel room with him," Jesse Smith, one of Bouckaert's Kappa Sigma frat brothers and sailing mates, laughed by phone from Jackson Hole, Wyo. "I believe this is a product of how Nick was raised. Just because he has money, it doesn't mean it's to be squandered."

On the other hand, Smith points out: "There are better ways to make money than with a music festival. I think he sees this as being something that's fun for him and hopefully for a lot of other people."

Fun? Maybe so. Especially if planning counts.

"The first thing I looked at was where we'd be on the SEC football schedule," Bouckaert said recently on a drive around the farm, pausing periodically to consult a festival site map spread across the dashboard. "Fortunately, it's going to be a slow weekend. Georgia is playing Vanderbilt ... [thoughtful pause] ... Even so, I think we'll have someplace where people can watch the games."

Fun aside, the Echo Project is also well-intentioned — despite the fact that bands with names like God Is An Astronaut and the Lord Is My Shotgun, along with their rabid followers, will spread across a pristine plot of land that normally echoes with the sound of horses' hooves (Carl was a member of Belgium's 2000 Olympic equestrian team).

The idea really began percolating in college, when Bouckaert attended a number of concerts and festivals, including the annual "Camp Bisco," whose headliners — the Disco Biscuits — are a Bouckaert favorite (just ask his faithful German wirehaired pointer, Bisco).

What if, Bouckaert wondered, he could stage a bigger event that had "something for everyone" musically — and a strong environmental message to boot?

Enter one solar-powered stage (out of four) and the Echo Village, a festival area devoted to "green awareness." Meanwhile, a plan for a single pre-concert Chattahoochee River Cleanup project has proved so popular with ticket buyers that it's been expanded to include a series of cleanup events being conducted by Rivers Alive throughout this month.

"It's impossible to have truly no impact on an area, but as much as possible, we'd like to turn that around," Bouckaert said as he and Bisco showed a visitor around the site.

Asked when he became "interested in the environment," he scrunched up his face in a way that indicated confusion, not derision. "That's an interesting question," he said quietly. "I've always been a very outdoors person, and I grew up on this land. But I wonder, how can anyone not be an environmental person?"

For all the farm's pluses as a venue, the veteran company managing the festival was hesitant when Bouckaert approached it over a year ago.

"We get e-mails and calls all the time from kids saying, 'I have a bunch of land and some money and a great idea,' " said Brett Keber, owner of Meatcamp Productions, a North Carolina-based music production and promotion company. Meatcamp produces and promotes Camp Bisco, as well as shows for bands like Perpetual Groove and Umphrey's Mcgee in clubs and theaters around the Southeast.

"This was different," Keber said. "It was how well he expressed himself, what he'd thought about already and what he was willing to admit he didn't know. He didn't sound like a 25-year-old kid who was like, 'Let's throw a party on my property.' "

Translation: We're not exactly talking a male version of Paris Hilton here.

Bouckaert is serious about work. After graduate school, he started his own company, Avalon Industrial Products, which among other things recycles the foot-long yarn tubes used by carpet makers. Recently, he bought into Meatcamp. He and his father are teaming up to provide about one-quarter of the Echo Project's overall budget, with the rest of the money expected to come from ticket sales and sponsorships.

Bouckaert is also serious about play. Not that navigating the world on a 51-foot sailboat qualifies as play, exactly.

"I love to travel, and the only way to see the world in an economic manner is by boat," said Bouckaert. "You're harnessing environmental power effectively."

Bouckaert and two future shipmates recently spent 10 days at an intensive "open water" sailing school, and soon the whole group will gather on Chesapeake Bay for a long weekend of practice.

If such attention to detail sounds typically Nicolas, a fellow sailor said, so does the larger idea of the voyage.

"He's driven to engage his mind while he's on this planet," said Willie Thompson. "Cruising around the world on a big ship is not living life to the fullest. It's taking a back seat. Sailing around the world is putting your hand directly on the tiller."

It may not be too normal.

Which may not be too bad.

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