Meet Sol Chase

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sol Chase. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sol, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?

I believe deeply in the power of gifting, decommodification, and community / social relationships based on reciprocity. This is something I began to learn early in life, while living among hippie communities and traveling often throughout Europe. We didn’t have many material possessions during my childhood, and what we did have was often shared among a small community of people we were living or traveling together. Ideas of private property and ownership were blessedly absent from my early childhood, and I developed a sense of group consciousness, wherein the individual was important, but only in so much as they participated in and contributed to the whole of the group.

As I grew older and moved to the US, I became more and more indoctrinated into individualist and consumerist culture, and I developed a work ethic that sought to put me ahead in a competitive and cutthroat world. I began to see money as a source of security, rather than relying on community ties and social capital as I had in my youth. This was isolating, as it led me to focus on work and advancement to the exclusion of creating meaningful connection.

It was through reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book “Braiding Sweetgrass” as well as Mark Boyle’s “The Moneyless Man” that I rediscovered the importance of reciprocity, gift giving, and living without money as the defining force of life. Both authors make the point that money has become a stand-in for connection and argue for gifting economies based not in individual profit but in reciprocal exchange of resources and “passing it forward”. In the following years I was able to participate in numerous experimental gifting economies, from small-scale local projects to enormous undertakings such as Burning Man.

I’ve come to realize that generosity is one of my most important values, for giving a gift without the expectation of something in return creates a bond that is more meaningful than any transaction could ever be. I wrote and released a song called “If Everything Were Free” that imagines a world run not by profit and competition but by mutuality and cooperation.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’ve been a musician since I was six years old, and I’ve been playing professionally for over a decade. While many projects, performances, and tours have been rewarding in myriad ways, none has felt as engaging, exciting, or meaningful as my current band, Big Love Car Wash. The band formed organically from the Austin music scene — all four of us were gigging musicians and met for the first time on the bandstand; but we knew from the first show together that this was a musical connection worth exploring in long form.

Our music lands somewhere between Americana, bluegrass, and folk-rock, but we’ve coined a new term for it: “Heart-Forward Dreamgrass”. We craft each song from our hearts, being very intentional about the messages and stories we’re putting out into the world. Songs are a powerful medium for social change or enforcement of status quos, and we want our songs to have a positive impact and to speak for what we believe in, be it environmentalism, feminism, social inclusion, anti-racism, or self-exploration.

In an industry that is sometimes callous, fast-paced, and impersonal, we have forged a “found-family” connection, a musical compatibility that has led to profound interpersonal friendship. I love my bandmates, and I love collaborating with them. This band has allowed me to release a lot of ego, bringing songs to the table I would have felt too vulnerable to share with anyone else and offering them up to be interpreted by the group rather than deciding myself how they will be played. I trust each of my bandmates profoundly as people and as creators, and we have created something rare in the Austin scene – a true band, where each member has equal creative control, rather than one person’s project in which they have the final say.

We released our debut album in June and followed it up with a national tour. The feedback we received, including a 2nd place prize at the renowned Telluride Bluegrass Festival, was nothing short of electrifying. We are now committed to building this project to the highest heights it can reach. We just spent a week in Nashville recording new music, and we’ll be releasing and touring throughout the next months.

Our next show in Austin is November 13th at Radio Coffee Beer South.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Community building — Everyone talks about networking, but we like to think of it as bringing people into our web of community. We won’t just work with or network with anyone. We want to be sure that anyone who’s part of our career journey is someone we enjoy spending time with and who aligns with our values. We spend time getting to know our fans and audiences, building connections with artists who we admire, and going to festivals, shows, or events just to be there and soak in the scene, rather than with a particular career goal in mind. We also collaborate with just about anyone who we admire – they don’t need to be a musician. We love finding creative ways to rope other art forms into our process.

Self-attunement — Knowing your own emotional capacities and understanding your own emotions is key to success in any field. Can you do an overnight drive without wrecking your nervous system? Can you camp for a week with your bandmates? What self-care routines can you not sacrifice? I’ve gotten better and better at listening to my body and my feelings when under stress, and this has proved monumental in my ability to keep doing creative work.

Play — We don’t “work” music, we “play” music. Andrew Marlin once told me that being in a band should feel like being a kid and playing with all your favorite toys with your best friends – you want to find the people who you can freely play with and get into a flow state, rather than just the best technical players or the hardest working musicians around you.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

In the past year I have deep-dived into my own emotional experience. As a man growing up in western society, I’ve been socialized to keep my emotions clamped down in favor of productivity, and I have only recently begun to put down my armor and allow my feelings to take center stage in my life. This has involved embodiment practices such as meditation and yoga, plenty of therapy, reading books such as Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, and ongoing dialog with those closest to me. Vulnerability truly is the path to connection, and understanding my own needs and feelings has been infinitely rewarding in depending my personal relationships, growing my creativity and creation as an artist, and improving my self-talk and self-acceptance.

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Image Credits

Noah Griffin
Nicola Gel

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