The cello tends to be relegated to chamber music and orchestral pieces, but Ben Sollee uses it to craft delightful folk- and pop-tinged tunes. On top of his full-time music career, Sollee also champions environmental sustainability, often touring by bicycle and campaigning against mountaintop removal coal mining in his home state of Kentucky.
He talked to Diversions editor Allison Hussey about his innovative new idea in his latest round of touring and his newest record, Half Made Man.
Diversions: You’ve toured on a bicycle in the past, are you doing that for this tour?
Ben Sollee: This tour this fall will be by van. You can imagine, you’ve got to cover a lot of ground.
So what we’re doing, since we’re not going to be on bicycle, we’re going to be encouraging the audience to be on bicycle.
And so we’re offering anyone that walks, rides their bike or take public transit to the show a $5 voucher at the merch table so that if they want to get a free gift, they can use the $5 voucher.
If they want to use it toward something else, they can do that.
Dive: What made you want to do that?
*BS: *Well, we ride our bikes to about a third of our shows during each year. Three years, we’ve done about 3,600 miles of touring by bicycle, but we can’t do it all that way and keep the business running like we need to.
And in the end, if we ride our bikes and people still drive from an hour away, it doesn’t really make a big impact — at least from a sustainability standpoint.
So we’re hoping to get the audience to get in on the game and work with us to make a more sustainable way for folks to get to the shows.
Dive: What’s the inspiration behind the title for Half Made Man?
*BS: *Well, I’m 28 years old, and I feel like, in some way, at the very least, it’s a mile marker in a lot of folks’ lives. Especially young guys, because you start to become less of an idea of who you want to be and more of an identity of who you are.
I made it out of the 27 club that a lot of musicians get caught in, unfortunately, and I just feel like I’m transitioning, and now’s my time to step out.
In that way, I feel like, okay, now I’ve got a sense of who I am. Let’s really go out there and build that. So that’s the idea of being half made. Kind of a new beginning at the moment.
Dive: In addition to being a full-time musician, you’re also actively involved against mountaintop removal mining. How did you get involved with that?
BS: The Appalachian Mountains represent a huge source of my heritage as a Kentuckian and an American musician, but I think they also represent a lot to our American heritage.
The idea of the American pioneer is based upon the living that people made in those mountains. And to see them removed, expelled, destroyed for a rock to burn for electricity just seems like it’s not worth it.
I hate to see the value of not only the land and the environment, but also the community and that culture be removed for something when we have a much better way to make those things, a more sustainable way to make electricity.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
