Seven years have passed between Ben Sollee’s last studio release, his 2017 album with Kentucky Native, and his new, Long distance (out August 16th). A lot has happened in Sollee’s life since 2017. His family has grown by two children. He has worked on a number of soundtracks and even won an Emmy Award in 2018 for his score for the ABC special. Basic ballet. The Kentucky-born and based singer/songwriter/cellist, who has long been an advocate for environmental and other social causes, also helped found a nonprofit called Canopy, which helps businesses in his home state make a positive impact on people, the planet and the future.

When COVID struck, it hit Sollee hard. “I was one of the first people to get COVID in the fall of 2020, and it stuck with me in a way that other people didn’t.” During his lengthy recovery, he had to change his diet, drinking habits, sleeping style and exercise. “It became a journey of inner exploration and changing my outer life. I really changed pretty much everything… It wasn’t until I came out of the long-term (COVID) story that I thought, ‘Oh, I think I have something to say about this.'”

While this album was born out of Sollee’s personal health crisis, it was also heavily influenced by the death of his close friend and longtime collaborator Jordon Ellis, who committed suicide in early 2023.



Sollee is always willing to mix genres and felt freer to expand his sound palette to Long distancewhich includes a gospel choir, a Little Richard-inspired rock’n’roll rave-up, West African rhythms and Caribbean grooves. He deliberately wanted lively, rhythmic melodies to balance out profound lyrics.

“Just like,” he explained, “Michael Jackson would make those big statements in the middle of those dance songs.” Sollee also recorded a special Dolby ATMOS Spatial Audio version for this album – a first for him – to underline Long distance‘s immersive sound quality.

Part of what the title Long distance refers to your difficult battle with Long Covid and also to the fact that life is a long road. How have the two things related to each other for you personally?

Ben Sollee: (COVID) definitely put me in a relationship with my body like I’ve never had before, and once you’ve established that relationship with your body, you realize how interconnected everything is. I mean, we’re all on this long journey together… and I realized that taking care of myself was maybe the most radical thing I could do. That really changed how I think about my live performances and my very purpose for being on the road, which is to help people connect with themselves. Because once they connect with themselves, they can connect with nature, other people, animals, etc. How I am in the world has changed. It’s subtle on the outside, but on the inside, it’s pretty profound.

How did all this influence your approach in creating this album?

I realized that over the years I had a very exploitative relationship with my creativity. It was just, “Here’s a project, just do something.” And that was really eye-opening.

I took a few different approaches to making this record. The death of my friend and musical collaborator Jordon during the writing of this record was really profound, as he was such a key cornerstone of my creative process. It kind of forced me to think about how I would have approached producing music for the record without him.

So I tried a few different mantras, and one of them was “follow the resonance.” If it told me something, I didn’t have to figure out why it told me something, even if it was Polynesian flute playing or this weird Tejano Caribbean groove – I just followed it. I used to always hold back; when I heard something, I was totally into that sound, but for some reason I felt like I couldn’t. Like it wasn’t part of my cultural heritage. I made up a reason why I shouldn’t make music with that sound or influence.

Another mantra was “show our fingerprints.” The recording was about hearing the hands and strings and the breath. I chose instruments that really brought out those human aspects of breath and touch. We incorporated woodwinds, which you can hear clearly on the first single, “Misty Miles.” We incorporated choirs for the first time on this record because I really wanted that breath and sound. A lot of the percussion is hand percussion. It’s a very tactile record… a very touch-heavy record.

You have produced Long distance. How was the admission process?

It was a very intuitive, collective approach, and that meant not only that the music was a surprise to me and others, but also that it was a very engaging, emotional journey. Adrienne Maree Brown (author of the book, New strategy) is the real inspiration for this – rather than having the vision of a single artist, you bring a group of people together in a moderated way.

It made me maybe a little bit braver and a little more confident that we could do it no matter what happened… I mean, the musicians left the sessions crying because they had so much fun and felt seen and heard. And that means as much to me as the music that came out of it.

Have your experiences composing film soundtracks influenced you?

(Film work) also inspired me to explore Atmos. I wanted this record to really be an immersive experience, something like a sound film. In that sense, there are some songs that actually have sound design built into them. It’s the first time I’ve done it in such a deliberate and immersive way that on “Hawk and Crows” we have cars driving by.

The sound of this album shows a real stylistic variety; “Under The Spell”, for example, is a song with a funky dance groove.

(laughs) I didn’t want to make a dance track. It started with this cello lick that you hear at the beginning. And it’s this kind of hypnotic West African loop of a lick that actually started with me trying to play some old-fashioned banjo music on the cello, like clawhammer.

The words relate to this kind of duality… dealing with identity and self and how often we are under the influence of the stories that people tell about us. Every time I have this ambition, this desire, or even just the idea that I have something, it leads me down a path of dissatisfaction, which causes great harm to other people and myself in the world. So the words can go as deep as someone wants, but it also applies if people just want to let go and have some kind of existential dance experience – then come on, let’s dance!

It touches on a development that I don’t think anyone notices in my music and career. My early records had a lot of direct social and political statements in the songs. I realized they were a little superficial and superficial. They didn’t really get to the heart of those issues. So I’ve moved into a sort of “post-activist” stance. My music has moved away from direct political commentary most of the time and more towards a basic idea of ​​togetherness and connection.



“One More Day” also stands out as a key song.

I guess the original seed of this song came when I started traveling again after Jordan died – to places he and I had traveled to so many times. I started thinking about what I would have said if he had called me in that moment of decision before he took his life. But the only thing I would have really said to him is, “Listen, I understand you, I respect your decision, but what’s the rush? If you want to do it, you do it, but you don’t have to do it right now. Just give it one more day, give it one more sunrise. Just watch it one more time.”

I think I would have told him that. And the song makes that clear through various vignettes of our time together on tour. And it does that with this Caribbean Tejano groove that must have come from some jams he and I did together. It must. It just feels like a typical Jordan groove. What I love about it is this really happy vibe, almost like the early Police. There’s some really heavy content in it and I just love the idea of ​​people dancing at a festival – and just saying, “Give it another day.”

The last song, “When You Gonna Learn,” features a stirring gospel choir and encourages you to follow your inner voice. It takes the listener out of the album and into the world in a very uplifting way.

I wanted to close with that message because as a father, I watch my four- and six-year-old children who haven’t developed a real sense of self or identity yet and are so connected to their world and the basic truths of caring for things and protecting things and love and justice. And I think that’s further proof to me that there are things that we know that we’re taught. This song is just like, when are you going to learn what you already know?

They address many difficult topics on the album, but do so with a sense of humanity and spirited music that offers a hopeful way out of these difficult times.

I often think of the “Pale Blue Dot” picture that Voyager took of the Earth. It’s just black and there’s just a tiny dot. And that dot says it all, because it’s all there, as Carl Sagan says: every love, every sorrow, every war, every church, everything is on that one little dot.

So we have to make it here. And I think that’s the biggest challenge for us right now. How do we make it? I realize we’re going to make some big mistakes along the way. I’ve certainly made them in my life. That’s where grace comes in, but we have to make it here. We have no other place.

Photos courtesy of Big Hassle.