Ben Sollee Takes it Easy

When we met Ben Sollee at Sunday morning at ACL, he had just arrived in Austin after driving all night from Lexington, Kentucky. To keep himself awake all night as he drove through the deep, deep south, he sang.

Sollee grew up on music the way some kids grow up on sports. He started playing cello when he was in elementary school and at home, he listened to the likes of Billie Holiday and Otis Redding. So you hear some soul in his music and also some bluegrass (he is from Kentucky, after all).

But at heart, Sollee is a folk musician. His music is social and so are his ideals. He works with Oxfam America in their campaign to help end poverty, and is passionate about ending the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining that he says has seriously negative repercussions on Appalachia and beyond. He's all about a kinder gentler approach to the world. You can see it in everything he does.