Sol Driven Train’s music weaves through genres like images in a Tom Robbins paragraph. The band’s playful sonic schizophrenia absorbs songwriting influences like John Prine and Paul Simon, Afro-caribbean rhythmic explorations, and funky New Orleans-style brass into earnest songs of life, love, loss, and long johns. The versatile 5-piece band, based in Charleston, SC, features rotating lead vocalists, and multi-instrumental talent spread across horns, strings, keyboards, and percussion. Combining rich varieties of American pop and folk music into their own brass-kickin' roots rock sound, Sol Driven Train has carved out a unique musical identity within the Jam and Americana music scene.
THE BAND
Joel Timmons
Russell Clark
Matty Thompson
Ward Buckheister
Wes Powers
“If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a kind of train. Yes, a long, lonesome freight train rumbling from generation to generation on an eternally rainy morning: its boxcars are loaded with sighs and laughter, its hobos are angels, its engineer is the queen of spades – and the queen is wild. Whoo-whoo! Hear that epiphanic whistle blow. The train’s destination is the godhead, but it stops at the Big Bang, at the orgasm, and at the hole in the fence that the red fox sneaks through down behind the barn. It’s simultaneously a local and an express, but it doesn’t transport weaponry, and it certainly ain’t no milk run.”