Ben Sollee with special guest Emilia Dahlin
April 24 @ 8:00 PM
Doors open an hour before showtime.
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Kentucky musician and composer Ben Sollee has spent nearly two decades blurring musical boundaries, and his latest album Long Haul (2024) is no exception. Drawing on tonal influences from the American and global South, Sollee’s expressive vocals and distinctive cello style thread through each track, connecting personal chapters into a cohesive, reflective journey.
After releasing his last album in 2017, Sollee stepped back from touring to focus on family life and community work in Louisville. Now a father of three, he’s leaned into composing, scoring projects like Robin Wright’s LAND, John Slattery’s Maggie Morre(s), and the Peabody-nominated podcast Unreformed. He also co-founded Canopy, a nonprofit supporting socially and environmentally responsible Kentucky businesses.
The pandemic years brought profound loss, including the deaths of Sollee’s mentor, father, and longtime collaborator Jordon Ellis. These experiences shaped the buoyant tone of Long Haul, a record that rises from grief with clarity and warmth. The title track documents Sollee’s struggle with long-COVID, transforming personal hardship into a broader meditation on healing and self-care.
Sollee approached the album with the mantra “show our fingerprints,” opting for organic textures—breathy woodwinds, hand percussion, choirs, and his signature cello—that shine in the Dolby ATMOS mix. Songs like “Misty Miles” and “Under the Spell” pulse with rhythmic momentum and reflect on humanity’s place in an increasingly tech-driven world.
One of the album’s most personal songs, “One More Day,” is a love letter written in the wake of Ellis’s death by suicide. Inspired by memories of touring together, the song pairs vivid lyrical storytelling with a buoyant, Caribbean-inflected groove—honoring Ellis’s joyful spirit while offering solace to those in crisis.
Without Ellis, Sollee found himself creatively unmoored, but the journey led to new collaborations, including with multi-instrumentalist Patrick Duke Graney. Other featured artists include Jason Clayborn and the Atmosphere Changers, Stuart Bogie, Alana Rocklin, Dan Dorff, and Brandon Coleman. The cover art by Ceirra Evans depicts a lone figure wandering through dreamlike woods—a fitting visual for a record that embraces life’s winding path with curiosity and care.
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Emilia Dahlin:
Performer, teaching artist, community organizer, and founder/facilitator of Sing Me A Story, Emilia Dahlin weaves her skills as an artist in many ways. Emilia garners great joy from collaborating and co-creating and believes that music and storytelling are some of the most powerful tools to foster connection between people and create positive social change.
Dahlin’s a fellow of Noel “Paul” Stookey’s (Peter, Paul & Mary) organization, Music To Life, which supports and amplifies the work of musician-activists and was recently a Creative Community Fellow with National Arts Strategies.
As a performer, she wields a voice that defies the size of her body with strong storytelling sensibilities and has carved out her name as a unique songstress. She weaves mesmerizing tales (complete with Greek myths, robotic messiahs, epic floods, and tax evaders) with raw, rootsy folk and dynamic jazz vocals. With an element of stealth, Emilia is able to deliver light on pressing social and environmental issues with subtlety and creativity. Her weaving of a historian’s imagination with a troubadour’s artistry offers an American original sound that blends vintage and latin jazz, the tang of a Tom-Waitsian waltz and the somber grit of a low tide lullaby.
Emilia has toured through the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Europe. Known for memorable performances, Emilia garnered national awards, from Telluride Troubadour, Winner of the Starbucks Music Makers Competition, Winner of Boston Music Conference Songwriting Competition, and the Great Waters Songwriting Contest.
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