Meet Rachel Solomon

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Solomon.

Hi Rachel, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
You might have heard musicians say something like “Music chose me, I didn’t choose it”, and I can totally attest to that. I knew I was going to be a musician soon after I started playing music when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. The only other profession I had my sights on as a child was a children’s author – I would dictate stories to my babysitter she would write them down, and then I enjoyed illustrating them. But I was, in my fiber, a musician, and the only choice would have been not to heed the Call.

My dad played music, and there are pictures of both my sister and me as babies propped up on the piano bench next to him. I started real piano lessons at age 6 and played classical music all the way through high school. But… I always loved SONGS. Powerful melodies with words. (Although just like when I was 6, it’s still very hard for me to memorize lyrics.) I loved musicals and listening to the radio as a kid. I loved what was on the Top 40 station then, and I REALLY loved what was then called Oldies (especially The Beatles, encouraged by The Beatles Anthology which had just been released).

Even though my training was mostly in classical music, I knew that wasn’t what I wanted a future in. This is interesting because I did well with it, and even performed with the Austin Symphony as a teenager. But I knew I wanted a career like what I heard on the radio, and what I saw on MTV & on VH1. In, for lack of a better term, “popular” music.

I went to my dream college, Berklee College of Music. (Thank you scholarship!) The school that high-school friends told me not to pursue because there was “no money in music” (as was likely being told to them by their parents), the school that even a guest band clinician in high school (I played saxophone) expressed concern about my attending. I honestly can’t remember what I thought Berklee was going to be like, but I do remember thinking it ended up being nothing like what I thought it would be. When I came to Nashville without finishing college in 2005 (it was the earlier ages of online school, so I did in fact finish my degree!), I and other alumni were instructed NOT to tell people we went to Berklee because of its “reputation”. I thought this was absurd; why should any of us be ashamed about where we’d gone to school and put in so much work? Jerry McPherson, a celebrated session guitarist I was on a session with sometime in the late ’00s, paid me a compliment.  A compliment that went something like this: “You know what’s great about your playing? It’s that you went to Berklee, but you don’t play like you went to Berklee.” (Just for the record, Jerry was awesome to work with and was very complimentary about my playing, even with my being a young musician.) Berklee alumni had a stigma for overplaying, sounding real “note-y”. I don’t think Berklee has quite the same stigma anymore; maybe because of John Mayer, maybe because going to a music school as Berklee or Belmont can now directly funnel you into the music business. I don’t think it did that in the same way in 2005, although it would have been nice if it had.

I actually didn’t even intend on moving to Nashville – I was a singing, songwriting pianist in Boston with one semester left of school, playing at a cabaret piano bar, and my eyes were set on the New York City music scene. What happened changed the trajectory of my career – I was hired into an all-girl touring country-rock group based out of Nashville, so I packed up my clothes and a keyboard and flew to Nashville and spent the next 7 years touring with that group.

After 7 years of touring 250 days per year, I decided to leave that group and began work as a session musician and country music side-(wo)man – I toured with artists like Laura Bell Bundy when she had her Nashville record deal, Heidi Newfield, Jenn Bostic, Krystal Keith (the year she opened for her dad, Toby Keith, on the “Shut Up and Hold On” tour), and Love and Theft. I also put out 2 EPs as an artist and went on my own tour.

After being let go from a touring gig (and I’ll plead the 5th on which it was, we’ll all have been fired at some point in our music careers when it’s said and done), I had to recalibrate – I wondered if I’d been chasing something that wasn’t quite right for me. I didn’t have a full-time touring gig anymore, and I’d stopped getting called for the session work I’d been doing. This is when, quite serendipitously, an international piano bar opportunity came my way. For the last 6-7 years, much of my work has been made up of piano bar work – I have traveled from Aruba to California, to Norway, and most recently Spain and Turkey doing piano bar work. Locally, I used to play Nashville’s premiere piano karaoke bar Sid Gold’s Request Room, and before that made some appearances at The Big Bang when it was still on Broadway. It’s interesting how the piano bar showed back up in my life because when I think about it, the last gig I was doing before coming to Nashville was at a piano bar. I frequently wonder, if I had followed through with going to NYC as I’d originally planned – though the journey may have been different, would I have ended up in exactly the same place I am now?

I love the audience engagement that comes with playing the piano bar, and I love getting to play so many great songs – many of them the ones I loved listening to on the radio when I was a kid. I love that I get to enjoy these songs and play them for people to whom they also mean so much

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There are external challenges and disappointments in a career as a musician – being fired, being written off by a publishing company or PRO rep, and suddenly no longer being hired for work for which I was at first very much sought after. But many of the continuing challenges are also internal. My theory is that every musician, at one and likely more times in their life, will have a moment where they ask themselves, “Is it time? Is this the moment I have to stop doing music because I can’t do it anymore/it isn’t sustainable/etc.?”

I asked myself this in 2020, and before that in 2015 when I was fired from a group, and probably more times than I can remember. But the answer to the question, “Is it time?”, has always been a resounding no. It has yet been time for me to give up on music, and honestly, I hope it never is. I tell younger musicians that those who continue living a life devoted to music do it because it really means something to them. There might be years where work and money aren’t amazing – I definitely had plenty of those. But I found ways to keep going because doing music was – and is – that important to me. (And thankfully these last two years have been my most profitable yet!). If it’s important enough to you, you will find a way.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m mostly known as a piano player and singer. I’m also my own artist and have an EP and singles available for streaming (and the EP is still on a CD if you’re into that sort of thing). I am gradually bringing the saxophone back out on gigs after letting it sit in the case for several years!

I had always thought musicians and artists who solely did things on social media were missing the point, but in 2020 when suddenly ALL of my live work was indefinitely canceled, it changed my perspective and I realized that these people had been ahead of the game all along. While I still prioritize my live creative work, I’ve put a lot of focus on my YouTube channel in the last couple of years. On the channel, you will find music and music videos, parody songs, parody music videos, travel vlogs documenting my travels in music, comedic skits, and more. Speaking of YouTube, I was featured singing in one of the viral “Alugalug Cat” videos which have garnered over 5 million views on YouTube!

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I also regularly get to share my love of the 70s and 80s pop and R&b on my new favorite gig, playing with the Nashville Yacht Club Band.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.RachelSolo.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/RachelSoloMusic
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/RachelSoloMusic
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/RachelSoloMusic
• Other: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/rachel-solomon/593118803 

Image Credits
Anna Haas and Pilgrimage Festival