Musician Sohm'sself-titled album is steadily gaining traction on streaming sites like Spotify. The first release, "In the Morning," has been picked up by commercial radio stations worldwide.
Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, he attended college at Miami University and now makes his home in Denver. The debut album includes the song "Ohio," written about his time at Miami, and specifically his first year of college.
Sohm spoke with WVXU about how his years in Oxford influence his music.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up where you are.
I was born and raised in Katmandu, Nepal. I was there until I was 18 years old. I started off playing a lot of local tourist bars. Nepal, of course, gets a lot of tourists because of the Himalayas, and that's where I got my start. Then I came to Ohio when I was 18 years old to go to school at Miami of Ohio. I played music there a little bit my freshman year, but essentially just went ahead and did the normal college track, finished my undergrad then went on to do my MBA in Chicago, and basically just had a very normal life right up until my 30s when the pandemic happened, and that's when I decided to write this album.
How would you describe your style?
I have been classified as alternative; sometimes folk. People also call me Baroque rock. But my style necessarily would be maybe a Pink-Floyd-meets-Jethro-Tull-meets-Bob-Dylan kind of slow rock-ish.
Tell us a little bit about the album, and specifically the song "Ohio."
When I started off with this album, my real focus was to bring a different perspective from different places and spaces I've been. There are songs about a red tree, for example, and "In the Morning," which is a lot of contemplative, where-my-life-is kind of situation. This is a personal album.
Ohio, for me, of course, was a huge, huge part of that story. This is the first place I came to in the United States — I didn't know how to use credit cards, for example, when I landed in Ohio — and it was written specifically about my freshman year; different people that I met. I allude to Gary, who was actually a custodian at my hall, Clawson Hall, at Miami University.
I talked to him for hours on my breaks sometimes and he told me the story about how he was fostering kids on a janitor salary. Gary would wake up every day, go drop his kids that he fostered to school; finishes work at Miami; go back. And it's really written about people like Gary — people like my friends who helped me out my freshman year.
I just wanted a real simple tune. The hardest thing in music, generally, is to write simple tunes. I was like, 'How can I give a very concise ode to the state and to these people without getting too poetic or too grungy as some of my other songs go?'
How did your time at Miami influence your music?
Before Miami, my music was very much some old British heavy metal, some kind of metal music, right? Miami's the first place that I really listened to folk; through-and-through folk music. Joanna Newsom, for example, blew my mind. I just had never heard anything like that before. I listened to her in Miami ... basically the entire New Weird America genre ... Sufjan Stevens. My real introduction to folk, forms of country, and, really through-and-through American music started at Miami of Ohio.
What's your career trajectory? Like you said, you got your MBA, but now you're in Denver, and you've just released your first album. So, like, are you a business dude by day and musician by night?
My main focus is actually in construction and commercial real estate, but I'm definitely slowly starting to pivot more towards the music. I think, especially for the last two, three months, my music workload has taken most of my days, marketing it. I'm also currently trying to figure out a band situation to start touring. So maybe I'll start doing that sometime — around February is the hope or maybe late January. We'll see.
What was it like the first time you heard one of your songs on commercial radio?
Oh, wow, I heard "In the Morning" for the first time on Canadian radio. It is absolutely surreal, especially when there's an introduction and the DJ talks a little bit about the artist ... it feels like, oh, man, I kind of did something, you know? I might not be a huge musician, but at the very least I got my song played on the radio. So that in itself is a huge relief and it's exciting, of course.
Anything else you would want our listeners to know about you, the song "Ohio" or just what you're doing?
My attempt here is really trying to bring back almost a '60s-, '70s-type of singer-songwriter songs that are lyric focused and produced simply — produced in some kind of raw capacity. That's my goal. I see a lot of '80s music starting to make a comeback, so I'm hoping maybe it'll go a couple more years to the '70s era and maybe people will start liking that music.
Sohm's debut album is titled SOHM. It's available wherever you stream or download music.
