While checking the lineup at this year's Summer Set Music Festival, I noticed a familiar name. SoDown was an artist I started following in the past year after stumbling across his “Journey” EP. We met up at The Saloon Stage, where he had just finished dropping a great set of Dub, Hip Hop and Funk.
You just closed out The Saloon here at Summer Set, the crowd was great!
Yeah! People turned out and got wild!
And you recently played Red Rocks?!
Yeah man it was my first time! It was me, Manic Focus, and Pretty Lights. It was so cool. Hometown vibes at such an amazing venue. I don't even have any words to describe it.
I bet! That's a legendary venue for everyone to play at!
Red Rocks kick started my whole interest in music. It really pushed me in this direction, so to come back and play with Pretty Lights and Manic Focus was full circle ya know?
Do those guys (Pretty Lights and Manic Focus) inspire your sound?
I have SO many different styles and genres that inspire me. I can't say any one name, but they definitely contributed to the evolution of our scene. Especially in Colorado.
What about when you were younger? What were you listening to?
I got deep into Alternative Rock, and Sublime and Ska. Then Reggae, Hip Hop, Underground Hip Hop, Brother Ali, Atmosphere, Dirty South Hip Hop, UGK, Three Six Mafia, Slim Thug, all that shit. I discovered Electronic Music back about 2010 or 2011. I quit my Job, dropped out of school, and started making beats haha!
Haha! Hey, look where it got you!
It was actually a teacher that told me to drop out. I was in business school. I was like ‘Damn I wanna do music!', then I started going to school for Audio Production. I took one semester. My teacher said, ‘You know what Ehren, you should drop out. This is what you want to do.' I was like, ‘Damn!' Coming from a professor, that's saying something. So I just dropped out and started grindin'.
Do you have any new work coming out soon?
I've got tracks on deck! All over the board. Everywhere from super heavy shit, chill shit, groovy shit. I've got sort of an organic Future Bass inspired track that has female vocals, harmonica, guitar, and saxophone. That's going to be the next track we're putting out.
We're starting this ‘adventure key'. Basically there's a different shape on the album art, either a triangle, circle, or a diamond. Each of those will represent a different sub-genre within my sound. Diamond is what I call ’SoHeavy’, circle is ‘SoChill’, and triangle is ‘SoGroovy’.
You definitely brought out the ’SoHeavy’ and ’SoGroovy’ tonight!
Yeah I didn't play too much Chill. It was short set. I just wanted to come out and be like ‘BAM! What's up?!’ Haha!
I'd like to thank SoDown for taking the time to meet with me after his stellar set! Can't wait for the new project!
