Born and raised in Nepal, SOHM spent his teenage years in a metal band that played a lot of tourist bars in Kathmandu – it’s where he learned most of his English.
But after moving to the U.S. to attend college in Ohio, the music stopped and SOHM did the “normal thing.” He got a degree and worked a corporate job, and spent several years in the world of commercial real estate.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, he rediscovered that love of music and two years later he’s taken on the stage name SOHM and released his debut album in June. The self-titled release features 12 songs and the music bares little resemblance to the songs he once played in Nepal.
“People will be like oh, this is a sound I haven’t heard in a while,” SOHM says. “I have not done music in so long that this might be my only album here so it has to be stuff I like and enjoy. People really appreciate the uniqueness of the sound and the style of the music you don’t really get nowadays.”
SOHM has traded distorted guitars for acoustic instruments, including the banjo, mandolin and ukulele and his new sound is very much folk and pop with some slow rock and baroque elements. It reflects the music that first caught his attention after moving to the U.S. 15 years ago, when artists like Ludacris dominated the college music scene.
“I had never heard any hip hop or rap and I didn’t gravitate towards that but what I did gravitate towards was American folk,” he says. “This genre of freak folk and people like Devendra Banhart and Vashti Bunyan that I could jive with. It was an easier transition to go from metal rock to this weird, folksy music.”
He wrote his first song, “For You,” and friends told him he needed to do something more with it. He contacted a producer, still thinking that was the only song he wanted to do anything with, but kept writing because “I’ve got nothing else to do.”
With a lifelong interest in poetry, he started playing around with programs like Garageband during the pandemic, turning poems he’d written into music sounds. After practicing more on the guitar and ukulele – he was a bassist and vocalist back home – the songs kept adding up.
“When I was writing this, my goal was I really want everybody who listens to some kind of slow, soft folk or baroque pop to like one song on the album,” SOHM says. “As long as people like one song on the album I think I’ll be okay.”
The aforementioned “For You” is a love song and the album’s fifth track. The project opens with “In the Morning,” a song about the struggles of addiction. “Red Tree” is about a tree outside SOHM’s house and the cycles it goes through each year, but the song also explores deep metaphorical questions about reality and the nature of life. “War Will Never End” is about how, whether or not you support fighting wars, there’s always a soldier who has to go and do the actual fighting. That track was inspired by the Nepalese Civil War he experienced as a kid.
“It’s a song about people hardened by life, trying to go back home or missing a structure of home,” he says. “Just everyday people with everyday lives being impacted in negative ways by their situation, their environment, their realities.”
There’s also “Die Young” about the knowledge that death can come in any corner, “so you oughta live life to the fullest,” he says.
“I’m a person who has been lucky enough to have lived in very different spaces and places,” SOHM says. “Born and raised in Nepal on old Jimi Hendrix and metal, coming to Ohio and listening to local folk tunes and proceeding through the United States. I think the sound I bring is unique, only because I think generally the experiences you live relate very directly to music and the different places I’ve lived and perspectives I’ve had brought me closer to the human experience of just living. I go to all these places and see different faces – white, brown, but they have the same problems. Boyfriend issues, money issues. I find the human experience to be very similar no matter how different they are.”
SOHM plans to tour this fall. He is currently based out of Denver.
Make sure to stay connected to SOHM on all platforms for new music, videos and social posts.
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sohmmusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdE9QYgt/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SohmMusic?t=wDdtHaWKFR_Yz-l0GD7cig&s=08
YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCQo7I5Ymkf6n9MmvBuOtX2g
Link tree: https://linktr.ee/sohmmusic