Five Minutes With: Musician Ben Sollee

Musician Ben Sollee will shun the tour bus during his swing along the Southeast coast. Instead, he'll take the bike tour.

Sollee, a singer/cellist who's been featured on NPR, "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and in Paste magazine, is making a six-stop tour from Wilmington, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla. -- all on his extra-long bicycle with cello in tow. He'll be giving a concert Wednesday at ARTWorks in Beaufort.

This actually will be his second bike tour, the first coming when he rode from his native Kentucky to the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tenn., earlier this year. Along the way, he raises awareness for Oxfam America, a relief and development organization, and the environmental benefits of bike riding.

Sollee describes how a bike and a cello is all you need to make sweet music.

Question. Why the bike tour?

Answer. I tell you, after the Bonnaroo tour I took a bit of the Forrest Gump approach -- I just wanted to keep running. I love riding. I love the pattern of getting up early and having some coffee and cereal and just pedaling all day. So we were plotting on when to do the next tour and had this idea of to do the Southeast in the winter.

Q. What was it like at the end of your first tour?

A. I knew it was going to be pretty stinking hard. It was Appalachia, and we were carrying a big load. At the end, I felt great. In the middle, I felt like crap. I thought I might give it up. I hadn't trained, really. I wasn't eating properly. I was eating what I thought were high-protein meals, but they were also high in fat. So that slowed me down. I switched to whole grains, and it was like putting in a new battery.

Q. Did you train more this time?

A. Yeah, I've been riding constantly. I'd bike to shows around here. I've been loading up the bike and doing sprints around town.

Q. Did you bike much before you started doing these tours?

A. I always loved bicycles. I had a nice steel-framed commuter bike. But I started doing this very hectic schedule where I was flying from one end of the country to another. It was the type of schedule that musicians get roped into. The bike was an opportunity to introduce a beautiful limitation. It gave me an opportunity to really slow down and focus on the things that are important to me -- the community, the people coming to the shows and my own pace of life.

Q. And you take the cello with you?

A. I ride with a few people with me, and we're all on long-frame bicycles so we can haul our stuff. The cello is with me. We've got all the electronics and gear. I had about 60 pounds on my bike. Every once in a while I had to stop on the uphill and hike it.

Q. Do you worry the cello is going to fly off?

A. It's in what's basically a bulletproof case. I bought it so it would survive airports. But it can also survive bike trips.