Burning up the Orlando Music Scene: An Interview with Solar Flair
Solar Flair is an Orlando-based band focusing on modern jazz/fusion with funk elements. The members include guitarist Zac Dostal (he/him), drummer Tyler Austin (he/him), saxophonist/keyboardist Gray (he/they), and vocalist/bassist Skip (any pronouns). Their music can be found on Spotify at Solar Flair and they can be found on instagram at @solarflairband.
Image Courtesy: Jackson Ring
When I arrive on the scene to interview Solar Flair, they are setting up for practice on UCF’s Addition Financial Arena Side Stage as the local skate club rolls on in the background, creating a makeshift skatepark with the chairs and benches that litter the lawn surrounding the stage. Guitarist Zac Dostal banters back and forth with the skaters. They ask Dostal to play various songs; he plays them all and politely declines the ones he doesn’t quite know, culminating in an invitation to join one of the skaters’ bands because of Dostal’s ability to “spread positivity and rock out.” Solar Flair’s singer and bassist, Skip, along with their saxophonist and keyboardist, Gray, are jerryrigging the microphone with one of my hair ties, joking casually while they set up. Drummer, Tyler Austin, shows up and fixes an issue with the amp, showcasing what the rest of the band affectionately calls the “Ty Touch.” As they begin to practice, it is clear that the bond this band has translates to their music as well. Every song feels like a conversation, an inside joke that you are not quite a part of but not excluded from either. They put on a performance, even for practice but it is everything but fake. As I am writing this, Gray is flipping their hair back in time with the music for the shot that photographer, Jackson Ring, is taking. The band is having the time of their lives every time they grace a stage, performing for a crowd of one or 100.
Image Courtesy: Jackson Ring
We start the interview with a conversation about what genre Solar Flair falls into; it is a real amalgamation of decades, styles and sound. Skip pulls out an explanation that leaves me speechless; and for a writer, that’s difficult. “Every single color, every single mixture of every single color, every single shape individually or every single combination of those shapes put together. Fluid like water, and jagged like rock,” Skip said. She then adds that the music is like “A really elaborate bowl of soup,” bringing a comical edge to such an existential and astute analysis. Solar Flair pulls from a vast repertoire of musical inspiration, from the Bee Gees to Tame Impala. This variation in so many different sources to pull from shines through in their sound, which Dostal comments on. “I feel that I have a very specific music taste, yet it’s broad at the same time because I know what I want to hear and when I hear it I know for sure like that’s the kind of song I want to make which is exciting because it opens up my musical and songwriting capabilities and adds more to my toolbelt.” Dostal said.
Austin expands on this concept, explaining, “This band is all about the freedom to do whatever, we’re not confined to a genre, we’re not confined to really like any standard in that way. And I think that’s really cool, that’s a band experience I haven’t had before.”
We then move into a topic I picked up on just from seeing the band practice: the clear joy that making and performing music brings to the group. While Solar Flair is unrivaled in their technical musical talent and songwriting skills, this is the element that keeps me and all the other Solar Flair devotees coming back to their shows over and over again- the sheer euphoria that radiates off every member, every performance. “We’re always in a conversation, this is like an intimate conversation that we share,” Skip said.
Gray expands on Skip’s thought, something these members are apt to do as if their brains are linked into a single, larger collective saying, “You said while we played today it looks like we’re having fun, it’s because we’re being playful with each other… we all make eye contact a lot… that’s usually because we’re making a joke, or like an innuendo, or maybe something serious… with the music.”
From there, Skip and Gray bounce off each other, with Skip explaining, “I have this obsession with the idea of the beam… the beam that the sun casts… the same way the sun casts a beam of light is how I am trying to cast a beam of sound.” Gray continues this thought, saying, “There's meaning behind all the words, and sometimes if there’s not words, there are melodies that are saying something… that beam is like a conversation.”
The dialogue moves into a discussion of the writing process of their music, which the group goes through chronologically, beginning with the creation of the band. Originally, the band was called Skip as it was just Skip, Dostal, and Austin who wrote the songs “Whisper” and “Strawberry Blues” during this time. Then, Gray comes in and adds his (solar) flair with the saxophone. From there, they wrote the songs “Silk” and “Hot Stone Groove.”
Skip takes her time explaining to me what it meant to her to write the song “Silk.” She pauses, choosing her words carefully, “It’s about authenticity. It’s about… being yourself, not a product of what people want you to be- spider woven.” If there’s a band to embody authenticity, it’s Solar Flair. Everything they produce is so uniquely their own, free from the constraints of what others want them to be.
Image Courtesy: Jackson Ring
Gray then explains their process while writing “Hot Stone Groove,” “It’s similar to authenticity,” Gray pauses here to think over his wording as this is a group who is very intentional with their words. “It’s about knowing what you’re worth. On the surface level, metaphor for the tension of a volcano, but the tension is sexual, and I feel like that’s kind of taboo in society to be like a sexual being.”
For all the music theory lovers out there, here’s a breakdown from Gray of the technical elements of “Hot Stone Groove.” Gray explains he started the process with the song’s baseline, incorporating chromaticism to give it a unique edge; the main chords used in this song are F and F sharp. They expand on this saying, “We had to put a little bit of everything in there. Bossanova’s lightness in that sax solo, going back to femininity, there’s that difficult balance of feminine energy in sexuality and masculine energy in sexuality. Being who I am, is quite a bit of a process, so this song says that for me. It’s like my sexual empowerment song.”
We take a turn into the topic of improvisation; many jazz musicians like to incorporate improvisation into their songs so that every time they place they are creating a new piece. Dostal explains, “I think it depends on the song for me, as common for it is in jazz to improvise, it's also very common to have it set in stone and have the same thing played every time. For example, in ‘Strawberry Blues’, I’ll most likely be playing the same two solos that I have where I could potentially improvise, but I like how I wrote them so much that I just wouldn’t change them. For those I think it’s a good example of keeping it, but for a song like ‘Spooky,’ I have a general idea of what I want to do, like I start off with the general melody of the song… and then I do my own, thing, take it to a different level… It depends on what I’m feeling in the moment.”
Austin calls his style of improvisation “systematic chaos,” remarking, “It’s a way that it’s improvised but there’s still a set amount of patterns and still a set amount of things in between the improvising and that sort of acts as an anchor.” Austin continues, “There’s really no wrong answers, right? It’s not like math, where there’s this one answer to this one equation. With music, there are multiple answers to the equations.”
We finished our conversation by discussing the band’s upcoming projects, including working on new music and a couple of upcoming shows. They’ve got a recording session coming up and the group teased a new song in the works written by Austin, called “Bane.” He explains the song is darker than Solar Flair’s previous projects, focusing on the weight of trauma and the resulting adaptation. Solar Flair also has some shows coming up, first on October 30 at the UCF Addition Financial Arena Side Stage, featuring other local bands: The Pheromones, Lady Heroine and Sky Navy. Next, they are playing at The Social on November 7 and on December 9 they will be playing the Orlando Strike Magazine launch.
Image Courtesy: Jackson Ring
I ask the band if they have any final statements to wrap up and Skip sums everything up better than I ever could saying, “I love all of these friends and bandmates with my entire heart and they are all so talented and inspire me every single day. It is an honor to share music with them.”
Strike Out,
Writer: Bella Love
Edited by: Reanna Haase and Olivia Wagner
Photographer: Jackson Ring
Orlando
Bella Love is a content writer for Strike Magazine Orlando. You’ll usually find her with headphones in and sunglasses on, trying desperately not to accidentally make eye contact on campus. In her free time, she loves to watch Elliot Page movies, listen to live music, and obsess over Stevie Nicks. You can reach her at bellarileylove@gmail.com.
