Arts This Week: “Soul Meets Body” at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall
By Ben Larsen
Dana Sun:
You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. For Arts This Week, we chatted with Nathan Scholz from the band Soul Meets Body. Nate talks about his band and their upcoming show at the Southern Music Hall and Cafe on August 21.
Nate Scholz:
Hi, my name is Nate. I play guitar in the band, Soul Meets Body. We have always kind of felt like we don’t want to put ourselves into one box genre-wise, but we definitely fall into like that punk rock like ethos. I used to live up in DC, and we I started working when I was in grad school for audio engineering. I started working with this singer, Genevieve, and her band at the time, which was kind of a different band, and eventually that turned into me joining as the bass player of that band, which then turned into us finding a new drummer, who then basically turned this band into Soul Meets Body. And we did a bunch of stuff before COVID, and then COVID happened, and we kind of like disbanded, because, like, everything disbanded. And then in 2021, 2022 we kind of, like, started working on some new music together, just like recording, because we were like, we’re just, we’re still friends, and wanted to work on stuff. And then that turned into us starting to play shows again. And then when we started doing that, we were like, hey, like, we really want to take this more seriously than we took it pre covid. Like, it was always fun. But like, we want to, like, see where this can go. We want to, like, we believe in the songs, we believe in what we’re doing. And like, we want to, like, take this somewhere. And so we kind of started taking a lot more seriously. And Genevieve has always been really good at, like, doing social media, and has done a lot of stuff on TikTok, done a lot of stuff on Instagram. And like, we really kind of focused partially because, like, we live in a bunch of different places, and like, logistically getting together for shows is kind of hard. So we can’t play like every weekend, like some bands can do. We can only play like once a month, usually, or less than that, even depending on what we’re doing. So we, like, really focused on doing the social media side, knowing that it was because we couldn’t play as many shows. But that really kind of like worked in our favor, because it’s given us this way bigger growth online. And then we started working on our debut album in 2024, spent pretty much all last year recording it, mixing it, and now it’s coming out later this month. So we’re actually doing a little like release tour this whole weekend that we’re starting out here at the Southern in Charlottesville on August 21 and then we’re playing a show in Richmond at a DIY spot called Mocha Mart. And then we’re also playing a show in Baltimore at another DIY spot called the Forest, and then we wrap it all up in DC on Sunday at Songbird Music House, um, you can find all our music on all the streaming services, or Soul Meets Body dot band camp dot com, our Instagram is at Soul Meets Body band. And tick tock is also at Soul Meets Body band.
Dana Sun:
Come catch Nate and Soul Meets Body at the Southern on August 21 with Ladada and Shagwuf opening the show at 8pm. You can buy tickets for the show on Ticketmaster or on the Southern’s website and get updates from the band on their Instagram at soul meets body band. Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont, Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu. For WTJU, I’m Dana Sun
