25 Years Later: Justin Solonynka Reflects on New Music

AFS’ Director of Choral Music, Justin Solonynka, has been involved in our school since 2009 and has been teaching for even longer. Even before he found himself in this role at AFS, though, Solonynka has been a singer-songwriter under both his own name and in collaboration with a number of musical groups.

Recently, in fact, Solonynka released a 25th anniversary remaster of an album he wrote in 2001 called Bull in a China Shop, available on his Bandcamp. This is the second remaster album he’s released, with the first being of 1999’s Playground in late 2024. 

In time with the release of Bull in a China Shop’s remaster, I got the chance to speak with Solonynka about both the original album and its newer version. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You released this album on Bandcamp only—not on any streaming platforms. This is in contrast to much of your work from a few years ago, which can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, and the like. What changed?

What changed is the recognition that streaming is deadly for artists. Not for the big-time artists, of course—streaming is working just fine for them—but for musicians who have smaller fan bases, like myself, streaming… gives a fraction of a penny per stream.

And obviously, this is not my livelihood… but the fact that I create music, and the advent of streaming, has made it so I get almost no compensation for people listening. Whereas, in the good old days, people bought CDs, and I could actually fund my work… 

Bandcamp actually pays its people. It’s a really good model. They seem to genuinely care about the artists and not just their own bottom line.

There’s no contest of how that is better for me. And better for the listener, because you own it. You’re not just streaming it, which, you don’t own a thing when you stream it…. When you buy a movie on Amazon [Prime Video], you literally don’t own it.

It’s crazy to me that human beings are willing to do this. To be like, ‘I’ll pay you for the right to watch this, maybe.’

Other than added songs as bonuses (live recordings and alternate versions), what would you say is the most major change you made for the remaster?

There’s the bonus tracks that I found on CDs up in my attic—I didn’t realize I still had them. Other than [those], I was never particularly happy with how the original album sounded. 

And it was no fault of the audio engineer. I was given advice that I should take it to someone who would master the album. What that is, is you take all the tracks, and then you check to make sure that all the audio levels are the same. 

And I went to this person… They were a rock and roll company. They just didn’t know how to master this piano vocal album… on one track. And I love it, but it’s a very odd album.

They just really weren’t sure what to do with it. They did the first pass, and I brought it back to them. I said, “There’s this distortion added to this.” And they were very apologetic, like, “Ooh, that’s on us.”

And they did a second pass and they said, “Well, it was kind of already there. We did the best we could.” And I didn’t know better.

Well, as it turned out, I found the original master tapes in my attic.

And so now, with today’s technology, those could be mastered in a much more sensitive way than this place was capable of doing back in 1999.

The main point is, you listen to them side by side and it’s like, ‘this is how I always wanted the album to sound.’ It sounds like what we did when we were recording it. It’s a big difference in the quality of sound.

If you had to choose one song on Bull in a China Shop to completely remake—more than just a remaster—what would it be?

Oh, easy: “Even You” was the most complicated track by far to record, and we did it live. The whole album was recorded live.

So, I was sitting at a piano. We had a full gospel choir on another side of the piano, we had a clarinet player sitting behind me, and we just kept doing take after take until everybody actually did what they were supposed to do.

I would love to do that again. It sounds great on the album, but it was too complicated to do live.

For clarity, what is “Even You” about?

I was driving in Montana, and I was on this great American road trip, and somebody cut me off. And I got really road rage-y, and then I was like, “Wait a minute. I love everybody. I am kind.” 

And then… I got to the place I was staying that night and the song just poured out of me. So it was about loving everybody. Even the people who are extraordinarily annoying, or cut you off in traffic.

Getting that just right, and having a full SATB choir, was a lot. It was a lot to get that track on tape.

Would you say that there’s much of a connecting theme to this album? Did its format intend to communicate something beyond just what the songs have to say?

Yes. The idea of Bull in a China Shop was that, in college, I was a real rabble-rouser. I had a column in the Lehigh University paper, and I was a progressive voice at a mostly conservative school at the time. At the time. We have kids going to Lehigh now, and they’re gonna have a great time [there] now.

But back then, it was a very conservative school, and I would write these [progressive] articles, and I was not always mature enough to recognize as a young person… to be more elegant and delicate with how I talk to other people. 

And so, there’s the metaphor of the bull in a china shop. [It] was me. 

As an album, it was my attempt to figure out how to be less of [that] and be more sensitive as I was writing about things that were important to me. That’s the theme through the album.

So, concept album: no. I mean, there’s no “concept.” But there is something unifying that I feel makes this very odd album all work together.

It was very much the product of where I was at 25. At this “starting to figure out that I didn’t have to always be an asshole” [stage]. Because I could be very strident, and this was really me going, “maybe I don’t have to always be like that.”

So it has that feeling of someone who’s handling things a little bit more kindly.

This is your second 25th anniversary remaster album. Looking at your Spotify, you have four other albums under your name: Long Time No See, A Cup of Kindness, Pianometry, and A Better View. When the time comes, do you intend to remaster those as well?

They’re not even gonna be 25’s anymore.

I want to get my whole catalog on Bandcamp, with bonus tracks and so on to make them worthwhile for people to check out. I may actually remix A Better View if I can find the original master tapes, because that also would benefit from my experience now.

I was less experienced when I recorded that album. It’s got some great tracks, [but] listening to it is just all over the place. I recognize that now, and so I’d love to take another look at that. And then, yeah, they’ll all eventually be on Bandcamp.

On a related note, do you see yourself releasing more albums (that aren’t remasters) in the future?

I’ve been writing new music for a new album. I’m actually pretty sure I have the track list. Whether it’s going to get recorded this summer or summer of 2026 remains to be seen. But yes, there’s a new recording coming. I have a bunch of new stuff to record.