Performer, painter, glass blower, Black Belt, this Bisbee artist has many talents
Sabrina Solo is a one-woman band that performs regularly in Bisbee as well as streaming her own show on Twitch. She’s confident, energetic, funny, and totally unique, playing the drums with her feet, while strumming and singing originals and covers to an adoring crowd.
Sabrina (who’s last name is Deets) was born in Northern California but grew up in Reed Spring, Missouri. “It was a sketchy place, but in spite of the rough environment, it helped me get my bearings,” she said.
Early Love for Music
Sabrina’s passion for music began at the age of eleven, when she would sneak into her dad’s room and play his guitar while he was away at work. “I didn’t know anything about guitars. And one day I broke a string and I thought I broke the guitar,” she recalled.
When her father got home, she thought she would be in huge trouble. Instead, her father bought her a mini guitar and amp. “That was one of the things my dad was actually cool about.” Sabrina got three free lessons and was basically self-taught for the rest. “Original music was straight out the gate.”
Sabrina landed her first gig at the tender age of 14, on a boat called Buoy’s Floating Cafe on a lake near where they lived. It was Memorial Day weekend and the family had come to see a show. Afterwards, Sabrina talked to the guitar player and told him she played as well. “He said ‘I can’t make my gig two weeks from now. Do you want to cover it for me?’ And I remember looking back at my mom, who just shrugged, and I was like, ‘I’ll do it.’”
The show was a hit with the 20 or so people that attended, giving Sabrina a taste of victories to come. By the time she was 23, Sabrina was living in Springfield, Missouri as a full-time musician, playing in various bands on drums, bass, and guitar. “I was in 20 – 30 bands,” she said.
Going Solo
If you’ve seen Sabrina in person or on her Twitch channel, you might be surprised to know that, save for that gig at 14, it took her a very long time to get the moxie to be the front person. “I had a lot of people tell me I should be a lead singer, but I grew up with three brothers, so it was hard for me to lead.”
But what truly made her switch to going solo were the bars themselves. “They would tell me that they would pay the same amount or more if I would just come alone because the bars were not liking my bandmates.” Thus, Sabrina Solo was born!
Drums with her Feet?!
One of the first things you might notice about Sabrina Solo is her setup: playing the drums with her feet. This was an idea suggested by a fan. “He told me: ‘You stomp your feet all the time while you play. You should put some drums under them.’ So I did and pretty much never looked back after that.”
To her, playing them is like dancing. “I get to dance for my whole set.” Sabrina also has a vocal harmonizer that she controls with her hand, so she truly is a one-woman band.
Falling in Love
Sabrina Solo began to take off, performing and hosting open mics at The Flea, her favorite bar in Springfield, for several years. It was during this period she met her partner, Justin Walker, who was, appropriately enough, a sound engineer.
“I was trying to record a single. So I had one meeting with Justin to talk about recording and I literally fell in love with him that day.”
The pair soon became inseparable, with Justin handling the sound duties as Sabrina performs. Together, they decided to try the RV life, moving from Missouri to Texas, to Georgia. They eventually settled, or rather, became stuck in Adele, Georgia, when the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns occurred.
Discovering Twitch (and Bisbee)
If it wasn’t for Twitch, Sabrina and Justin may have never left Adele, a “back asswards” town near the Florida state line. One day Justin was on Twitch, a streaming platform, and came across a musician. In the ten minutes he watched, she got a $500 tip.
“Before he showed me that, I was like, ‘I’m not playing online.’ I just thought it felt fake. Well, when you’re starving, and then you see where somebody can make money, I decided to try it. And so I literally maxed out the rest of my Best Buy credit card to get started.”
And, lo, The Sabrina Solo Show was born. Justin runs the cameras and the stream, allowing Sabrina to concentrate on putting on a fantastic performance, pulling from her repertoire of over 500 songs and taking requests. During the pandemic, she performed three days a week, making enough money to get out of debt and think about moving somewhere else. But where?
“I started looking at Arizona art towns under 10,000 people,” she said. “I don’t meld well with big.” Bisbee came across her algorithm and they were instantly intrigued. “We went on Google Maps and pinch-zoomed our way down Main St. and Tombstone Canyon. We sat there looking at this town and said to ourselves, ‘if this town is really real, we want to live there.’”
Bisbee is, indeed, real. And when they traveled across the country, they were equally blown away. Quickly, they were up and running on Twitch, and began integrating into the music scene playing at open mics and doing gigs.
Multi-Talented Artist
This article barely touches on the many talents of Sabrina Deets aka Solo, who is now 36 years old. In addition to her songwriting/performing skills, she blows glass (“I was taught by a guy who was Walt Disney’s first glass blower”); paints (“Our house is decorated with a lot of my paintings”); is a video editor; costume designer; prop maker (she made a ship’s wheel out of empty paper towel rolls for her Pirate Weekend show); baseball player (she recently joined Bisbee’s vintage female team The Copper Queens); runway model; and is even a Second-Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do (“I HATED it. Dad made me go.”).
So check out the Sabrina Solo Show (now Tuesday afternoons 3 – 5 pm Arizona time on Twitch), or one of her shows here in Bisbee, usually at the Bisbee Social Club, the Bisbee Grand, or the Thirsty Lizard. “If I can do a gig in town and one gig on the internet a week, that’s my dream,” she said.
