Solomon St. James is a blessed child of God. He knows because the bible and his mama told him so. Third child and only son of Runner and Linda-Jean St. James' four children, Sol grew up with a clear-cut, unshakeable idea of who he was and the world he lived in. Runner and Linda-Jean married straight out of high school and set to work on carving out their own piece of the American dream on a 280-acre family farm that a St. James had run for three generations. Runner and Linda-Jean believed in the value of hard work and devotion, and as a result, Sol was raised on a tight schedule, his life regimented from farm chores to Sunday school.

He learned early and was reminded often that God had a plan and that it could be best elucidated through the power of prayer. When he couldn't learn to read or write, God had a plan. When he was left behind not once, but twice in school for the very same reason, God had a plan. And when he bit his Sunday school teacher for calling him stupid one more time, God had a plan for that too. His earlier years were a series of attempts at trying to be the faithful, fastidious little man his family and his faith wanted him to be, each attempt stymied by something beyond his control. His closest friend growing up was his older sister, Bobbi, who helped him find God in catching frogs and starting fires, in screaming at the top of his longs with other Hazard boys. Through them, he found balance, found things he was good at, and assumed this had been God's plan all along.

It was with Cole Tremayne and Xander Scoffield that he tagged along, four years their junior and too young to do much more than chase their shadows. It was only because of Bobbi that he was allowed to stick around them at all, and he was grateful for the opportunity, never quite finding his niche with kids his own age. If someone needed to be duct taped to a tree, Sol was the first to volunteer. If someone needed to get his hands dirty and rifle through an uncle's liquor cabinet, Sol's neck was almost invariably on the line. He was only ten years old when he followed them, puppy-like, into a blues bar. He was tall for his age and didn't talk much, so when he lied about his age to keep from being sent home, nobody asked any questions. He'd loved music since he was young, singing and plucking at an out-of-tune piano with his mother while she prepared to lead their church choir, but the smoke and blues of the bar spoke to him in a totally new way. He studied piano in earnest, listened to the radio and recreated what he found. When music took hold of his friends in a more serious way, he felt the familiar threat of being left behind again, and with a desperate gambit, he threw down a challenge: if he could teach himself to play bass in 30 days, they would let him follow them wherever this dream happened to take them. If not, he'd go back to being another of Hazard's sons that never saw beyond his own front yard. He studied, he worked, and at the end of the month, he played bass lines for each of their fledgling tracks, as well as a number of the covers they'd been fond of until that point. He was thirteen when the band started playing, and never stopped the forward momentum to ask questions.

As the Sons of Hazard started picking up steam, Sol was met with more and more resistance from his parents about the pursuits that were taking him away from Hazard, away from the farm. Their performances at church were the only reason that Linda-Jean didn't pull him from it altogether, and by the time they left for their first tour, the St. Jameses were too beside themselves at the change in their son to say otherwise. Eventually, he left Hazard for Los Angeles with the promise that he'd be home to mind the horses as soon as the band was done. That dream was very nearly cut short in 2005 when his older sister, Clara, died following complications from injuries she sustained during a domestic incident with her long-term boyfriend and another of Hazard's sons, Kyle Lawson. His family was devastated, as was much of the community that had raised them, and Sol spent a stretch of time in the news for something he wasn't equipped to handle. He received an outpouring of support from strangers, from fans he'd never meet, and rather than shrink from the attention, he leaned into it, taking on an almost self-sacrificial burden to give back a fraction of what they'd given to him. He signed autographs longer, listened to fan stories longer, and gave himself over to the machine of being a public figure, all the while telling himself that God had a plan.