Raised in the wild by feral graduate students, Sofía learned to make simple vowel sounds at a young age. When she was not suckling at the teat of the mimeograph machine refill cartridge (ahhh — delicious purple toxicity!), Sofía absorbed the basics of life, such as Latin declensions, poetic forms, and the proper use of the subjunctive.**

Entry into the modern world posed its challenges, but Sofía persevered with a cheerful naïveté and a level of spaciness not entirely unreminiscent of Janice the Muppet. For a time, she made her home in Austin, TX, where she frequently made even dozens of dollars a year as a singer-songwriter. The economic difficulties of being a musician often put her in desperate economic straits, and it was on a trip to the local pawn shop to pay her 20% monthly interest that the song Nickel and Dime was born. The funk song about usury is basically a SchoolHouse Rock song for adults.

(Sofía originally assumed that legislation would soon make her song hopelessly dated, like the Child ballads about Johnny Going Off to Sea, but alas, it appears evergreen.)

With a music career sure to pan out some day, and an amazing array of completely dysfunctional pearl-buttoned sensitive musicians to try to avoid dating, Sofía was settling in for the long haul, but everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked when she contracted Lyme Disease during a tour in the Northeast. With those fateful words from the Lyme specialist, “Only Crazy People on the Internet Think They’re Still Sick,” she was thrown headlong through the looking glass into the opposite bizarro world of medical gaslighting. A 10 year saga ensued, and while she did eventually find excellent medical care, she still became disabled, and remains on disability now.

In 2019 and 2020, she hoped she would be able to spend what little energy she had shifting creative gears by writing a funny book about a fictional apocalyptic pandemic. She then got a little bit freaked out when her book started coming true. So now she has switched her artistic focus to essay and memoir writing as well as creating poorly-drawn cartoons. (However, if everything she writes comes true she would like to mention that she is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice as well as extremely healthy and good-looking).

Some Salient Information:

• Sofía’s last name, Echegaray, is Basque. The Basques are a proud, unpronounceable people, famous for their paella, jai alai, and general beret-wearing.
• Echegaray is pronounced like this: Etch-eh-garrr-eye.
• Due to an entirely bizarre series of circumstances that occurred while she was interning at Sesame Workshop, Sofia actually exists in Muppet form. So there it is, ladies and gentlemen: Immortality in Felt.
• To date this is still her greatest accomplishment
• Sofía was born in Spain to a Spanish father and an American mother. Her experience with Spanish bureaucracy has trained her well for a life of endless disability paperwork.
• Sofía grew up in Storrs, Ct and other college towns. Her upbringing was very unusual but, as they say, “Everything is copy.”

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**(Hint: “I wish the subjunctive were used more often.”)

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Awards and Bragging Rights

Semifinalist, Music2Life competition — Songs for Social Change

Two-Time Semifinalist, Mountain Stage NewSong Competition

Sung Backup / Shared Stage with: J. Wagner (as “Sofia Grey”), Idgy Vaughn, the late Eric Taylor, Lilli Lewis, Jack Wilson, Najeeb Sabour

Co-Write: “Dancing” with Grace Pettis

“Nickel and Dime” chosen to be part of Songs for Standing Rock, a project which raises funds for indigenous water protectors