Back in first grade, Jacob Hemphill traded a Garfield Christmas book to classmate Bobby Lee Jefferson in exchange for a Garfield pencil topper. Oddly enough, the two childhood friends are now trading guitar licks as members of the reggae band SOJA.
“We’ve popped out a quick tear every once in a while,” Hemphill said. “Our parents see us and they’re like “Wow, there they are – there’s Jake and Bobby.’”
SOJA, who formed out of Washington D.C. in 1997, consists of Hemphill (lead and harmony vocals, guitar) Jefferson (bass), Ryan Berty (drums), Kenneth Brownell (percussion), Patrick O’Shea (keyboards), Rafael Rodriguez (trumpet), Hellman Escorcia (saxophone) and Trevor Young (lead guitar).
“It’s been easy because we’re all friends,” said the 31-year-old Hemphill. “If we weren’t friends, I have no idea. That’s been the easy part for us.”
The spring/summer tour features appearances at Bonnaroo, Wanee, Wakarusa, and All Good Music Festival. Hemphill said the band is pumped and hopes to attract a slew of new fans. Soja is coming off a 2011 where it played at Dave Matthews Band’s Caravan and released a new album, Strength to Survive, on ATO records, co-founded by Matthews.
“It’s a mix between a band going nuts on stage,” said Hemphill, when asked to describe the dynamic of the band. “One half is really powerful and the other is really pretty and a lot of vocals about social, economic, environmental and political issues.”
SOJA has played 360 shows in a year-and-a-half, how does the band manage to stay energized?
We really like to play, so we feel lucky. We see bands that hate being on the tour and that is unfortunate. I love being in a different city every day, I love being on the stage every night, I love singing and I love the people I’m on stage with, so that’s where I want to be.
What can fans expect to be different about this spring/summer tour?
We’ve got a new guitar player, Trevor Young. He used to be our guitar tech. We realized he was adding all this beautiful, extra stuff during the making of the record and we wanted to play it live. There was no way for me to do everything at once, so our guitar tech stepped up and he’s actually an incredible guitar player and singer. He’s the lead guitar now and he stands up in the front next to Bobby Lee.
We’re always changing things. We’re SOJA, so every show is different and every tour is different and all the arrangements are different. Obviously, we have a ton of new music from our album.
That’s pretty cool, moving from guitar tech to lead guitar.
Not a bad move. It’s kind of like how we’ve made the whole team. We don’t go out and find the guy who has the look. We want someone who is obviously good but we want somebody who is our brother too or our sister. This isn’t a job for us, this is like the rest of our lives, so it made sense and we knew all the right things about him. He was humble, he was a genuine good person and incredible at guitar.
Speaking of the new album, What’s the meaning behind the title Strength to Survive ?
The theme of the album is that the human race will learn to work together and come together to have the strength to survive or if we all make the earth so hot that the ice cap melts that we have an ice age and wipe out our entire history.
Why is it so important for you as a band to have such socially conscious lyrics?
That’s what I like to sing about. I like to sing about saving the earth and the people who live in it. And it seems like we have two options, we can either start fixing things now or we could start fixing things when they’re broken. But 50 years ago nothing was broken and another 50 years we may have a very different picture to look at. And I like singing about the evolution of the human race and where we’re headed.
How is this new album different from 2009’s Born in Babylon ?
I always loved how Bob Marley records had a really cool reggae sound but then again it rocked with the producer coming in and adding guitar, so we kind of wanted to do that for ourselves and we got a chance to do it.
How do you get fans to see there is more to reggae than the likes of Marley, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff?
I don’t know if that’s really my job. I’m not here to sell anybody on my brand of reggae necessarily. I’m just playing my music and whoever wants to listen to it, can. And people who are expecting Bob Marley, I wouldn’t think it is good advice to listen to anyone and think they’re going to be as good as Bob Marley.
Getting back to the summer tour, you’ll be headlining and supporting with a variety of acts. When you play in your hometown of Washington DC, DJ ?uestlove will be a special guest.
He’s a big go-go music fan and we’re going to try to play some extra go-go songs at the show that night. We’re going to try to impress him.
What’s go-go music?
It’s music that’s only played in my area as far as I know. It started with kids playing paint buckets outside the metro stop. They use the metal shopping carts as high-hat cymbals and the big paint bucket as the kick drums and the little ones are the snares and toms.
You also have back-to-back opening gigs for the Dave Matthews Band in Burgettstown, Pa.
Dave Matthews is kind of an inspiration for our band not only musically but also the way he evolved and the following he achieved – it’s kind of staggering. It’s kind of like watching the leader and their band is incredible. Each one of those guys individually is so good that I feel like musicians are drawn to them.
Do you think you might collaborate during that mini-run?
I haven’t met him yet. We’ve been busy and he’s been busy probably since the album came out. I talked to him recently and we were talking about how we want to meet up. I’m sure we’ll see him at one of these shows. I would love to get on stage with Dave Matthews.
Then in August the band has several dates with Slightly Stoopid and 311. What does SOJA have in common with those bands?
We played with Slightly Stoopid a couple of times. They’re buddies of ours and they’ve been doing it for a long time and they’re kicking butt, same as 311 and they’re kicking butt; and we’re looking to hop on the tour and kick butt as well.
Could this be a breakout year for SOJA?
I don’t think SOJA is that kind of band. We don’t write a song and get famous. We’re more of a band that rises on a 45 degree incline – we just build it. We play the music we play, the fan base grows, goes from 100 people to 1,000 to 10,000 people. I’m never going to feel like we arrived because for us it’s about playing the music for the people who come to the shows and make an album that they can play in their car or at their house.
How about becoming regulars on the summer festival circuit?
I guess, we’ll see how it goes. We feel like festivals are the name of the game these days. It’s also a musician’s favorite thing because you see all these bands that you really like and you get paid to be there. It’s the coolest thing ever and we’re just pumped that we have the chance to go to all these cool things and we’re already trying to figure out who we’re going to watch.
