SOJA

    Strength To Survive - Interview with Jacob Hemphill from SOJA

    Strength To Survive - Interview with Jacob Hemphill from SOJA

    by Justine Amadori Ketola

    01/30/2012

    Strength To Survive - Interview with Jacob Hemphill from SOJA

    SOJA started out in Washington DC as a humble, revelatory, reggae garage band.  Combining their love of music with their curiosity for reggae and rasta culture childhood friends grew into teen-aged white Rastas participating in the local nyabinghi order and community.  Now they are signed to a unique deal with Dave Matthews' new imprint ATO Records which allows them to pursue their creative freedom and continue using their well-forged tools to meet their fans and speak to them loud and clear and in very large numbers from their humble beginnings. 

    As they developed their sound, the capital of the United States known as "Chocolate City" was the filter for their brand.  Using this obelisk - the Washington monument as a symbol combined with a drum kit, this logo was a way to identify American and reggae in the same headspace, one that was cool, hip, and as a result,  rapidly became an underground sensation.  The band toured relentlessly, maintaining their bohemian style and stature, with Jacob as the ultimate hippy kid, trodding barefoot in the streets, walking the talk, using the word god with a little "G" and coming of age as the ultimate flower children, troubadours with dreadlocks, militant purists determined to make their mark in reggae. 

    In this recent interview with SOJA lead singer and songwriter, Jacob Hemphill to highlight the band's release of Strength to Survive, we meander through the melting pot of the artist's passion and the band's strengths.  We receive his honest opinion of the world around him, some insight into his upbringing in Africa and his development as a songwriter.  At one point he merges a call in to the interview with his mother, Deidre West who aids to complete the picture of this complex character in reggae music.  We go through the various parts of his passion for writing music, the level of focus involved in reaching an estimated 1000 songs (recorded and unrecorded) in his catalog.  We address the significance that saving humanity has in his lyrical mission, and ultimately we go to one of his main mentors and inspiration, a folk musician as Jacob would characterize him, the great Bob Marley. How timely that the band chose to launch this opus the week before the great king Marley's birthday, February 6th.   Our conversation inspires a great discussion involving a sports analogy that  Jacob offers on the resurgence of the bands in Jamaica.  We find out that it is really a small world after all, and that there is plenty of love to go around for the music in all parts of the world!  We complete the journey with his mom still on the call, as she helps to deliver a great history lesson around the origins of the band's name, Soldiers of Jah Army. 

    Justine Ketola: What are you working on right now?
    Jacob Hemphill: We are actually rehearsing for the new tour,  We have a new guitarist with us.

    Is he an additional guitar player?
    He is in addition... John Alagia, Dave Matthews' guy produced the album and added all of these pretty guitars and I couldn't really play them all and sing so he was actually our guitar tech.
    He's like a real good buddy of ours and wondered if we would want to play on the stage with us instead of playing with cables and he was pretty excited. 

    I have been watching your trajectory and am intrigued by your past and how you grew up living during your time in Africa and the intensity there.  It seems to me that really opened your mind to becoming an artist or becoming a folk singer, a troubadour, kind of telling your story, do you feel like Africa affected you that way?
    I think that was probably the first thing - you know what, I have always lived in different colored neighborhoods.  I think there has just been a lot that's affected me over  your the years to kind of look at the world as one people. And you know whether you are living in a white place or a black place or an in between place or whatever it is after a while you start to feel like…. you know the reason  people get racist is because they don't understand other people, the same reason people are afraid of things they don't understand it, once they understand then it is not really scary any more.  But for me there was never really a group that scared me, I was always more scared of humans themselves, I guess I kind of lent itself to who we eventually became.

    I have the same background….living in different colored neighborhoods, I like the way you put that.
    It's funny because it works for everybody that way, everyone's scared of what they don't know, people are always tell you, 'you're scared of the snake, the snake's scared of you that's how everything works so for me, I was more scared of government, than I was of somebody with a different colored skin.  I was more scared of whoever was scary.

    And that you speak truth to that power that they have….The work with the World Food Programme that the band is doing, bbviously you feel a sense of urgency to give back and to help, that's part of your mission.
    The last album was kind of warning, it was called Born in Babylon and it was kind of warning, that you know when you are born with one mindset, it can lead the world into kind of a bad place which it obviously has with everything and everyone not being able to afford their houses but they have three LED TV's . I mean we have become what we allowed ourselves to become which is people who think that consumption is the point of life and when people when used to kind of….I think preservation whether it was because they just didn't have enough money or that had to save things.  You used to get married because it was cold outside and you needed to not freeze during the winter, you used to marry the girl in your town, cause there was no internet, there was no telephones. You used to farm food and then eat it….. way we are now is we go to shopping districts and we buy things that are imported to that place. Most of it is stuff we don't need but it is stuff we are trained to want, and that was a lot of what "Born In Babylon" was about. It's when you are born in a place that trains you to become a 24 hour a day consumer that is what is your going to get from it. And the government loves it because it means you are buying all this crap and the economy is getting better and blah blah blah. The new album is the mentality  that we train ourselves to be what we are and the human race is itself fulfilling the prophecy but the new album is focused more on the earth and that as we do what I was talking about in "Born In Babylon" which is consume everything, we end up consuming the earth.  And if we consume the earth which why the album is called "Strength to Survive".  It is a about do we have the strength not to consume this earth.  We turn into the one thing that humans can't cure which is cancer, we figured out every disease so far except for that one.  I think it is because  it reminds us so much of us, that we can't figure out how to stop it.  That's the new album, that we are the cancer and we're consuming not only hamburgers and french fries but the entire earth with it.


    You feel then that it is your mission to educate the fans about the state of the world and the message of being one world and one family, what happens during your shows?  You have this like Grateful Dead-type of following, do you make an effort between sets or after shows or at the merch booth to get these issues out in front of the fans, how is the dialog progressing?
    We don't really, I am not in the business of telling people who to be. I used to tell people who God was, I told them how to wear their hair, I told them what to eat for dinner what shoes to wear….hold on that's my Mom, she's been calling me all through practice.

    No problem, I understand
    I am going to conference her in as it is just easier.

    To Deidre:  Your son was just wowing me with his fantastic ideas about how capitalism and the new world order is shaping our world.
    Deidre West: That may be beyond me.

    [Jacob Hemphill Laughs]

    It may be beyond me, but I am willing to give it  a try.
    Jacob Hemphill:  I used to tell everyone what to do, I used to tell them who god was and  how to wear their pants and what to eat for dinner, and what hairstyle was going to get them into heaven.  And over the years I kind of realized how dumb that is and how offended I got when they told me they knew who god was for a fact and it was always something that offended me.  I always wanted to tell them that 'you are lying' and I thought about that I realized that I had become one of the people that was so set in his ways that looked around myself and I realized I really understood nothing about this earth.   So what we do is we don't force anything down people's throats, we ask a lot of questions during the songs and we give suggestions that we think are cool with hopeful solutions. There is no periods on anything no exclamation marks, its very much supposed to be an open dialog between us and the fans. And I think that is why we have so many fans because the E's that you got  that you got singing about having sex with models and about having millions of dollars, or you have them shoving this down your throat to tell you all that is good.  There is no middle ground, everybody needs a middle ground which we feel the population of the earth needs is that middle ground.

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