Q&A: SOJA’s Jacob Hemphill speaks on tour life, new album

Alternative reggae group SOJA’s eclectic band of dreadlocked guitarists, Latin-style brass players and upbeat percussionists perform music with a deep lyrical conviction regarding the state of human emotion and conflict.

The Daily Bruin’s Max McGee spoke with Jacob Hemphill, SOJA’s lead vocalist and guitarist, about the band’s new album, “Amid the Noise and Haste,” and the band’s journey to this point in its career.

Daily Bruin: When SOJA was first starting off as a band over in Virginia, how did you gain the faith and confidence in yourself to know you could pursue music over anything else?

Jacob Hemphill: Confidence is a tough question, but I do know that it comes from within. If you keep looking at other people – and this goes for everything, not just bands but life in general – you are kind of screwed. You are going to see the people who are doing better than you and you’re going to get envious. Then you are going to see the people who are doing worse than you and you’re going to get vain.

I think the key – to confidence in starting a band, starting a relationship, starting a business or anything you believe in – is you. In these crazy times, one true currency that you can always believe in is your own contribution to your own dreams. I would say that’s something that I have always tried to focus on: me. Not me being better or worse than anyone, just me.

DB: What are some daily practices that have created a productive environment for SOJA on this tour?

JH: The way that we try to go about it is to No. 1, have fun. No. 2, make other people have fun at the same time. And as long as we can do that, we love it. If we have a day off we will go play golf or go to the studio or set up all of our acoustic instruments in the parking lot of our hotel outside of the tour bus.

A lot of what we do is based around enjoying life because these tours of 180 to 190 shows per year, can really beat you up if you don’t go about them in the right way. We stay in love with the music; we stay in love with the audience, the new record, the tour; and we stay in love with the tour bus.

DB: As the band tours around the world, have you noticed this sense of noise and haste, described in the album title, felt stronger in certain areas than in others?

JH: To me with the new album, the title is somewhere amid all this crazy is the truth, and we have to look inside to find it. When the Brazilian government decided to pay for the World Cup (while) hiking up bus fares, Brazilians took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands basically saying, “You cannot pay for your big party out of the pockets of those who take the bus.”

The second I saw those protests, I wanted to be there because I know that within that chaos is where the real truth is. Humans aren’t only beautiful when they’re doing beautiful things; they’re beautiful when they’re standing up against ugly things.

DB: How are the band’s thoughts from older albums, such as “Peace In a Time of War,” still alive on “Amid the Noise and Haste?”

JH: The answers to today’s society, not the ones from 2,000 years ago, involve the environment, the economic issues, the social issues, the equality issues – all of those are based in one thing and that one thing is the love of the human heart.

Those first couple of records are very Rastafarian because we were Rastafarian. Then personally, over time, I realized that my goal in life was not to pretend that I knew all the answers, but I do know one thing: The human race is programmed to love love. When they would say, “We are one people, one love, let’s all live together,” that was the big deal for me.

That’s what SOJA is about – finding those common human threads, those feelings we all get; putting words to it; putting music to it that matches; putting it on a record, and singing it live. That’s what we do.

Compiled by Max McGee, A&E contributor.