SOJA with Envy MagSOJA

(All Good)

SOJA: From a band’s perspective, All Good’s badass because they really know how to treat the artists. All the bands have a really good time. Then you get up on stage, and you can tell the audience knows you’re having a good time, so they have a good time. It’s a smart setup.
Yeah, the shows don’t overlap.

Yeah, it’s great. You can see every single band on the bill. You’re sitting there watching the main stage, you turn 45 degrees to the right, and there’s a side stage with music hitting you instantly. Yeah, it’s badass. Good for them. It’s the only festival in the world we stay the whole weekend for. I think a lot of bands do.
Fear Nuttin’ is on the bill. Superjam ruckus?

[Laughs] Normally, if our band and their band are at the same place, one band will run up on stage with the other. It just seems to always happen. You never know, but it’s happened a hundred times before, so …
Everyone always uses “conscience” reggae when they describe SOJA. What’s conscientious about it?

I never put a period on my lyrics. I always try to leave it with a dot, dot, dot. Different things are for different people. I think that’s why Bob Marley was so popular. He never told people what to do. Instead of telling people it’s about red, gold and green, the Lion of Judah, smoking weed and going to heaven; I try to be the opposite of that. Whether I believe that or not is relatively unimportant compared to who I might be able to reach through music. After the dot dot dot is what I believe, but I’m not putting it in there. Thinking objectively is only something truly intelligent people do, and that’s who I’d like to reach—and that only happens with open-ended conversations.
Born in Babylon is releasing over the summer.

Yeah, I think there are a lot of things special about it. My biggest theme of the album is that you can be born in Babylon, be yourself, be effective in the fight of good over evil, and not be a weaker version of you by smoking weed all day. You can just be you. It’s simply for those born in Babylon.
So, when it comes down to it, is it really “all good?”

Things are all good in the sense that it’s always been all good. There’s never been a perfect world. It’s all good because it’s how the world is. When I was a kid, I knew what was right and wrong, but as I get older, it’s tougher and tougher to know where the lines are drawn. It gets tougher to put these things into songs because my own mind doesn’t know what to think anymore. Is the world okay? Is it all good? I think the world’s all good, but division scares me. Racism scares me, class scares me, poverty scares me, and I’m sitting here with gas in the van, food in my stomach and a joint in my hand. I’m all good, but is the world? Sometimes I don’t know.

 

From http://envymags.com/2009/06/summer-festival-preview/