Welcome to the Gig Presents… A More-ish, Funky Interview with SOJØURN!
Oosh - producing awesome music, fun vibes and serving up great fashion fits, what more could you ask for?! All photos provided by SOJØURN.
The band consists of Tony Baker (bass), Elias Giles (keys), James Finlay (lead guitar, backing vocals), Isaac Hunter (lead vocals, guitar), Jim Bokma (drums) and Jacob O’Brien (saxophone, backing vocals) - AKA, the funniest people I’ve interviewed thus far. My face wouldn’t stop hurting from smiling afterwards.
With their new single More on the horizon, due for release at midnight this Friday, 29th October, I sat down with 5/6 of the guys from SOJØURN (Elias, James, Isaac, Tony and Jacob) for a chat and let me tell you, it was the most hilarious interview and the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Not only do these guys create insane music, they keep you laughing the entire time you’re chatting with them and their newest song is super dreamy and really chilled to listen to with the promise of More great things on the way.
As I was unable to screen record this interview and have still getting familiar with each voice, this write-up will be a little different, so you will still see all the answers from the band, however, as there were quite a few of us, you will see their answers just listed as SØ instead of their names typed beside each answer. Apologies for this.
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Hello!
SØ:
-collective hellos-
How’s everyone been?
SØ:
- Alright, alright!
- Bit over the level three, to be honest. I was kind of hoping we were going to go into level two.
- There’s a virus going around or something, what — what’s going on?
So, this is just a casual chat, whatever springs to mind, just say it!
SØ:
- Unreal.
I do have a few questions for you all, though. Your latest song, Saturday Sipping was released in February this year, wasn’t it?
SØ:
- Yup, correct. There were four Saturdays that month.
- That’s what that was about.
- How do you know that?
How was that received by the audience when it was released?
SØ:
- I think everyone that we know liked it. I don’t know what the plays are on it, but I think it did pretty well! It’s always gone off live and so, we just tried to capture what we do live and stick it down on tape.
- Sometimes, it’s also hard to know what the audience thinks because they’re not just going to say, “oh, it wasn’t that good” like, for someone to say that to you, after they hear your song, it’s super rare.
- Yeah, if they don’t like it, they’re probably not going to be honest.
You’ve also got the people who are honest and who do love it and mean it when they tell you that. So, that’s a good thing. You said that goes off really well live, have you noticed any other top songs that go off, too?
SØ:
- Yeah, some of the songs that we are releasing in this EP, some of the big, sort of, bangers that our audience has been waiting for. More is one of those, which is one of our singles. [Insert unreleased song title here] is another single that I think we’re going to release?
- Yeah, we will.
- We played that one on the main stage at Bay Dreams, that’s how it made it into our cut down set. All the stuff on our EP, we’ve played live, except for one song.
- At the moment, I think that our most successful songs are the two that we released together on Summer Tape, so that’s Take a Drive and… Mind has gone blank. What’s the other one?
- Still a Mess.
- When we played them at our last gig which was in Mangawhai, which was a sold out show, which is our hometown also, for me, that was one of the biggest moments in our music career. Everyone knew the lyrics and to have that many people singing all the lyrics was a major deal for us as a band as well. Those are definitely our most successful songs.
They’re such great songs, as well. I can see how they would go off live at gigs. I’ve heard from so many bands that it is so surprising when people know the lyrics to their songs! Unbelievable.
SØ:
- I only know the lyrics to my all-time favourite songs. I don’t even know all the lyrics to all the songs that we do and I hear them all so often!
- You get that with your favourite songs, you start singing along to them before you learn the lyrics and then you just sing your own made up lyrics forever.
- Pretty much eh. Making up words as you go.
Then you realise two years down the line, hold up, I’ve been singing the wrong lyrics this whole entire time!
SØ:
- It’s all about what a song means to you.
So, you were going to play at the YOT Club in Raglan and that got rescheduled, didn’t it?
SØ:
- Super gutted about that. YOT Club in Raglan, we’ve been trying to get in there for a couple years now, we finally got the go ahead and we had it sorted and yeah.
- We’ve rescheduled that for [a date over summer which is unreleased at this stage]. That’s what it says on my calendar.
Gives you something to look forward to, as long as everyone is out of lockdown, eh? What are you guys doing with your time now that you can’t do gigs and properly record with CJ at the moment?
SØ:
- We were pretty lucky to get all that recorded in that time, really. Now, at the moment, all that we would have been doing would be just tightening our practises up and just smashing some gigs out. We’re really stoked to have that already recorded [the EP] and ready to send out.
- Although now, with level three, we can’t practise anymore, which sucks. Yeah, too risky.
- Don’t want to be known as the super spreader.
You mentioned about a new EP! Is that coming out next year, is it? When are you thinking that is going to drop?
SØ:
- Ooh, can we say?
- Yeah, we’ve got rough dates!
- [Release date estimate]
- We have a single coming out at the end of this month that’s from the EP and then another single coming out in [unreleased date] next year, which is also from the EP. Then, the EP will come out not long after that.
- It gives us some good time to build some content around the EP and get some videos done and more artwork, I guess.
- Building a whole image on the EP really, eh.
- Merch as well. We’re thinking about doing some more merch! Another merch drop with the EP.
- Ashlea, I’ve got a question for you. If you were to buy merch, what would you buy? Would you buy a t-shirt? A hat? What do you think is a good merch idea?
Ah, God. As someone who has a lot of merch, most of it is t-shirts. I’m wearing a Mild Orange t-shirt right now.
SØ:
- That’s what they call me, by the way. Mild Orange! [Elias]
- Why do they call you that, bro?
- Because I’m cool, man.
That’s brilliant! If you do like a Mako Road thing, do the bucket hats. They’ll go off really well. What would you guys like to release as merch? Anything out of the ordinary?
SØ:
- Hoodies. Hoodies are always my favourite, hoodies are always a go.
- I’m going to say a craft beer.
- We’re thinking about doing lighters. Lighters with the SOJØURN logo on it.
- Beer cosies.
- Stickers. Stickers are mean. Everyone likes stickers.
- We were going to do Hawaiians. Like, the shirt.
- That would be loose.
You’ve got some pretty rad ideas.
SØ:
- Yeah, we just need shows to sell them at.
You could also open up a webstore and that would get a lot of customers, too.
SØ:
- Yeah, not like the gigs, but yeah. Maybe if we do make our own craft beer line, we can start pumping it out.
- We should do a vape juice!
- What’s the taste of SOJØURN?
[At this point, there were so many random tastes being thrown around, I couldn’t keep up]
Would you ever do a collab with the Dolphin Friendly boys?
SØ:
- That would be unreal.
- Being at different ends of the country, that makes it really hard to tee up times where we’d all be able to do it. A lot of people to tie down. It’s hard enough trying to get our own band in one spot, let alone two. That would be sick. I’d love to do something like that.
- When we were recording the new EP, the guy who recorded it with us is CJ from Mako Road, he’s recorded Dolphin Friendly, as well, so we may be able to get in through that.
That would be pretty sick. You guys with Dolph would be awesome, or even a Mako Road collab, that would be epic as well.
SØ:
- Even the idea of split EPs, split albums is quite cool. Not even collabing on tracks, just as a joint release, that’s another option that would work
- A side and B side.
You guys have got great ideas! I need to get you on Welcome to the Gig more.
SØ:
- Our brainstorming has just come to life.
- We’ve been locked up too long, that’s why!
The epic artwork for More, out 12am on Friday, 29th October! Do you feel like you’re being watched?
What are you most looking forward to when you come out of lockdown? Apart from obviously playing gigs. Anything in particular you’re looking forward to?
SØ:
- Going to the festivals.
- I’ve just recently started writing again and found some creative energy starting to be built up again. I’m looking forward to bringing those to the band and hacking them out. Building an album, maybe. That would be cool eh.
That was actually going to be one of my questions, if you guys were going to release an album eventually, that kind of covers that off.
SØ:
- This EP is six tracks, so it’s heading towards an album.
- When we do anything again, we will definitely work with CJ. We’ve had an amazing time working with him and all our best studio experience has been with CJ and the fact that we also recorded in our own band room… We didn’t have to go far. We could stay overnight there and work as late as we possibly wanted. It was really comfortable for us. The whole process was a lot nicer, so we’ll definitely be doing that again for the album. CJ soundproofed our band room and turned it into a studio. He set up his desk and computer and away we went.
- We had a gazebo sitting in a garage.
- The garage is kind of like our band room, it’s been turned into a bedroom, which has been turned into a band room. It’s big and it’s sort of like - since it’s isolated, we can just hang out there and we play late into the night. The neighbours don’t mind too much.
- We haven’t had a complaint.
- That we know of.
- The last songs that we recorded in the [shared] studio, we always felt like there was a pressure behind us to get it done by a certain day, it needs to be done by this time… You know? [Also] the long drive, you know, for Elias’ stuff, we were recording in Auckland and it would take two hours to drive there and back, finding accommodation and it creates this pressure.
You have got to have the classic Europcar van photo!
Regarding the new EP, has the title been released yet, or do we have to wait until next year?
SØ:
-collective I don’t knows-
- We’re allowed to, I think. The EP will be called [insert EP name here], which is the title of one of the tracks on the EP.
That is super cool, I love it!
SØ:
- The EP name does summarize what the EP is about, it’s getting pretty out there in a good way.
- I would say, based off the song, it’s experimental. We kind of experimented with different things and we wanted it to be kind of like, we want to take you on a trip with our different sounds and that’s pretty much what [EP name] is.
- The SOJØURN trip.
- There are no drugs involved.
- Yeah, sober.
- Even though it’s an experiment and we are pushing our boundaries, we are still staying true to SOJØURN’s sound.
- I think it’s a body of work that does really reflect the sound we have the most fun playing and if we’re just jamming off the cuff, it’s the kind of sound we would be jamming with, playing around with. Psychedelic and groovy, they’d be all that.
- We’re all really proud of it. I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s probably our best release.
- 100%.
- Although Jacob, they do say pride cometh before the fall.
- Nah, we’re proud as f*ck.
You’ve got to be proud of what you put out there, eh. It’s really good to hear you’re proud of it.
SØ:
- Yeah, we’re 100% confident around the release and around the fact that people are going to love it. There have been projects in the past where they’ve been so rough you’re not confident it’s your best work.
- That’s the worst feeling.
- You never want to release something and then have second thoughts after it’s already done, because then… What can you do? It’s just like that forever. That’s what I was thinking when I was doing my tracks. I know that I won’t be able to change it, so I better get it right.
Nah, that is awesome! I’m so excited to hear this new EP of yours, it’s going to be epic. Hopefully once the covid situation calms down, you guys can go on tour and I may be able to fly up to where you will be and see you!
SØ:
- No, we’re going to fly down!
- We’ll come down to Christchurch.
Oh mean! Was it last year, you guys came down here and played with The Hootz?
SØ:
- Yeah, we did.
- At Wunderbar.
- About this time last year for Spring Send.
- Yeah, that was last year and that was also in level two. That was a crazy experience as well because people had to be seated at the gig.
- I’m super confident we could have easily sold out our Christchurch gig with the amount of people that were at the bar but couldn’t get into the venue next door. It was guttering to see. It was a blast also, I loved that South Island trip.
- Everyone started standing up and we nearly got kicked off stage by the bar managers because everyone was standing up.
- Unfortunately, we have a song called Stand Up, where we tell everyone to stand up.
- The management didn’t like that! It was a coincidence, we wrote it before the plague, we didn’t know that it was going to be trouble.
The plague! That’s pretty much what it feels like. So, you guys almost got kicked out of your own gig because of that!
SØ:
- We finished the song and they cut our sound completely and the manager came up and talked to us and was like “if that happens again…”
- We need level one back.
Did you have any Summer festivals coming up? I saw that Bay Dreams has been moved to 2023.
SØ:
- Yeah, we’ve had Bay of Islands Wine and Food Festival canceled on us, YOT Club, Raglan… Auckland.
- We had to cancel a whole tour.
- We’re still going ahead in Taranaki in late December.
- Oh yes! The Festival of Lights.
- I don’t think we had many festivals lined up for this Summer. I think there was a possibility of Bay Dreams on the second release.
- It won’t happen any more.
- Our main goal for the end of this year and the start of next year was the whole EP release and doing our own shows. We wanted to hit all the little venues.
The boys playing at Soundsplash, Raglan in January 2021.
Next year, eh. That would be really good, hopefully. You did Bay Dreams and Soundsplash this year.
SØ:
- Yeah, main stage at Bay Dreams and that was an unreal experience. Biggest stage we’ve played on! Then, Soundsplash - can’t remember what that stage was called, that was fun too.
- Top stage.
- Top stage! That’s what it was.
- We also played at Wingman on Great Barrier Island, as well.
- That was a cool one.
How do you guys manage as there are six of you in the band! How does that work when you’re on stage? You can be thrown on this tiny stage and then there are six of you!
SØ:
- Sometimes James gets close to knocking my keyboard over. One time he knocked it and it was almost at the edge of the stand and it’d have been a disaster if he knocked it completely over. I would probably think it was funny, but it would ruin the gig.
- Lots of bass heads in the face, just getting deafened by the cymbals, it’s what being on a small stage is like.
- Tripping all over cables and knocking them out…
- Being careful where you stand, really.
- You can pull it off though eh, jamming out and looking like you’re dancing all over the place, but your feet are in the same spot the whole time. We don’t even think about it now.
- I think at a few of our shows, there were three of us on the stage and three of us on the ground, we’ve done that before.
Bit of a balancing act there by the sounds of it! So, if you had to claim an album as your own that already exists, what album would you claim and why?
SØ:
- As a band? If SOJØURN had to recreate an album? Okay.
- As in we literally own it, or released it as our own?
Owned it/released it.
SØ:
- Faaaar, it’s not like we bought The Beatles back catalogue.
- My album would be Astroworld by Travis Scott and my reason being is because it has my favourite musical engineer behind it, Mike Dean, who I really look up to when producing music, yeah some of my favourite tracks are of [his producing], so I look to those as reference points. Yeah, that’s one of the top ones for me. I would also like to say that for our SOJØURN EP, I used Stadium Arcadian by Red Hot Chilli Peppers for the drums and that’s probably way up there as well, so that was a great reference point for how I came to CJ, how I wanted the drums to particularly sound.
- I was going to say… Bob Marley and The Whalers. I don’t know exactly which album but I find them pretty cool. I like The Specials first album.
- What about the Pixies album?!
- Yeah, yeah. That’s pretty high up on the list! Bob Marley, Pixies, you know… Bob Marley is tried and tested. He was so big in New Zealand, such a legend. It resonates more with the Kiwi soul.
- Uncle Bob.
- That’s a really good question.
- There’s this band called The Frightnrs who are a New York band who are a part of Daptone Records. They do analogue recordings and they get this old, authentic-sound. Nothing More to Say is the only album by The Frightnrs and they released it while their singer had leukaemia and he passed away just after they recorded it and it’s real beautiful and he’s got this super high voice when he sings. That’s what I sort of like to cry happy tears to.
That sounds amazing.
SØ:
- Did I buy you time, Isaac?!
- Uh. Yeah… I would like… Bays by Fat Freddy’s [Drop]. Freddy’s is f*cking ultimate. Or, Continuum by John Mayer. Two different genres, two different sounds. This EP, I drew a lot of inspiration for writing from the up and coming Kiwi talent, eh. Bands like Mako Road, Masaya, Muroki - some of his grooves are crazy! Dolphin Friendly, very similar inspiration from their older releases and yeah. Any of those guys.
- They’re such good people.
This might be a difficult one to answer, but it might not be at the same time… What’s the toughest struggle that you’ve had as a band?
SØ:
- Covid.
- Nothing really eh, we’re pretty cruisy. Maybe personality clashes, but we just sort it out. We’ve got some big personalities and some big differences in ideas, but we always massage them out.
- I agree with that.
- Being at the top of the country, like, that makes it harder on touring. You’d want to be in Wellington or Taupo, somewhere like that.
- We were talking about that, actually.
- Apart from Auckland. Closer to the main hub.
- Apart from that, we’re just killing it!
- I’d also say like, different lifestyles and different commitments that we have in our lives. I think that would be with any band, but I think with having six people and us doing different musical things or us playing sports or us with our different types of jobs, it’s hard to bring us together. We really have to make time to commit to the band, which is what we want to do.
- Everyone steps up, everyone does it. If the only time we can do it is a certain time or a certain week, we make it work.
There are some positives that come out of the toughness that you face from time-to-time.
SØ:
- Yeah, always.
To go along with that question, what is the proudest moment that you’ve had within the band?
SØ:
- Bay Dreams.
- Mine would probably be everyone singing the lyrics at our show. People that know your songs and put time and effort into listening and learning the lyrics. It kind of shows truth that they enjoy the song, but it’s real difficult to learn the lyrics of a song that you don’t like, you know what I mean? That for me has a real deep meaning, that was definitely the greatest feeling I’ve had with the band so far.
- This upcoming EP for me as well, it just sounds so slick, real proud of that.
You’ll be eagerly anticipating the EP drop!
SØ:
- If I could drop it tomorrow, I would.
Can you please? Please just do it?
This is a random one, if you guys could go forward to the future or go back to a previous year in your life, what would you choose to do?
SØ:
- Do we get old in the future, or can we be young? Do we get to go back?
You can Benjamin Button if you want to! Like, age backwards… There’s no rules in this game.
SØ:
- We can go back and we can go forward again? As a band, we could all travel back and see Bob Marley or something and come back!
- That would be a mean weekend.
- He played Western Springs in 1970-something.
- I’d just see mean gigs and just go on excursions if I had that power.
- I’d go forward 500 years to see if the world still exists and then come back.
- Oh, but what if it doesn’t exist and you obliterate into nothing?
- Oh, bugger.
- -Screaming- MY INSIDES!
- I wish I traveled Europe before covid. That was definitely my regret, yeah I don’t know. I don’t think I’d like to go to the future, I’d always like to go back in the past.
Reggae, soul, rock, surf - what more could we possibly ask for?
Yeah, I think the past would be a lot more fun. You could almost rectify any mistakes you’ve made, as well, if you went back to the past.
SØ:
- I was going to say, I would go back and be my younger self. Music for me through High School was always something really fun, never something I tried to hone in on, it was more like d*cking around and not doing much, so I would have told myself to work at it a bit more. Learn more when I was younger.
- I have changed my mind, I’d go back in time and give myself a hiding. That is the official answer, lock it in.
- Sort your sh*t out.
God, you guys are entertaining. Have you guys got anything else you’d like to add, serious or not serious?
SØ:
- We’re all like, back bench comedians, we can’t really hold a conversation, but we will just come in with the one liners. If you run out of questions, we might just squirm.
- The More single is out on Friday, 29th October.
- Save the date!
- There will be a pre-save link for all streaming platforms for Spotify, Apple Music for it. [Links at the end of the interview]
- Keep supporting the SOJØURN.
Your friend, Tony has just joined the chat!
SØ:
- He’s not our friend! We’ll be here another hour.
This has just been such a classic interview.
SØ:
- Thank you for your interest in our music, Ashlea.
No worries! Thank you guys for being so creative and putting out such amazing music. It’s really cool to see your passions.
SØ:
- We covered a lot of ground.
- I was just talking to someone about the uncertainty of trying to plan shows and I’ve kind of just pulled together maybe 6 or 8 dates over summer, we’re obviously just going to sit and wait, see what happens with all this covid sh*t. In the mean time, we’ve got a couple real banging releases to throw out there into the universe, that’s pretty exciting, you know?
I’ve heard all about them! Can’t wait. Will definitely have to do some reviews once they drop!
SØ:
- You’ll have to get up here for one of those North Island shows.
- We told her we’d go down to her.
- Yeah, we love Christchurch! We’re pretty keen to get back down there. Maybe in Autumn - March/April we’ll try and get down there and throw some bangers out there.
100%. You guys are ALWAYS welcome in Christchurch and hopefully there will be some normality throughout the country very soon.
SØ:
- [With the new music] Kit from Melbourne is keeping us in line. We’ve done it all on our own up until this point, now we’re working with Meow and working with a bit of agency and it’s quite exciting and Kit has done a lot of stuff with Mako and I think he may have done There’s a Tuesday and The Butlers before, as well. I think his biggest client was the Pixies, that’s not too bad as a starting point.
Amazing! Please keep up the amazing work! Thank you for your time - I appreciate it, even though you’re in lockdown, I’m sure you have other things to do.
SØ:
- I can only speak for myself, but I don’t.
- I’ll probably just sit here long after the interview is finished.
- If you exit the zoom Ashlea, we’re probably just going to stay on here!
Have a good night guys and again, thank you!
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An incredibly big thank you to Isaac, Jim, Tony, Elias and Jacob for your time during the most entertaining interview - my face hurt so much from laughing and smiling, even for about an hour after it had ended. Make sure to keep your ears to the sky for SOJØURN’s new EP, dropping sometime early next year and go on and pre-save More which comes out THIS Friday. I’ve heard the track and it is definitely my favourite song of theirs thus far. A fantastic taste of what is to come.
A little bit of background on the track according to Isaac: “This song is about the closing stage of a relationship when you can feel someone slipping away. It’s the perspective of feeling invisible to the other person and blaming yourself for the relationship ending.”
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Pre-Save More here and find SOJØURN at the below links -
Spotify
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
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At the moment, I do have availability to do interviews, reviews, features etc. for New Zealand musicians - check out the blog for what I have done in the past. You can send me a message on Facebook, Instagram or send an email. Right now, I don’t have the capacity to do international features - please keep an eye on the social pages as this could change very shortly.