Iration will headline a show at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Sunday, August 25, with Pepper, Fortunate Youth, and Katastro. It’s the culminating of an upward climb for the Santa Barbara– and Isla Vista–based sunshine reggae band that has evolved both its sound and message over the course of its many-year career. I spoke with lead singer and guitarist Micah Pueschel about their growth as a band and as people, the changes of Isla Vista, internet troll culture, and more.
How does it feel to be headlining at the Bowl? We’re really excited. It’s kind of been a goal of ours for our entire career.
Knowing you’d get here someday, what advice might you give to yourself in the band’s early days? That’s a tough one. I’d say to be patient. I would probably say to spend more time on the early records, and really think about the sound you’re going with in the early days. We’ve changed so much, and a lot of the early stuff was — I felt we were just inexperienced and just trying to figure stuff out. It was a lot of trial and error, and not a lot of actual understanding of what we were doing. … These last few years we’ve really come into our own as songwriters, I feel. We are really understanding our process and what our sound is as a group; we’re really starting to hit our stride.