He's surfed professionally, graduated from college, and traveled the world. Although he's the son of a world-renowned surfer, he has made a name for himself as both an athlete and an artist. Not everyone can live a life like Jack Johnson's.
Still fewer people can recognize his name.
And even fewer would treat life with the calm self-composure that accompanies Johnson's voice.
"I'm doin' some last minute packing here... I always leave everything to the last minute," he says, laughing. Yesterday Johnson was at home with his wife in Santa Barbara; today he'll be in Boston to embark on a 23-date tour opening for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. For him, this may be the culmination of years of blissful participation in both the arts world and the surfing community.
Johnson was born twenty-five years ago in Hawaii, the son of famed surfer Jeff Johnson. As such, surfing came naturally to him.
"When you're five in Hawaii, you learn to ride a bike and you learn to ride a surfboard," he says. Johnson surfed throughout high school and found himself competing in professional surfing competitions at age seventeen, but decided to leave Hawaii and attend the University of California at Santa Barbara. There, he became fascinated by the world of film and majored in Film Studies. After college, his filmmaking curiosity and his love of surfing merged.
Jack put his talents together with noted surf-filmmakers the Molloy brothers and started making16-millimeter surf documentaries. Their work culminated in the release of Thicker Than Water, a full-length feature that chronicled the bond between surfers in different countries. Johnson and his crewmembers visited Tahiti, Australia, Ireland, and France, using natural light to gather beach footage and conducting interviews with various surfers.
"It's about how things besides the actual physical part of surfing affect us," he says. "The connection between surfers is like a big family. I don't mean to be redundant, but it literally is our religion - especially when you learn it from someone you love. It's something that brings fulfillment and calmness to you."
Still, Johnson doesn't want surfing to supplant his musical talent, nor does he want to use his reputation as a surfer to promote his musical career. He wants to be recognized as a surfer "definitely on whatever level is natural. I don't want to use it to make this stuff work in a professional way... I don't want to be seen in the public eye as a surfer before a musician."
Despite Johnson's love of music, he maintains that it still cannot offer him the personal satisfaction he gets from surfing. "Surfing is complete self-fulfillment. With music it's more about sharing. When I'm out surfing it doesn't matter if there's anybody on the beach watching."
Johnson began playing guitar as a hobby about ten years ago, and picked up some piano along the way. In California he played in his first two groups, Limber Chicken and Soil. He began to record his own work for use on the soundtracks of his surf documentaries. Soon, Johnson fell into his own groove, writing blues-y folk songs that bring to mind the work of Jimi Hendrix and Ben Harper. It became obvious to his friends and bandmates that his talent as a songwriter and singer was developing. Still, Johnson's focus remained on surfing and filmmaking. A chance encounter with G. Love changed that.
Johnson was introduced to the Philadelphian blues-rapper through a mutual surfer friend. At the time, he was not playing in any bands and was simply writing with an acoustic guitar.
"[My friend] just called and said, 'You wanna go surfing with G. Love tomorrow?'" Johnson jumped at the chance, not expecting any artistic benefit. Then he played one of his songs, "Rodeo Clowns," for G. Love. G. Love invited Johnson into the studio to record it the next day, and it became the first single on his latest release, Philadelphonic. Though G. Love credits Johnson with writing the song during its drum loop intro, the song has often been credited to his band, G. Love and Special Sauce.
However, Johnson's lack of musical notoriety was about to vanish. His name began to circulate with the success of the single. Months later, he had his own recording contract.
"I've just been letting it flow; it naturally got to this point," he says - with an apparently total lack of surprise, pride, immodesty, or arrogance. "It's strange to me how it got to this point."
He soon paired up with Ben Harper's producer, J.P. Plunier, whom he met through-you guessed it-surfing. Plunier decided to produce Brushfire Fairytales, and helped to get Ben Harper involved in the project.
"We knew each other for a while...then J.P. gave him some tracks of mine that I'd done on a four-track." Harper liked one of the tracks, "Flake," so much that he asked to play slide guitar on the album cut of the song. Things became a notch more intense when Harper asked Johnson to open for him on his North American tour.
"This is the first tour of any level for me," says Johnson with the most slightly detectable air of confident nonchalance. "I've only played between Santa Barbara and San Diego."
In fact, he's never been to the Northeast before, and looks forward to discovering the area when he's in town for two dates - tonight's Orpheum show and a public concert at Brandeis Saturday night.
"I'm hoping it'll snow here and there, though it's a little scary to drive in a minivan. I love going places where there's no surf action," he says, eager to discover what people do for fun in these parts.
Perhaps Johnson's mindset is more impressive than his artistic accomplishments. Having produced numerous interviews and a full-length album, his semi-Zen Pacific attitude shines through, even through a telephone wire. If all else fails, Johnson already knows how he'll recover - if he has to.
"I still surf every day," he says.
