Pages tagged “jack johnson”

1. She & Him - Vol. 1 (Merge)

Reaffirming that Neil Young really does have a "Heart of Gold," the venerable singer/songwriter will once again headline the 2008 Bridge School Benefit concert, in honor of the California school he co-founded to provide assistance for children with severe physical and speech impairments.

We just finished putting together our August issue, which is our special International Issue. Our premise is that "world music" isn't a genre; musicians from around the world are contributing to every style of music and adding their local flavors. International influence certainly proved to be true the first part of the day yesterday at Bonnaroo. I started local with Augusta, Ga., native Sharon Jones and her Dap Kings. It was like watching Amy Winehouse if she was better and likable—and could dance. From there, I caught Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet. Abigail is from Tennessee, but her music is influenced by her many trips to China, where she'll be returning this summer for the Olympic Games. On the main stage, California-based multi-ethnic group Ozomatli was mixing rock and hip-hop with salsa and reggae for the pulsating masses. And then Gogol Bordello was adding their Eastern European touches to New York punk for a frenzied crowd.

“It was kind of a comment on our culture, on what’s going on.”

The Bowery Hotel wants to pamper you with its plush sofas and soft light. An echo of a New York that never was, the hotel is comfortable and solid, carefully designed to help you relax. In other words, it seems like the perfect place to listen to a Jack Johnson album—his breezy guitar and gentle lyrics a perfect match for the hotel’s warmth and comfort.

But with new album Sleep Through The Static, Johnson is not out to soothe or comfort anyone. During a recent listening session at the hotel, “All at Once,” the record’s elegiac opening track, immediately breaks the Bowery’s gentle spell: Around the sun some say it’s gonna be the new hell some say / It’s still to early to tell some say / It really ain’t no myth at all / Keep asking ourselves are we really strong enough / There’s so many things that we got too proud of. With its brooding piano and minor chords, it’s a haunting opening—the darkest point on an album that refuses to accept easy answers. Static balances its dark material with quiet, wistful love songs, and the result is ambiguous, which is exactly what Johnson wanted.

“Sometimes I ask myself, 'Would I listen to my music?' I’m not sure if i would or not, to be honest.”

As we sit in an epic ballroom with a fireplace that’s larger than your average hotel room, Johnson remains grounded. I ask him about his last album, the soundtrack to the Curious George movie, wondering whether the record (Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George) was a clever screw-you to critics who’ve accused him of being too soft and too safe? Well, yes, he says. “Sometimes, I like to disarm people. I can see a lot of the reasons why I might get attacked by people who like edgy music. The funny thing is I never really tried to make any claims of being like a rock band or whatever.”

Static shows that Johnson is comfortable with musical growth, but it’s definitely growth on his own terms. There are more instruments than ever before—keyboards, electric guitar, even a Moog synthesizer—and more dynamic range: Johnson and his producer, J.P. Plunier, intentionally made the loud songs louder and the soft songs softer.

Despite Johnson’s light touch, Sleep Through the Static is not an escape from heaviness. “It’s not just like, ‘Things are tough, but don’t worry—everything’s OK.' It’s, ‘Things are tough—I feel alright sometimes, but, man, it can be overwhelming.'”

“Hopefully it’ll catch on and change the industry a little bit in a small way.”

Before politics ever appeared in his music, Johnson was taking the world seriously. In the back of a Cadillac Escalade on the way to the hotel, he tells me that his record company, Brushfire, is committed to environmentally friendly packaging. As Johnson’s popularity and name-recognition grow, his plans get bigger. His 2008 world tour will expand upon the EnviroRider, his ambitious guide to green touring. (The conflict between the EnviroRider and the Escalade goes unmentioned, but at one point the singer/songwriter admits, “I just as often sleep through the static.”)

Back at the hotel, Johnson describes Brushfire as a civic-minded enterprise. After a favorable deal with Universal, Johnson committed to helping other artists, including Rogue Wave and G. Love & Special Sauce. “Our label is almost more of a co-op thing,” Johnson says. “People can come and now they have control of their stuff because they’re part of our deal.” In a way, Johnson’s business model mirrors his artistic approach on Static—it’s all about looking inside to figure out the contradictions, then looking out at the world to see what can be done about them.

Jack Johnson briefly considers the functionality of metaphors in “Never Know,” one of several insidiously catchy tracks on In Between Dreams, before concluding, “I wanna give this imagery back.”

Johnson is the most plainspoken of singer/songwriters; he never resorts to metaphor if straight talk will do. Listening to the surfer/artist’s third album is like sitting on a barstool alongside a good friend, knocking back pints and rappin’ it down about, y’know, life and whatever.

Among the weightier topics Johnson ponders this time are the nocturnal struggle between worry and sleep (“No Other Way”), screwing up as a vicious cycle (“Staple It Together”) and coming to terms with the death of a friend (“If I Could”). As always, the sparest of arrangements surround his gentle vocals, appropriately paralleling his down-to-earth lyrical style. The opening and penultimate songs, “Better Together” and “Do You Remember,” conversationally celebrate Johnson’s relationship with his wife, and they’re all the more touching for their guilelessness. In the latter, he reflects on the day they met, singing, “I was crazy ’bout you then / And now for the craziest thing of all / Over 10 years have gone by / You’re still mine / Locked in time / Let’s rewind.”

Johnson’s songs contain little catharsis (riding waves apparently takes care of that), instead offering the soft-spoken assertion that, even in this imperfect world, life is worth living, if only for its beautiful minutiae—love, friendship, banana pancakes and a sizable swell on a sunny California afternoon.

It’s 2:15 on a Sunday afternoon in Atlanta, and Jack Johnson seems to have just woken up. But when you’re talking to a guy who probably wears a T-shirt and flip-flops 365 days a year, it’s pretty hard to tell. Though Johnson is scheduled to take Music Midtown’s main stage in a little over two hours, he seems as loose as his breezy brand of Frisbee-folk. He’s channel surfing inside his tour bus, talking about his second record, On and On, which hit stores in May, and his summer amphitheatre tour with friend and mentor Ben Harper.

With an easygoing sound that falls lazily between Cat Stevens and Sublime, Johnson’s music sounds better with a tequila and twist of lime in hand, a salty breeze, and sand under your feet. Sedate, minor-chord melodies carry lyrics about snowboarding, bubbly toes and mud football over Rasta-tinged barre chords. A modern-day Jimmy Buffett sans the Margaritaville cheese, Johnson has made his mark with a seemingly effortless vibe that neither overwhelms nor disappoints—and that’s just fine with him.

“I’m not trying to do something dissonant that people don’t get,” Johnson explains, without a hint of defensiveness. “I’m just playing music for people who want to have a good time. I mean, I’m not trying to kid myself—it’s simple stuff. It’s easy to sing along to. I want people to hear my songs and feel like they could have written them.”

Fans connect with his mellow stage persona, which provides the perfect complement to his music. And since his crowds are more apt to party than hang on every note, Johnson says he and his band put very little pressure on themselves. “It has to be a really bad show for us to get bummed,” he says. “If we have a sloppy set but the crowd seems to be having fun, we don’t really worry about it.”

Following a solid year-and-a-half of touring to support his platinum-selling debut, Brushfire Fairytales, the band retreated in August 2002 to Johnson’s hometown of Oahu, Hawaii, to lay down tracks for On and On. Longtime Beastie Boys producer Mario Caldato Jr. (aka Mario C.) signed on to produce the project after convincing Johnson to convert his garage into a studio. They surfed in the morning and barbecued at night, maintaining a loose, familial atmosphere that comes through soft and clear in the recordings.

“When you’re not paying for the studio space, it makes a huge difference,” Johnson notes. “You can take your time, and you’re not forced to compromise your lifestyle. The sessions basically felt like afternoon jams with friends.”

The sleepy island rhythms of On and On are certainly no radical departure from Brushfire, though Johnson does dig in a little deeper, lyrically. Caldato’s subtle touches help break the strum-hum monotony with percussive grooves like “The Horizon Has Been Defeated,” “Holes to Heaven” and “Rodeo Clowns” (which Johnson borrowed back from G. Love). The production allowed Johnson to wear his influences on his sleeve without ruining his shirt.

“A lot of people know Mario from the Beasties, but he does so much more music,” Johnson explains. “He was excited about the project because it was a non-hip-hop thing for him to do. You can definitely hear some hip-hop influence in my lyrics and phrasings, but I never want to give my music too much of that vibe, because it’s unnatural. I grew up in Hawaii, not on the streets. And I love reggae, but I didn’t grow up in strife. Mario was great, because he was able to combine these elements in the flavor we wanted, like the thick tones and the break beats.”

While most musicians chase success from day one, a career in music was never really part of Johnson’s master plan. Instead, fame seemed to come looking for him by way of the sea. Born and raised on Hawaii’s North Shore, he began surfing the revered Pipeline at age 12. By 17, he became the youngest invitee ever to make the finals at the Pipe trials, the world's most prestigious surfing event. Yet despite scoring a pro contract before graduating high school, Johnson gravitated away from competition to explore his creative side. He earned a film degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and began racking up film credits on surf films and music videos. He traveled to Indonesia and Australia to shoot some of the world’s top surfers with an acoustic guitar in tow. Many of Johnson’s first songs appeared in his movies, and the surf community encouraged him to keep writing and recording.

An early break came when G. Love and Special Sauce chose one of his songs as the first single on their 1999 release Philadelphonic. “Rodeo Clowns” turned into a minor radio hit, giving laid-back Jack some initial industry exposure. A four-month tour supporting Harper garnered him thousands of music-minded fans along the way, paving the way for his debut release, which was distributed on an upstart label co-founded by J.P. Plunier, Harper’s manager and producer. Brushfire Fairytales was quickly embraced by the college, jam band and adult-alternative crowds—much to the surprise of Johnson, who never expected his music to get beyond the surf-and-skate crowd.

“Music wasn’t anything I planned on doing, but I hate to sound indifferent, because I truly appreciate all the support we’ve received,” says Johnson, who recently turned 28. “I think the key is to pay your dues without realizing you’re paying them. When we were traveling in our little soccer-mom van, the three of us took turns driving through the night to get to the next gig. And the thing is, we never once thought, ‘Man, we need to get a bus.’ We were always just super excited to be on the road with our friends, playing these little clubs.”

The days of playing small clubs are long-gone. A 55-date package tour with Harper will keep Johnson on the road through the early fall. Both artists are playing full sets each night and even sitting in with each other on occasion. All shows are in 5,000-15,000-seat outdoor venues, giving Johnson’s songs plenty of room to breathe—and plenty of voices to help sing along.

“The second you figure out what everyone digs about your music is probably a bad revelation because you’ll start trying to move in a direction people want to hear,” he adds. “Thankfully, I’m not too concerned with figuring it all out.”