Jack Johnson had never heard the song Drunk in Love by Beyonce. We fixed that. Photo: Weisberg
It had come to this. There I was, seated at a table beside Jack Johnson at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, and I was singing to him. Beyonce. Drunk in Love. The queen of all that is holy in pop culture had taken hold of our table and conversation. Just moments earlier, I asked Jack what he thought of Beyonce’s “surfboardt.” He immediately deadpanned, “Who? What?”
I should have seen that coming.
My face wrinkled into disbelief. His face unchanged. He clearly had no idea what I was talking about, and I quickly understood what must happen.
I closed my eyes. Kinda. Then I mustered some uncomfortable, half-ass swag that starkly contrasted the marine exhibits around us. “Mah surfboardt.” Pause. “Mah surfboardt.” Pause. Now my neck was in it. “Grainin’ on that wood. Grainin’ grainin’ on that wood.”
Nothing.
He was a sport, quickly transitioning the conversation into something about Sheryl Crow, Don Ho, and Q-Tip. And that’s how I always imagined my first conversation with Jack Johnson would go.
The occasion that enabled that exchange was just as serendipitous. Jack and his family were in town to celebrate World Water Day with students from high schools around the world, including his alma mater, Kahuku High School, and Algalita, a marine research institute based in Long Beach. All attendees were learning about issues near and dear to our oceans at the 2014 Plastic Ocean Pollution Solutions Summit. It was the perfect World Water Day.
And it ended with a surprise performance by Jack Johnson. He owed me one.
So how did you get involved in this gathering of students and environmentalists?
We’re part of this event in two different ways. We have two different non-profit groups. One is called the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, and it’s based in Hawaii. We do environmental education in the schools for kids. It could be anything from school gardens, getting them on field trips, recycling programs, trying to get locally grown food in the cafeteria, and things like that. The other is the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, and we give grants to groups to help them do what they do all around the world where we tour. This was one of the things that Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation helped to fund.
It must feel pretty awesome to get kids from your high school over here to be part of it.
It feels really good to be able to do this. It’s kind of a by-product of getting to do the music, and it all grew into something where I think my wife felt like her job was making sure my ego didn’t grow too much – trying to shine the spotlight off of me and put it on things like this.
That’s interesting you say that. Because I think one of the most distinct qualities of your identity as an artist and apparent in your music is a level of humility. Almost everything about your approach seems very understated.
Well, I mean, I just kinda do what I do. It’s nothing very fancy. It’s just fun. It’s acoustic guitar. It was always a hobby. A lot of people think I’m trying to be overly humble when I say this, but this is one place where people understand. Surfing has always been first in my life, you know? Other people sometimes don’t understand that and think I’m just kind of making up a story, but music is just a hobby for when the waves were flat for me growing up. Or at night time on the North Shore of Oahu there wasn’t always a lot to do, so a lot of my friends would get together and we’d play music. And it was something that brought me and my friends together. It was something I did around the house with my grandma sitting on one side and my niece and nephew, so it was very family-oriented. It was always just a hobby.
Then we had a chance to open for Ben Harper on this one tour, and then it turned into something that was feeling more and more like a career, I just tried to keep in my mind that it was still just a hobby. I think that a lot of times, if you have the luck that something like this gets going, you can forget what it is that you were getting into it for. And for me what connects with people are just simple stories about a relationship. Whether it’s between a father and a child, a husband and a wife, or a couple of friends – the songs are just simple folk songs, you know?
So I’ve always tried to keep surfing first, and that’s just kept it where the songs are pretty simple. On the other side, I get critics all the time. “Don’t you want to change what you’re doing? Don’t you want to reinvent your whole deal?” This and that, and it’s just like, “That just sounds like too much work.” (Laughs.) You know? I just want to surf and keep making albums once I have enough songs. And just keep it what it was. And that’s why it feels understated. It’s a lot of acoustic guitar and simple chords.
Yeah, it can’t still feel like a hobby any more. Right?
We just got back from South America, and it was crazy down there. The fans are so passionate, and we play to a lot of people, and it can get crazy. Sometimes it’s hard to say it’s just a hobby, but we try to keep it that way as much as we can.
