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Jack Johnson How the surfer/filmmaker/singer-songwriter mines his dreams for song ideas and finds the balance between Jimmy Buffett and Jimi Hendrix. By Drew Pearce (Reprinted from the February 2009 Issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine) Inside a trailer behind the main stage at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, Jack Johnson is quietly tuning up his guitar, and tuning out the cacophony of crowd noise and distorted bass barely muffled by the window. A few feet away, photographers and event coordinators are scurrying to stay on schedule. In the next two hours, Johnson will be whisked from interview to photo shoot to stage, where he’ll stand before tens of thousands of fans who roar for an encore with such intensity, it sounds like a jet has just landed by the drum kit. All the while, Johnson navigates the chaos like a Zen master. After the multi-platinum success of his 2001 debut, Brushfire Fairytales, Johnson has probably learned to adjust to life in the eye of a storm. When the soundtrack to his films Thicker Than Water and September Sessions created a buzz among music fans in the surfing community, it wasn’t long before he became a music celebrity and cultural icon of sorts—“the Jimmy Buffett of a new generation,” as an iTunes reviewer observed. Early hits like “Flake” and “Bubble Toes” defined his signature sound—percussive, palm-muted strumming anchored by booming backbeats and funky bass grooves. Listening to the laid-back Hawaiian singing effortlessly catchy tunes like “Upside Down” from the Curious George soundtrack was like taking a virtual vacation to Oahu. But the new record has a more melancholy vibe that seems perfectly in tune with our times. Over chiming minor chords on a tremolo-drenched Telecaster, Johnson begins the album by singing, “All at once, the world can overwhelm me / There’s almost nothing you could tell me that could ease my mind.” There are still gentle lullabies and uptempo tunes to be found—“Angel” and “What You Thought You Need” being two of the best—but the contemplative tone running through the new record makes it clear that the seemingly serene man under the mango tree is just as anxious about the war-torn world as everyone else. Since much has already been written about his evolution from world-class surfer to filmmaker to rock star, we decided to dig into the development of the new album instead. So we talked with Johnson before his set at Outside Lands to find out how he captures creative ideas and turns them into tunes. Some of the acoustic-based songs on the new record, like “Adrift,” have an easygoing, almost country rhythm. Could you tell how that song started and evolved? JOHNSON “Adrift” is one of the trickier ones for me to play. It’s tuned to a Hawaiian slack key (D G D G B D)—an open G tuning—but the whole thing is in the key of D. I found a barre chord that I could play off of. Usually the first chord of the slack key is in G, so I had to find these other barre chords. I showed it to my friend, Kawika Kahiapo, a great slack key guitar player from the band Kaukahi. He’s taught me a lot about the slack key tunings. He actually learned from Gabby Pahinui, one of the great Hawaiian guitar legends. When I showed Kawika this new song, he said, “That’s really something. I haven’t really seen those chords before.” So that was a real compliment because he said I took the slack key tuning and made something of my own. Another slack key tuning Kawika showed me is the one I use on “Constellations” where you drop the low E string to a C. If you hold it like an Am7, it becomes a major C chord. When I figured out that I could slide this Am7 (shape) up two frets and have the D—and up here (on the 5th fret) is the F—I started using the hand position like any other barre chord. I had just seen Neil Young in concert doing the Greendale show, and I was lucky enough to get to go backstage. Those have been some of the most extraordinary chances in my life—to get to hang out and talk with Neil Young about music. He played this song that was tuned down so low. He said it was tuned to B flat. I think he told us that he had just read an article that said the universe is resonating in B flat. When I watched him play that song, I drifted off and started thinking about these old camping trips my dad and I used to go on every summer when I was a teenager. We’d go to outer islands in Hawaii and camp in these valleys. The imagery of that was really going with the music Neil was playing that night. “Maybe the universe really does resonate in B Flat.” And as he was saying this, it was resonating me back to this time. I wrote “Constellations” within the next week or so. When you’re working on new song, what’s your approach to creating melodies? Do you find ideas within the chord changes and guitar lines? JOHNSON Yeah, those are nice. They just kind of write themselves. “Enemy” is one where I find a vocal line that follows a (guitar) line. Sometimes I just start humming something, find a melody I like a lot, and if it sticks around for a couple days, a few words will lock themselves into place. I might just get the first line. Then words just keep falling into the syllables. The choruses kind of write themselves and verses I have to work at a little bit. I think I just started playing this (riff) one day, then I started filling in the line. (singing) “After I spoke I had a dream that I broke the teeth on the mouth of a snake then I choked on the teeth, they were mine all along.” That’s from this dream I had during this time I was having conflict with somebody. (In the dream), the snake came at me and jumped and I ripped his head in two pieces and threw it down. It was pretty graphic dream, different from most of my dreams. I kind of interpreted it that it could be two things: I was the snake and it was this person I was having conflict with. It was like a big lesson in empathy for me. That’s a song that trips my 4-year-old out. He says “Now wait, you broke the teeth from the snake, but you are the snake?” He’s trying to figure it out. It’s been good because it makes us have conversations about what dreams are, and who you are in your dreams. I was trying to tell him, “Everything in your dream is actually you,” I’d read recently. So the snake must have been me as well. Do you keep a journal by your bed to write down dreams that could turn into lyrics? JOHNSON I used to just play when the songs came and never write anything down. Didn’t really keep any kind of organized journals. Nowadays, with a 2 year old and a 4 year old, when I get time to go in the studio or the garage behind our house, I’ve got to write ideas down. I’m not too organized with that kind of stuff. Usually, I just feel better writing when there’s a guitar around and there’s friends. I might get a melody I lot a lot, then later that night, once the kids are asleep, I’ll sit down try to write something. Songs like “Flake” seem to be in keys that would lead others to use a capo. Is there a reason you tend to prefer barre chords? JOHNSON I didn’t start using capos much until this newest record. I don’t know if it was from just not having them around. I also find that one of the main ways that I play—that percussive thing, muting all the strings to get that snare sound—that comes from not having a band for a while, sitting around playing by myself, trying to do the guitar and the drums. So you use that technique to mimic the rhythm section and the barre chords give more of a full spectrum of low notes and high notes? JOHNSON Yeah, I was just playing alone a lot and trying to do the “drums”. Once I had a band, I slowly moved away from always feeling like I had to cover it all. Sometimes the snare drum and that noise compete if we’re not locked in together. So I’ve been using a capo more now. It’s kind of nice to discover things a little later because it opens new doors. On the electric side, new songs like “Hope” use guitars just to accent the backbeats and create a sparse reggae rhythm. Were you trying to create some space for the new member of your band, keyboardist Zach Gill? JOHNSON Yeah, it was fun. This was the first time that Zach and I got to be in the studio together from the beginning. On the Curious George soundtrack and In Between Dreams, he came in once we finished recording and we found a few spots where we felt like it added to the songs. It’s easy to fill things up too much. But this time around, he was in the studio with us, jamming around when we were getting ready for it. So if you were to take the keys away on this new record, there’d probably be too much space on certain songs. So it worked out real good. Hope is actually one that Zach from Rogue Wave had written for a potential movie. He had the melody, but he never finished the words. We played it one day and I liked it a lot so I started writing words for it. I’ve worked with the band on songs, but that’s the first time where we’ve worked on a song that someone else already had and took it somewhere else. When you’re working out chord progressions, do think in terms of theory? JOHNSON No, I’m pretty bad with knowing all the scales. I saw a Joseph Campbell documentary once. He was saying there was a meeting of all these different religions at a conference. One guy said, “I don’t really understand the theology behind it.” And Joseph said, ‘We don’t really have one. I think we just dance.’ I always liked that. It made me feel better. Right before I did my first record. I met with this producer who was probably a little too glossy for what we were doing. During the meeting he said “Why would you put a major 7th chord there instead of a major?” I didn’t even know I was playing a major 7th, you know? I play them just about everywhere because my pinky doesn’t usually go down when I do barre chords. So it’s not always correct, but it’s okay. The guitar work on “F Stop Blues” from the soundtrack to September Sessions reminded me a lot of Hendrix. Can you tell us a little bit about his influence on your guitar-playing style? JOHNSON Yeah, he’s definitely one of the biggest influences on me. It’s funny because it’s probably not in the normal way that Hendrix influences people, because I just never really took it to that step where I could play lead and take guitar solos. For some reason, I didn’t think I could do it. I wasn’t really taking lessons. I was always just getting tablature books and things like that. But I loved what he did between each chord, all those pretty little hammer-ons. But all the Hendrix-y things like F-Stop Blues, that’s just my version of that style. Sometimes your limitations are your strengths, too, you know? Me trying to sound like Hendrix—it comes somewhat close, but it has these little things that just become your own style. Can you tell us a bit about the origin of your “All at Once” campaign? JOHNSON: We wanted to do a tour that felt how the Kokua festival in Hawaii feels. All the money from that goes to the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, a non-profit group we started to benefit the public schools in Hawaii. This time, we reached out to different non-profit groups in every community where we played. When you bring that many people together, it’s nice to be able to do something besides just play music. You have all these hungry hearts that are in their early 20s finding their way in the world. Then you say, “Here’s these great groups in your town, here are these great people who come to the show.” They meet each other. Then we leave town and they’re doing great things together. WHAT THEY PLAY “They’re made out of all sustainably grown wood down in Australia,” Johnson says. “It’s a beautiful wood that’s a relative to Koa wood from Hawaii. The finish on it is real nice. Most of all, the pick-up system is really great for playing live. A lot of times, acoustic guitars sound a little too direct if you just plug them in. But this one’s got a mic inside and a bridge pickup that you can split the difference on. So you get that real nice exact sound from the bridge pickup, but the microphone inside gives you a little more off-the-string sound.” LIVE Electric guitars: Electric rig has a DejaVibe, MXR micro amp, and Ibanez TS808 IN STUDIO Electric Guitar: 74 Fender Telecaster THE SOLAR POWERED PLASTIC PLANT While looking for a spot to do Jack’s new record, Brushfire co-founder Malloy found a house in the middle of Los Angeles where he grew up. “We knew we’d use the Hawaii space for the songwriting and the vocals, but we had to do the band part somewhere,” explains Malloy. “I found this office in the middle of LA where I grew up. It was an old house with a photography studio in the back.” “We did everything we could to be as low impact as we could while renovating. Our friend Luke found tons of scrap lumber everywhere. He spent days sanding it all and did some great woodwork on the inside to help give it a vibe. It’s all stuff he randomly found and brought back in his truck, and pieced it all together.” “Then put up the solar panels and got all the gear and really went for it. We were still putting dry wall up when Jack showed up to record at the beginning.” Since the recording of Sleeping Through the Static, the Solar Powered Plastic Plant has been put to use for projects by other Brushfire artists as well. “Zach Gill did his first solo record. Neil Halstead did a majority of his record there. Mason Jennings did about 4 tracks there,” says Malloy. “I do all of my film stuff out of there as well. Plus, it serves as the headquarters for Brushfire Records.” FANNING THE FLAMES OF A BRUSHFIRE: HOW THE LABEL WAS BORN “I don’t think we had a specific agenda,” says Malloy. “We did a surf movie, had some songs and they just started getting out there. Eventually we thought, ‘Wow, we should put out a record.’ We started working with J.P. Plunier and he created a label. Then we got to a certain point where we said, ‘On this next record, it would be great to do our own label, you know?’ ” For Johnson’s records and the soundtracks to their films, Malloy and Johnson decided to create their own label name and have Universal be the distributor. “We’ve always been pretty good at making things, but putting them out we always left in other people’s hands,” explains Malloy. “We did initially want to keep it just at that, honestly. I was like, ‘I’m directing films and managing you… and that’s enough.’ ” The original idea was to create one company for both the surf movies and the music. It was going to be called “The Moonshine Conspiracy,” but due to a conflict, the name couldn’t be used. So they came up with two names: Woodshed Films for Thicker Than Water and September Sessions and Brushfire Records for the music. For Johnson’s 2nd record, they put out On and On working closely with Universal. “Jack’s first break in the music world happened with G. Love. When they were at a point where they had grown tired of being on the label they were on for all those years. So we were like, ‘Well, we’ve got a label!’ Through the course of putting out another person’s record, we realized it’s a lot of work. We can’t just be an imprint and just use some privilege that we have because we sold a lot of another record. We have to go out and make this a record label.” “On the road, we realized that musicians we loved were in these spots where they miserable where they were. I don’t like to see things like that going down. I just kind of go, “Oh, are you kidding me? Let’s do a record.” “Our artists have definitely come to us very naturally. We gravitate toward the people, what they’re all about and the spirit of their music.” “At the beginning, we were Jack, G. Love and Donovan Frankenreiter. It was a niche thing: surfers making music, not even really surf music. As we grew out from that initial lineup, we started to take on Money Mark and Matt Costa and things that spread into different audiences. I think we’ve done a good job at progressing our sound, to the point where we could almost sign anything right now.” |