Jack Johnson: “It All Came From A Love Of Surfing”

Although a series of chance meetings redirected Hawaiian multi-hyphenate Jack Johnson’s creative focus from filmmaking to making music, his “love of surfing” smoothed the break.

Jack Johnson

SURFILMUSIC, Jack Johnson’s new documentary, chronicles his evolution from professional surfer to filmmaker to globally acclaimed musician. In conjunction with the new film, Johnson will release a double album, SURFILMUSIC Soundtrack and 4-Tracks, through his Brushfire Records imprint on 15 May.

He’s also bringing the SURFILMUSIC Tour Down Under in November, with Ben Harper, John Butler and Emily Wurramara (Sydney exclusive) in tow.

We caught up with Johnson to discuss all things SURFILMUSIC, the collaboration that spawned his music career, surfing as a humbling equaliser, mitigating the negative impacts of touring, and so much more.

“Beautiful background,” Johnson observes, smiling broadly when he clocks the Zoom-supplied virtual beach – resplendent with rolling waves and a palm tree swaying gently in the breeze – that we’ve chosen for today’s chat.

We find Johnson in his home studio, The Mango Tree, which is situated on his farm on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. Johnson’s background features a selection of prized guitars, a cigar box guitar above his right shoulder standing out amongst the pristine acoustic and electric instruments hung neatly in brackets on the wall.

Many of Johnson’s albums were produced inside this eco-friendly, solar-powered studio, which aligns with his environmental efforts. In 2003, Johnson founded the nonprofit Kokua Hawaii Foundation with his wife, Kim, to support environmental education in Hawaii's schools and communities, for example.

Johnson looks so happy, tanned and Zen that we contemplate taking up surfing for a split second.

SURF

If the surf report drops and it’s all-time, we can just imagine how tricky it is for Johnson to head to the studio and make music. “I know,” Johnson acknowledges with a chuckle. “I got a solve for that. What I did was, I made my own studio in my garage and so I don't have to pay for studio time ever. And that way, if the waves are good, I just change plans.

“You would be surprised how many times the band has gotten the morning call saying, ‘We're not gonna meet at 9[am], we're gonna meet at noon,’ you know? ‘So, you guys go get breakfast. We'll meet in three more hours, ‘cause the waves are good.’ And so, it's nice, it's a luxury, but yeah! It's also a good balance to have. Sometimes being in the studio every day can get a little stressful, and it's nice to be able to have something that you love even more than the music part.”

Playing a show at nighttime and then going for a surf the following day has gotta be a great way to keep your mental health in check, right? Even though factoring in two of his obsessions probably isn’t possible everywhere Johnson tours, we’re tipping it’s achievable in Australia.

“Oh, you definitely can – it's my favourite place to tour because of that,” Johnson extols. “You really can surf in the day and play a show at night almost every day of the tour – I mean, as long as there's some kind of a swell running.

“It's really nice to have something like music; I appreciate getting to do it so much. But then there was this one time where I did a whole tour, and I remember thinking, ‘This is kind of amazing’ – it was all happening. And then the first day I got home, I caught up with an old friend and I remember running down the beach to go for a surf, and the waves were just absolutely perfect that day – I just got lucky right when I got home – and I remember having this feeling that I was like, ‘Oh, I'm more happy right now than I have been during the whole last month.’

“And I remember just holding onto that and thinking, ‘That's a healthy thing’. ‘Cause, you know, it's a strange thing to get out in front of that crowd every night, and it can get a little addictive – just everybody cheering for everything you say – and if you don't watch yourself, you can get a little bit hooked on that: the adrenaline rush of it all. And so, it's nice to have something that you look forward to even more than that, that’s kind of away from that, you know? And I think, going back to what you were saying, it's healthy for me mentally. Yeah, it does help me a lot.”

Getting ragdolled by a gnarly wave is probably quite humbling, as well. “Yeah, that's right,” Johnson confirms, laughing. “It definitely is. It puts you in your place.”

FILM

In March of this year, a new documentary chronicling Johnson’s evolution from professional surfer to filmmaker to globally acclaimed musician – aptly titled SURFILMUSIC – premiered at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Johnson, who was in attendance, recalls, “It was nerve-wracking to sit in a theatre and have a film that's kind of based around you…” – he trails off laughing, before continuing: “It was a fun experience, though. I mean, the film's a lot of fun, you know? There's a lot of parts to laugh about and so it got some good laughs. All the people that made it together, we’re all close friends, so it was a nice thing for us to all be there together. It seemed like it went good. We got claps at the end, so that's all you can hope for.”

SURFILMUSIC weaves together rare behind-the-scenes footage from Johnson’s formative surf films, Thicker Than Water (1999) and The September Sessions (2000), with his personal and family archives.

In SURFILMUSIC’s trailer, Johnson reveals via voiceover: “I’ve always surfed and I’ve always wanted to surf, so it’s this throughline through my whole life. Every other creative process kind of waxes and wanes, but I’m surfing through that whole time.”

During our interview, he elaborates: “Before my music career, I used to make surf films, and I was the camera guy. And when we made those films, they used to be on VHS and then they were on DVD. Then my music career kind of started and we spaced-out on getting the movies online.

“The years went by and we were like, ‘Oh, we better get those things online at some point,’ and so we started doing that recently – clearing all the songs again and getting the movies remastered. And during that process, we just started watching a lot of the footage – like, behind-the-scenes stuff we had – and decided, ‘Oh, it'd be fun to put out a little – almost just a social media thing of some of the stories behind the movies and stuff.’

“But as we started doing that, it just kept growing into this bigger piece. Then we found all this footage of me on Super 8 from when I was a little baby and when I was young, surfing. So, all of a sudden, it seemed like there was this little intro, and then we kept finding stuff. It was almost weird. When you see the movie, you'll see it. I kind of couldn't believe the stuff people kept sending us, footage of me making student films in college and things like that. And all the little pieces – it became too easy to put it all together, and it just became a fun project.”

The film is dedicated to Johnson’s late friend Tamayo Perry. A celebrated professional surfer, Honolulu lifeguard and actor (Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), Perry was killed in 2024, aged 49, in a fatal shark attack while surfing off Goat Island near Oahu's North Shore.

“Ever since 7th grade, Tamayo was one of my best friends,” Johnson shares. “And when we started making the surf films, he was on some of those trips with us. So, one of the major reasons we decided to make the film, really, was when we lost Tamayo a few years ago, and we started watching the old footage back.

“The very first trip we went on for the very first movie we made, called Thicker Than Water – these islands we went to in the Indian Ocean that I don't think anybody had ever surfed – we found this spot. And I remember watching him paddle across the channel out to the waves.”

Here, Johnson slowly extends one arm forward, as if reaching towards the horizon while remembering his mate. “It was the first shot that we ever documented for our trips, and watching that old footage again – and just seeing all this great footage of him that never made the movie – really was the thing that kept pulling us deeper into the old film and wanting to watch it all.

“He was the definition of what a good friend is, you know? Somebody who's always there for you. The film's a lot about friendship and collaboration, and he was the quintessential friend. So, it really was the thing that kept us diving through all the footage and wanting to bring his story out, too.”

Reflecting on his career prospects around this time, Johnson offers, “I can honestly tell you, at the time, the filmmaking – the surf films – was going pretty good. And it felt like the path for me was gonna be – what I was really thinking, I wanted to use the surf films as a way to learn to do camera work, and then I wanted to start making documentaries, ideally National Geographic-type nature documentaries – that was the trajectory I saw for myself.

“And the music was just sort of on the side, and something I loved to do, but it was right during that time where it all just started happening. And at some point, I kind of had to admit to myself that it was actually happening. I kept thinking [music] was just a little sideshow thing, but it grew into my main thing.”

MUSIC

“I had been recording onto a little 4-track cassette player during that time, in the mid- to late-’90s, and these recordings started floating around in the surf world – like, friends would make copies of it and pass it along to other friends – and I eventually had a chance to meet Garrett Dutton, who's in a band called G. Love & Special Sauce.

“I was a big fan of their music, and when we met, he really liked this one song I had, Rodeo Clowns, and so we started to rehearse that one day together – playing it, just jamming out – and then he invited me to come into the studio the next day, just to see whether it would come up. Then we recorded that song, and it ended up being on his record [1999’s Philadelphonic], and then it ended up being the first single off of his record, and it ended up getting on the radio.

“There's this really funny intro he does in the song where he says my name. And so, all of a sudden, I started getting all these phone calls from record labels because of that song.

“So, really, I wouldn't have had a music career if it wasn't for that collaboration with Garrett that day. And it all came from a love of surfing: he is a surfer; I was a surfer.

“We had a friend in common, and we decided to go for a surf one day. He didn't even know I played guitar at the time, actually, and I was a little bit shy. I had my guitar in the back of the car, and our other friend said, ‘Oh, you guys should play some music,’ you know? [Garrett] was just being polite, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, let's play some songs.’ And, anyways, it led to this collaboration where we're still playing shows together, even today, you know? We're doing a show together in a few weeks.”

When asked whether he initially thought Rodeo Clowns would be a one-off collab, Johnson contemplates, “I mean, it felt like it, yeah. I just thought that that was gonna be the story I got to tell about the time I was in a recording studio.”

In conjunction with the new film, Johnson will release a double album, SURFILMUSIC Soundtrack and 4-Tracks, through his Brushfire Records imprint. Our first taste of the soundtrack is a new rendition of Drink The Water – which originally appeared on Johnson’s debut album, 2001’s Brushfire Fairytales – with Hermanos Gutiérrez.

Whereas 4-Tracks dives into Johnson’s personal archives – documenting his musical beginnings through previously unreleased gems and raw recordings – the SURFILMUSIC Soundtrack features the original film score, by Johnson and Hermanos Gutiérrez (Ecuadorian-Swiss brothers, Alejandro and Esteban Gutiérrez), together with a selection of his remastered early 4-track recordings.

Just by listening to SURFILMUSIC Soundtrack, we can imagine how much the music enhances the visuals. When told the guitar sounds often conjure images of sunlight reflecting from ocean waves, Johnson enthuses, “Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, especially playing with Hermanos Gutiérrez, who are such great guitar players – maybe that's some of the songs you're talking about.

“We would watch the footage together, and we would sit there and play music – it's a fun back and forth. Usually, you kind of watch a rough edit, and you try to put the music as close as you can. And then you play the music in, then you go back and you change some of the footage around to match the music even better. So, we had a lot of fun doing that.

“Alejandro and Esteban, they're both surf-film fans – they grew up watching surf films a lot – and so they had a lot of fun during that process. Our friendship was growing as we made the soundtrack and so we have a really great friendship and play music together a lot now. It's kind of fun for us to have documented our relationship growing together.

“I was a big fan of their music, and then I heard word that they maybe knew my music, too. Then the more we got to talk, I realised they had been to some of my concerts when they were teenagers. It was funny, because more and more came out, then eventually Esteban – the older brother – sent me a photo from in his bedroom, and he had a signed poster in the background of one of my shows, you know? And it was really cool – just how deep our connection goes.

“They were telling me that a lot of the early songs they used to play together were my songs they would learn and stuff. So, it was really cool for me to hear, because the last few years, I've been putting their music on all the time, and it’s some of my favourite music, so yeah! The collaboration was a lot of fun, and I just felt like their music is so perfect. It creates these soundscapes where you can visualise things without even seeing it. You get to hear this music that paints a really beautiful landscape.”

SURFILMUSIC Tour

Johnson’s SURFILMUSIC Tour hits Australian shores this November, featuring solo acoustic sets by special guests Ben Harper (who also appears in the doco) and John Butler. Sydney ticket holders will also be treated to a set by the shining light that is recent APRA Award winner Emily Wurramara.

Johnson on Ben Harper

“Ben Harper was somebody who I’d really looked up to for years. I would just listen to his music all the time; he was one of my favourite musicians. Then I just had another chance meeting with him, and our lives started to cross.

“He was a musician first, and then somebody who loved to surf. Then I was a surfer first, and somebody who loved playing music. And because of that, it was this really great relationship where he was like my older brother who took me on the road for the first time, and then I was the younger brother who had a friend that had wetsuits and surfboards at every stop we were at. So, I was the one always lining up the boards for the days off, and then he was the one showing me how to tour.

“Anyway, I learned so much being on the road with Ben and just seeing his connection with fans – and the way he treated everybody – and the time he spent, after the shows, connecting with people. He was a great person to learn from.”

Johnson on John Butler

“I can remember the first time I heard John Butler playing guitar, and I was just blown away. I remember I walked into a sound check when he was playing, and I didn't know who he was yet.

“I'd heard his name, and then I remember hearing this guitar playing as I walked in and thinking, ‘Whoa, who is this? This is amazing!’ you know? And I went and just watched from the side, watching him sound check. And so, before I ever got to know him as a person, I remember just being really blown away by his instrument and how he was able to navigate – and paint such a beautiful picture – with it.”

Johnson on Emily Wurramara

“Another friend, Emily Wurramara, who's gonna be joining us in the Sydney show – we played a lot of music on the last tour, and so I'm excited to get to hook up with her again. She's really great. She's such a beautiful human, just so fun to sit around and talk with backstage. And then to get to play music together is really nice.”

So, can audience members expect some collaborative live performances from Johnson and his special guests?

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he promises. “To me, the best part of music and touring is getting to play music together with the other musicians out on the road. So, we always make that a big part of our night. And then especially when you've got players that are on that level, it's really exciting for us.”

Mitigating the negative impacts of touring

“We have a person on the road who's kind of dedicated to mitigating the negative impacts [of touring]. One of the things we're always trying to do is eliminate the amount of single-use plastic at the shows, so a lotta times we're trying to implement reusable cup programs and things like that.

“Comprehensive recycling is always the obvious [starting point], but you can go a lot bigger than that. So, trying to support local food systems, too, you know? Really trying to support local farmers through the shows – with the catering and the vendors out in front – as much as you can.

“A lotta times if we're travelling by bus, we'll run the buses on biodiesel. So, there's lots of ways you can mitigate the negative impact. But, for me, really, it's more, like, how do you expand the positive impact? And so, the best way we can do that is to try to shine a light on the local nonprofit groups in every town we play.

“So, a big part of our show is making sure that we have groups that are doing work in that area all the time and then trying to not just raise funds for those groups, but also kind of direct young fans of those groups. ‘Cause a lot of times after we come through town, we've been told their membership goes way up. And a lot of times it's a younger, new wave of people who are coming on with more energy and stuff – excited to go to do the beach cleanups, or whatever they might be doing. So, we try to work with lots of groups that are doing positive work in the community.”

Jack Johnson will bring his SURFILMUSIC Tour to Australia with Ben Harper and John Butler this November. Tickets are now available.