ON the Beat | Sitting on Top of the World

Jack Johnson | Photo: Morgan Maassen

Jack Johnson has presented special shows in his half-hometown of Santa Barbara, from multi-night soirées at the Santa Barbara Bowl (next up, October 3 and 4 of 2026) to a memorable and intimate Lobero Theatre concert. There, the power went out halfway through (see story here), but Johnson and the band soldiered on in very old school fashion. They didn’t need no stinking electricity to fire up the room.

Adding another left-of-normal live experience to the list, last week, Johnson settled into a very-packed Arlington Theatre to cook up a friendly bouillabaisse of his surf films Thicker than Water and The September Sessions — from before he became the humble superstar Jack Johnson — and musical doings, along with onstage testimonials and amiable shop talk. The night, a lead-up to a forthcoming new film, SURFILMUSIC, soundtrack and tour next year, amounted to a roots rediscovery for Johnson, who famously started out as an aspiring pro surfer, then filmmaker, then accidental music celebrity.

This was also an opportunity for Johnson to cast a spotlight on his surfing buddies who happen to be legends in the surf world, among them Brad Gerlach, Rob Machado, Shane Dorian, Dan Malloy, and Luke Egan. Filmmaker Chris Malloy, onstage with fellow director Emmett Malloy, was a central figure in the show and in Johnson’s surf film life, having talked the young UCSB film student into making 1999’s Thicker than Water, and its follow-up. Both films follow pro surfers riding the waves and pursuing tube action with gymnastic fluidity on beaches around the world.

G. Love and Jack Johnson at the Arlington | Photo: Leslie Dinaberg

Chris Malloy said the objective in making the original film was “to write a love letter to surfing.” The central role of surfing in Johnson’s life goes back to his finding camaraderie and beachside music-making, songwriting, and jamming with his friends. As he confessed, “that gave me the confidence to push myself as a musician.” Blame it on the seductive power of the waves.

Over the course of a lazily sprawling four-hour show, Johnson’s unique mix of film, surfing culture — with surf stars attached — and a generous feast of a music set, with a band featuring his longtime comrade at the keys, Zach Gill, and others, including a cameo with old ally G. Love. They covered much of the waterfront of the Johnson songbook, on the loosely planned plan, including the new single from the upcoming doc/soundtrack, the affirmative “Hold onto the Light,” in cahoots with Hermanos Gutiérrez.

Aptly enough, the whole multi-discipline experience closed with an all-aboard singalong to Johnson’s “Better Together,” suddenly transformed from a personal love song to a communal anthem. It was a warm and fuzzy kinda night, in the best way.

(See Leslie Dinaberg’s review here).

Border Criss-Crossing, Naturally

Gaby Moreno is a true sensation of her own devising, as she reminded us at the Marjorie Luke Theatre on Sunday night. She was an ideal candidate for the prized UCSB Arts & Lectures–supported “¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!” series of concert/education residencies for Mexican and Latin music and dance, hybridized and otherwise. She was a welcome returning “Viva” visitor, having been here in 2018.

The Guatemalan-born and Los Angeles–based singer, a multi-genre and bilingual artist and proud of it, has a Grammy and film/TV credits and a growing discography — including the fantastic collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, ¡Spangled!. She has collaborated with and opened for Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Neko Case, and traveled in various musical circles.

But a more intimate proof of her artistic worth and voice comes alive in the live forum. During a single set, she uncovers the breadth of what she is about musically, deploying her lovely, versatile voice — from a controlled purr to an artful howl, and Ranchera-esque passion in tow. And her intrinsically bilingual nature is never far from the surface.

At the Luke, joined by three musicians, she often called on tunes from her latest album, Dusk. She also wove a range of Spanish language songs into the set, including “Luna de Xelajú,” which she identified as a kind of second anthem in Guatemala (triggering hearty singalongs from the contingent of Guatemalans in the house), and “Quizás, quizás, quizás (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps),” as heard on Nat King Cole’s album Cole Español.

Moreno slid easily between the bonafide rock ‘n’ roll stuff of “Ain’t that they Way it Goes,” and “Solid Ground,” into an infectiously festive and extended cumbia — inducing dance fever in the house — to close. At encore time, she pared down to just guitar and voice, from a melancholic ballad into a sweeter mode and mood to leave us floating out toward the free Mexican pastries, post-show.

Gaby Moreno and her band perform at the Marjorie Luke Theatre | Photo: Josef Woodard

To-Doings:

The potently gifted pianist Conor Hanick, a seasonally local musician thanks to his faculty status at the summertime Music Academy of the West, has spiced up Santa Barbara’s classical scene with memorable entries from the contemporary and lesser-known repertoire corners. In 2022, he performed Hans Otte’s cult classic piano opus Book of Sound at Hahn Hall, after he had done the same at the Ojai Music Festival. Two years back, he thoroughly wowed the crowd (well, some of us more than others) with challenging music by the fascinating Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya.

Next Wednesday, November 19, as part of the inspired “Mariposa” series presented by Music Academy in its “off-season” months, he’ll team up with clarinetist Gerbrich Meijer for an enticing and promising program. Here, the only familiar composer is Poulenc, alongside the stuff of Mieczysław Weinberg, Marie Elisabeth von Sachsen-Meiningen, Béla Kovács, and Derek Bermel.Of special note:Bermel’s “Bells of Westertoren” is an Academy commission and a world premiere, paying tribute to the great Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Meijer is the winner of the Academy’s “2025 Alumni Performance Award.” See you there.

The distinctive singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell, who showed up at the beloved old “Sings Like Hell” series at the Lobero, returns to town, playing SOhO on Friday (a 6 p.m. “dinner set”). The Idaho-born singer’s most recent album, another in a long line of small musical jewels in the singer-songwriter orbit, is 2023’s Get Behind the Wheel, part of an impressive discography of song going back to 2006’s Boundary County.

Judy Collins and Tom Rush | Photo: Courtesy

Veteran folk-popstress Judy Collins pays a return to the Lobero Theatre on Sunday night, and this time in a double-whammy booking, with fellow eminence gris troubadour Tom Rush.

The Santa Barbara Symphony goes all out with its November program on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, with a cast of more than 200 instrumentalists and choristers taking on Mozart’s legendary Requiem. Also on the program are works by Aaron Jay Kernis and a Symphony co-commissioned work by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi, theDouble Trombone Concerto. (See story here)

Last Monday night at SOhO, the formidable Monday Madness jazz ensemble filled the stage and the room with a tight, varied, and sternum-shaking sound, with dazzling vocalist Sophie Holt sparking up the set with sharply tooled standards. The respected big band stretches its sound in the larger room of its host institution Santa Barbara City College’s Garvin Theatre on, yes, Monday, November 17. They’ll be joined by two other ensembles in a happy collusion of jazz forces in one package. We need more of that kind of musical action in our burg.