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This week marks something like the 20th time I’ve written an article about Jack Johnson, the Hawai’i-raised, UCSB-educated big-wave-surfer-turned-filmmaker-turned-globally-beloved-singer-songwriter who everyone reading this almost certainly knows. (This week’s story is about how a garden he planted on Trigo Road during his senior year played a role in shaping his positive outlook.)
I’ve certainly written more about other general topics — such as wine or food or even county planning — and other people’s names, such as chefs or winemakers or politicians, have probably popped up more than his in my other reporting over the years. But I can’t think of another individual person (aside from myself, of course) who I’ve covered more often over the past quarter-century.
I imagine it’s possible that other writers out there have written about Jack more than I have, but it would be interesting to see who and why they did so. Maybe someone in Hawai’i would qualify? Or a full-time music writer focused on Jack’s brand of mellow? But I must be in the running for most Jack bylines ever.
That’s largely a matter of timing and place. Our careers began in the same town at the same time, and we remain largely doing the same things — albeit him on a planetary scale and mine much more regionally confined. He still plays music, and I still write about Jack Johnson when he comes back to Santa Barbara.
Jack is a couple of years older than me — 51, whereas I just turned 49 over the weekend — but his debut album, Brushfire Fairytales, hit my desk when I was a cub news reporter at the Independent back in 2001. I liked the album quite a bit, and that led to my first interview with Jack, when he and Kim lived in a rental near the Montecito shoreline. (Those early articles are only in paper form, as it was pre-Independent.com, though I’ll track them down some day.)
We hit it off pretty quickly, having a number of mutual friends — I recall listening to some rap lyrics laid down by Gill Kaufman on Jack’s answering machine — and sharing interest in golden age hip-hop and plenty more. Jack was immediately just a really nice guy, and had that special glow of someone who might do big things. Kim was also super engaging and friendly, and seemed quite qualified to help make those big things happen. But I don’t think I or anyone would have predicted what was to come.
In all likelihood, I’d probably already seen Jack playing on the streets of Isla Vista, maybe even when I visited the college town with a bunch of buddies from San Jose when as a high school senior. Our host, Dave Fortson — the older brother of my good friend, and still a proud Santa Barbaran — was friends of Jack’s crew at that time, so we’ve guessed that we may have seen Jack’s band Soil during that initial visit.
Then I almost certainly saw Soil while drinking keg cups as a UCSB student myself. I was more an acolyte of ALO — which went by numerous other names during that span, like Django and Magnum Family — but they were friends with Jack already too, so there was likely crossover. (ALO’s Zach Gill, a proud Goleta resident, eventually joined Jack’s professional band around 2005.)
Of course, while our career timing was similar, our trajectories weren’t exactly comparable. Don’t get me wrong — I’m mostly happy where I’m at, and wouldn’t trade my own life for anyone’s. But while my rise has been respectable enough, Jack’s rise was stratospheric, in fame, wealth, and — perhaps more than anything — influence.
His ability to make concert venues and the music industry at large more environmentally conscious is unprecedented, and his fundraising of more than $40 million to date for charities around the world rivals wealthy businesspeople and celebrities 10 times his worth. Jack should make everyone want to do more.
Jack’s rocketship was already midflight back in 2003, when this newspaper agreed that it was time for a proper cover story on his roots and rise. He invited me to accompany him at Coachella, which was then still emerging into the concert juggernaut it is today. I was obviously down for that idea, and it helped that my great-uncle’s ranch was a mile from the venue, meaning that I could just bike in every morning.
I tried to set up a lunch between Jack and my uncle, the late talk show host/game show creator/real estate mogul Merv Griffin. Merv, or Uncle Buddy as we called him, used to hang out back in the day with Harry Belafonte, who was one of Jack’s heroes.
That meetup didn’t happen, but I was able to spend very rare one-on-one time with Uncle Buddy, as he was the only other person there that weekend, aside from the ranch staff. We even smoked some of his cigarettes together, which he was certainly not supposed to be doing, at least according to doctors. He died four years later, soon after my wedding, which he missed due to being in the hospital.
I eventually wound up backstage at Coachella to hang for a bit with Jack and G. Love in their trailer. Other rock gods wandered about, and members of the Blue Man Group rode bicycles in tight circles inside the fence outside of their trailer. I watched Jack’s show from the side of the stage, looking out over 150,000, with Woody Harrelson standing behind me. It was surreal, just a glimpse into what Jack still says is a trip at every show, looking out into such a vast crowd.
I had to head back to Santa Barbara that night because my uncle’s ranch was being swept by the Secret Service, as his good friend Nancy Reagan was coming to stay there the next day. So I only caught a few more backstage songs from the White Stripes, who played after Jack, and then drove the four hours home.
When I finished the story and our design team was laying it all out, Jack and Kim wanted to come by the office to see the Independent in action. Being on the cover of a newspaper was still a novelty to them, and it was quite a treat for the Indy staff to see this Coachella headliner wander through our halls, saying hi with a big smile to everyone.
I’ve had my fair share of unique Jack Johnson experiences ever since: judging a Gong Show with him at the Jolly Tiger on some Halloween night decades ago, he dressed in a gorilla outfit, me as The Dude; watching him record the earliest version of “Breakdown” from The Brokedown Melody soundtrack in a studio off of Milpas Street; helping to arrange the show he played at Harder Stadium back in 2008; hanging out with a bunch of schoolkids at Fairview Gardens in Goleta to publicize the launch of some concert venue initiatives (lots of garden themes in that story too); noticing Natalie Portman checking me out (no joke!) backstage during his Central Park Summerstage show in New York City; heading down to the Solar Powered Plastic Plant in L.A. to watch an intimate show, when Jack yelled “Kettmann!!!” at me from across the street.
But the best Jack story I have is about my son, not me. During one of his 2014 concerts at the Santa Barbara Bowl back, my wife had stood up in her seat to dance, only to be told to sit down by the person behind her. (Such a common issue at the Bowl.) We had backstage passses, so just went there to watch the show while standing (and getting free drinks).
For some reason, the musician Money Mark (of Beastie Boys and other fame) took a liking to our son, Mason, who was then about 4 years old. Toward the end of the show, Mark asked if Mason wanted to go out on stage, and there he went. Suddenly, Mason was doing something like the robot and the Batman (two dances I’d recently taught him) while Zach Gill and Jack Johnson played right next to him.
“That’s amazing,” said Jack, though what we heard was “That’s Mason,” which was even cooler. My friends in the pit recognized Mason, and quickly snapped his picture and took video. So while I can claim watching Jack from the side stage at Coachella, Mason can say that he danced next to Jack on the front of the stage at the Santa Barbara Bowl.
It’s been a rare treat to have a first-row seat watching Jack and Kim and company go from I.V. backyards to the world’s biggest venues. This really couldn’t have happened to a nicer, more gracious, and extremely generous family. I believe many of you have your own Jack memories too, and I expect more to keep on coming, as soon as next week, when Jack’s SURFILMUSIC screens at the Metro 4 on September 16. Then he’s back at the S.B. Bowl for back-to-back weekend nights, October 3 and 4. Maybe I’ll see you there, and we can cheers with our reusable cups.
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