By TIFFANY PING
'Rolling Stone' magazine described his music as 'folk music that borrows from roots, reggae, and mellow hip-hop.'
Jack Johnson came out with his first hit record in 2001 titled 'Brushfire Fairytales' that spent 80 weeks on the Billboard's Top 20 Pop Catalog Albums.
Johnson's second album, 'On and On,' hit the stores in early 2003, to both critical acclaim and huge sales.
A rush to purchase tickets for the Johnson and Harper concert in Park City had the concert sold out within 12 days - three months before the concert on Aug. 25.
The Daily Universe's Tiffany Ping got the chance to talk with Johnson about stayin' chill, surfing and life on the road.
Q: You're from Hawaii right? What part of Hawaii?
Jack Johnson: Yeah, Oahu - North shore of Oahu. I went to Sunset Beach Elementary and then I went to Kahuku. I graduated in 1993.
Q: Who are some of your musical influences? People you look up to musically.
Jack Johnson: Biggest influences are people like Neil Young, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan and Greg Brown -- a lot of the artists that write songs on the acoustic guitars. But also I like stuff like Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Beastie Boys, some hip-hop stuff like that. I also like some rock bands like Radiohead. I guess I listen to a lot of different stuff. Probably the stuff that influences me the most are singer-songwriters from the 60s and 70s.
Q: What is it like to tour with Ben Harper?
Jack Johnson: It's fun. It's interesting who you match up with on the road. You spend a lot of time with everybody in the band, not just Ben and all the guys in our band. This one works out good because pretty much everybody gets along. There's a lot of basketball getting played backstage between our bass player and their keyboard player. It works out pretty nice because everyone enjoys the same things. If we are near the beach then there's a lot of surfing going on.
Q: What is the best thing about being a celebrity?
Jack Johnson: About being a celebrity? Oh, I wouldn't know. I'm barely one. I'm at a nice spot where we're able to draw a crowd and play a show, but I don't really get recognized when I go out on the streets or anything. I think the best part is being able to share your songs with a group of people. Have a captive audience who is willing to listen.
Q: What is your least favorite thing about being on tour?
Jack Johnson: The least favorite thing is probably the long drives. Right now we just walked back into the room after going on a long bike ride. We have mountain bikes out underneath the bus. And we have a collapsible basketball hoop; we have skateboards. So if we are set somewhere it is pretty fun, we get a chance to go out and do outdoor things during the day and play music at night. But sometimes the 12-hour drives get a little hard. Because sometimes we are suppose to sleep while we are driving, but it's hard to sleep when you are on bumpy roads.
Q: What is something you cannot live without?
Jack Johnson: Something I can't live without... that's a good question. Probably my wife would be the best answer for that. That's the part I didn't like about touring. She was a teacher. She'd be back at home; I'd be on the road. It was too hard to be away all the time. Now she is on the road with me and she works with us out here on tour. So it makes it a lot more fun to be on tour.
Q: How did you meet your wife?
Jack Johnson: Just at school in Santa Barbara. She grew up in California; I grew up in Hawaii. So we went to the same university.
Q: What did you go to school for?
Jack Johnson: Film studies at Santa Barbara. When I graduated I started making surf movies.
Q: Any advice you would give to college students?
Jack Johnson: The main thing was, for me, I was a statistics major at first. That could be somebody's passion, they might be into that and that'd be cool. But for me, it wasn't really fulfilling. I was just doing it because I didn't know what else to do. And then once I switched to film and found something I was really passionate about, then it wasn't really studying. It was doing something that I love. It made it so that I actually studied something that I can take and use after school. So I think finding a major that you really enjoy, even if it is one your parents don't think is a good idea. That would be my advice: find a major you like a lot.
Q: Now that your music is going far, are you putting off filming or do you still want to do that?
Jack Johnson: I had to put off filming a little bit, as far as making surf films because it's pretty time consuming traveling and doing that. It's pretty time consuming doing the touring. It sort of has to be one or the other for a little while. So I've been rolling with the music because it's been fun. But I'll probably get bored with touring in another year or two and will want to make another surf film. Yeah, I'm taking a break from it, but I don't think forever.
Q: Do you think music is something you will be doing for the rest of your life or do you plan on going back to film only? Or doing a little bit of both?
Jack Johnson: I think a little bit of both for the rest of my life. I'll always write songs just because I enjoy doing it. I recorded my last record over in Hawaii just in my garage. I'll probably just keep doing that for the rest of my life - putting out recordings. I don't know if I will always tour to support the records, kind of like what we are doing now. But I think I will always be putting out records even if just a few people get them. It's fun. At some level I will keep recording songs, I think.
Q: Where do you get inspiration for the lyrics to your music?
Jack Johnson: Pretty much everything I see. The way I remember things a lot of time is putting things into rhymes. If I was suppose to remember a phone number or a name of a street I am suppose to be at, I just do everything in rhymes in my head. So every once in a while when I sit down with a guitar, something would be stuck in my head that I saw that day. So it could be just anything from day to day. I never really sit down to write a song. It always comes from either joking around or goofing off and a song comes out of it.
Q: What is your favorite quote? Or the best advice somebody gave you?
Jack Johnson: Don't take life too serious. Like a song I wrote 'Slow down everyone, you're moving too fast' . I have to listen to it myself, too. It's a reminder to me as well. It's just the obvious thing about not getting too caught up in everything and making it so important. It's all just let's enjoy ourselves while we are here.
Q: How do you feel about coming to Utah for a concert?
Jack Johnson: I'm excited about it. We've been playing in Southern California for a while. Between everybody in Ben's band and my band, there's so many friends and family, it was fun for a while. Now everybody is excited to get out and play shows at some places where we don't have friends or family, just because that is fun, too. Play in places you don't know, get to meet people and get to spend your time during the day. That would be fun in Utah.
Q: Did you ever guess your music would get so big? Your concert here in Utah sold out in 12 days. Does it ever hit you?
Jack Johnson: That's the funny thing. It hardly ever hits me. It's weird. It all happened real naturally but I never dreamed I would be doing this stuff. We were always happy with where we were. When we were playing in a club called Roy, a restaurant Roy in Santa Barbara where they had 75 people, that was fun. We weren't really looking into stepping up from there. Then we started playing in a spot where they had a little bit more people. Then we started doing trips down to L.A. or San Diego and that was really fun and exciting that we were actually playing outside of Santa Barbara. Then back in Hawaii we would play at some places like Haleiwa Joe's. Every step of the way we didn't really dream beyond there. Sometimes it just happens. We're always ready to be satisfied if this is the biggest it gets.
Q: How did you get into the music industry?
Jack Johnson: Kind of all by chance really. Part of it was meeting a guy name Garrett, who was a singer and he has a band name G. Love and Special Sauce. I met him and he liked a couple of my songs. We recorded it and put it on his record. That was before anybody heard my music at all. Then record labels started calling me because that song got on the radio. Ben Harper heard some of my music and he invited me to go out on the road, open up for him about three years ago. Then we got to make a record, just all by chance. Kinda through surfing, a lot of it. People I met through surfing. I met Ben because his manager is a surfer and met him through the surfing world.
Q: This is not your first time playing with Ben?
Jack Johnson: The first tour we ever did was opening up for Ben three years ago. Then he took about a year and half off from touring. We kept touring while he was making a record and all that stuff. Then we made a record as well. His fifth studio record came out around the same time our second record came out. So we started taking about doing a tour together again and promoting our records together.