Riding back to Hawai'i on a musical wave

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Musician/filmmaker/former pro surfer Jack Johnson, who grew up on the North Shore, will perform at World Cafe tonight. Enjoy Records Jack Johnson 8 p.m. today World Cafe $15 599-4450, 947-3633

But California can't always deliver the finer things in life this former local boy craves.

"I try to get as much teriyaki chicken as I can here, but it's hard," Jack Johnson says solemnly, in a voice that makes you want to promptly send him some Zippys.com grinds.

"Here" is Johnson's Santa Barbara digs. A block from the beach, and half an ocean away from the North Shore O'ahu hometown, family and surf he craves only a little more than a decent plate lunch with sticky rice.

"The first thing I'll do when I get back is go straight to the ocean," says Johnson. He's more upbeat discussing his upcoming monthlong O'ahu stay for performances (one is this evening at World Cafe) and the holidays. "The only thing that can make me acclimate correctly when I get home is to just get into the water a little bit. To get it back into my blood."

To call the 26-year-old locally born and raised Johnson "low key" would be an understatement. Over the phone he is friendly and talkative enough — but his calm and soothing voice blends equal parts quiet intensity and laid-back, beach boy cool.

It's the same contemplative, yet upbeat voice you hear on Johnson's first CD, "Brushfire Fairytales." The small-label release of lyrical, acoustic beach folk has earned some big-time media attention from magazines such as Time and Interview.

"Yeah, I guess I'd consider myself low key," says Johnson, as if I were the first person in the world who might have suggested it. "As low key as the average kid who grows up in Hawai'i, you know?"

Uh-huh. We know.

Johnson grew up in a beach house near Pipeline, first taking to the waves at age 4 on the board of his father, local surf legend Jeff Johnson. By the time he was a teenager, Johnson had a pro contract with Quiksilver and had won entrance into big-time contests such as the Pipe Masters and Xcel Pro. Then at 17 — and already planning to ditch a professional surf career for college — Johnson slammed into a reef while on the waves.

"It was definitely pretty bad," Johnson says. "It knocked out my front two teeth. I cracked my skull a little bit, had 150 stitches on my forehead and put a hole through my lip. That kept me out of the water for two months."

Holed up at home, Johnson turned his attention toward his guitar, which he had been teaching himself to play since age 14.

"What I would usually do is surf in the day and then play guitar at night," Johnson says. "After the accident, I played all day."

Next came college at UC-Santa Barbara, where Johnson took up film studies and wound up directing surf films after graduating. His camera work and scoring of the 1999 surf film "Thicker Than Water" drew the attention of musician and amateur surfer Garrett Dutton, lead singer of the funk-rock outfit G. Love & Special Sauce. Dutton wound up using Johnson and his composition "Rodeo Clowns" on the group's 1999 album. The song became the album's only hit.

Surprised and overwhelmed by a handful of major labels' sudden desire to put him on the payroll, Johnson opted for a recording contract with friend and surf partner J.P. Plunier's independent Enjoy Records instead.

"I didn't really know anything about the music industry, and I knew J.P. would be somebody I could trust, who wasn't going to put me in any situations I didn't want to be in or get me in over my head," Johnson says. "He turned my music on to Ben (Harper) who I met backstage at one of his shows and started hanging out with a little bit."

One of Plunier's management clients, neo-folkie guitarist Harper — who had a pop hit last year with "Steal My Kisses" — added some inspired fretwork to Johnson's "Brushfire" composition "Flake."

"It was just the song he liked and he had a good idea for this one part of it, so we laid it on," says Johnson, quietly. "No special story there."

"Brushfire" was released in February; its rainy days and sunset acoustics generated growing buzz in Southern California and Hawai'i retail markets, before the mainstream press came calling late last summer.

"I wasn't reluctant to do it or anything, but I was surprised that they wanted to do a piece," Johnson says of a September full-page profile in Time. "It almost seemed like a really big jump."

The profile wound up having the misfortune of appearing in Time's Sept. 17 issue, which went on sale the morning of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks.

"It was like the one issue that almost nobody saw," Johnson says. "The next day, all of these special editions came out. People tell me they've seen it, but there was no direct effect from it."

In truth, Johnson sounds almost pleased about the Time article's lack of accompanying hoopla.

"The album's doing real well," says Johnson, of the 50,000-plus selling "Brushfire." "It's selling a lot more than we thought it would. And people who have been coming to the shows have been really cool, with some good energy."

Johnson's World Cafe concert will feature selections from "Brushfire" and a screening of his most recent directorial effort, the surf film "Summer Sessions."

"What I'm really looking to do is move back to O'ahu sometime in the next few years for good," admits Johnson, excitedly. "If I can pull it off where I can live in Hawai'i and keep doing this, that'd be nice. That'd be the idea."