Mellow out under the Kamani tree with Johnson
The palm tree and sunny weather vibe of Jack Johnson invokes memories of mellow tunes on the radio of a friend’s car after another day of navigating the perplexing ocean of high school.
Listening to the same 2005 album “In Between Dreams” that played on the airwaves carries more feeling on a vinyl. Johnson’s already calming tones increase, filling the room with a peaceful atmosphere.
Leave it to Johnson to fit the ukulele, banana pancakes and rain into one song that sounds as smooth as raindrops trickling down a window.
“I’ve always pictured that I’d just get mellower and mellower and then I’d eventually just kind of be doing straight forward acoustic folk stuff as I get older. It’s funny how this one ended up being more upbeat. I don’t know how that happened,” Johnson told Glide Magazine’s Jack Spilberg in a February 2005 interview.
Even in “Staple It Together,” a song focused primarily on the stabbing of a moment by a brown thumbtack from a “prisoner of his own past” who “shot his own future in the foot”, Johnson keeps the tune upbeat. Although the bricks of the lyrics only increase in messiness and admit “hate is such a strong word”, it makes for an easy dance song.
In “Never Know”, Johnson sings about imagery and turning the page, “reading the story again and again and again.” This line reflects the entire album, in which every tune is a story.
The theme is reflected in the cover art, a bright yellow of the sun that depicts a figure carrying a guitar, who stretches out a hand to a dark and partially opened tree.
Lasting less than two minutes, Johnson also serenades in French during “Belle” that draws one to a Parisian corner and the city’s street musicians.
However, he ends the song by saying in French that he does not understand the language he is speaking in, so the other person should “speak to him in another way.”
He asks where all the “good people” went, why he must always play the fool, and speaks to a dissatisfaction with the media still prevalent in the society of today.
“[T]here’s songs where I’m talking about how I turn on the TV and maybe get a little annoyed with seeing someone getting beat up on the street or something and there’s really no need to watch it. It’s just sensationalism and it pulls you in, so I guess the other theme is just kind of being annoyed at media or TV or entertainment,” Johnson told Spilberg.
Hawaiian native Johnson began surfing at an early age and hit the professional stage by his adolescence. An injury led to finding his talent in guitar, which would result in music that sounds like the kind of music that pays homage to Johnson’s home state and alternate surfing career.
He enrolled at the University of California in Santa Barbara, tripling his talents while studying film, creating documentaries and continuing to work on his music.
“Brushfire Fairytales” debuted in 2001, originally gaining fans in the college crowd and then finding its footing among other fans of the pop genre.
His third album, “In Between Dreams”, garnered a nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards.
In addition to his music, Johnson is active in various environmental and social causes.
“All the music I grew up on, the bands had things to say besides just in the songs. That’s why I was interested in them, because the songs were one vehicle they had to share ideas. When I’d go to their concerts and things I would learn about some new path they’d take me down, a new trail that was inspiring. So I try to emulate that same thing that all of my favorite musicians had done for me,” Johnson told a reporter of Music Times in November 2014.
The album’s final piece, “Constellations”, succeeds in showing Johnson’s passion, speaking to skipping stones and a sunset followed by a moonrise to “lay down underneath the stars, listen to Papa’s translations of the stories across the sky.”
Listening to Johnson, you will undoubtedly feel like you are part of that story across the sky or sheltered under the Kamani tree of ancient Hawaii.