Jack Johnson Lives It Up as Surf’s Newest Big Kahuna

You made Sleep Through the Static primarily in Los Angeles rather than Hawaii. What kind of impact did that make on it?

Jack Johnson: I actually live in Hawaii the majority of the time, but we spent a little more time in [Los Angeles], and we were building a new office and studio for Brushfire Records, so it made sense to do it there. It’s pretty fun to make a record in a new place, but it’s the same mellow acoustic music we’ve always done. We just always feel like, “Let’s not get sucked into feeling we have to produce some big rock album.” We just try to keep on making the same music we’ve always done.

You returned to J.P. Plunier, who produced your first album, for Sleep Through the Static. What led you back to him?

Johnson: We’ve been good friends ever since, and J.P. and I were hanging out a lot in [2006] and we decided to do this one. It’s kind of one of those things where I was talking to J.P. a lot about these songs in particular, so it made sense. And it was exciting ’cause the first record we did, the band got together for that record and we rehearsed for a couple of weeks and played for a little while and did the record in six days. We hadn’t played out live as a band when we did that first record. So it was kind of exciting to get together with J.P. after we’ve been playing for seven years or so.

You seem even more comfortable this time writing more topical and even political songs.

Johnson: Yeah, I mean, a little bit of peace, a little bit of that feeling of the whole climate change and being overwhelmed with all of that. There’s some little, sappy love songs as well—a little bit of everything. I never really try to say that, “this record’s gonna be all about this.” It’s just whatever songs come to me in that bit of time before we do the record, I kinda collect them all together and put them onto a record.

What kind of pressure do you feel when you put out a new album?

Johnson: Naturally there is some, but it’s pretty low in our camp. When we made our first record, I remember my dream was it would be somebody’s favorite record. I kind of thought it would be cool if someone held that record and it was important to somebody. We thought if we could sell 20,000 records, that would be a huge success. It ended up growing so far beyond what anybody thought it would. And ever since that first record we’ve always thought the next one won’t be as big as that, and it’s always surprised us. So we’ve tried to keep that feeling.

You can pick up Jack’s latest CD, Sleep Through The Static, here.

This entry was posted by RNYK on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 3:32 pm