After more than two decades as a soft-spoken recording artist and forceful advocate of environmentalism and sustainability, Hawaii resident Jack Johnson does things on his own schedule.
When Johnson announced that he would be releasing his eighth full-length studio album, “Meet the Moonlight,” in June, five years after the release of his previous album, “All the Light Above It Too,” his fans knew he had something to say and had decided the time was right to say it.
“For me it’s a pretty simple, simple formula,” Jackson explained, calling from Los Angeles shortly before the official June 24 release date. “It’s when I feel like I have enough songs that are worth putting out into the world. I never rush them. I’ve always just decided when it feels right, and so this time around, it has actually been five years, so it took a little longer than (the) last few cycles. But for all I know it’ll be 60 for the next, maybe it will be one, I don’t know. I never know. It’s just my wife, we’ve been together since we were 18, and she’s always been like my editor. We kind of decide together whether we feel like it’s an album or not.”
Johnson called the day after he’d appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to preview the new album. President Joe Biden had been on the show that same night. Jackson didn’t meet the president but said the Secret Service detail was cool.
“We did a sound check beforehand, and it was really funny because there were all these Secret Service people that asked if it was OK if they watched because they were going to be gone when we performed. So there’s all these guys with the little earpieces and stuff watching us sound-check.”
Hawaii fans can see him in person on Friday and Saturday when he’ll play the Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell with Tavana, Paula Fuga and Kawika Kahiapo. The Saturday concert also will be globally livestreamed. The concerts will benefit Johnson’s Kokua Hawai‘i Foundation.
Why perform in Hawaii in the middle of an international tour? That’s when it fit.
“There were a lot of times where you route an East Coast tour, you’re looking at all these venues that everybody’s trying to get, and you kind of have to grab them early,” he said. “Whereas Hawaii, we have certain windows and we wanted to see when it would work best for everybody to be able to do those shows.”
Johnson, Fuga, Tavana and Kahiapo offered Hawaii a preview of what they’ll be doing in a YouTube video posted on Earth Day in April.
“Whenever I can play music with them, it always makes the show better,” Johnson said. “Paula is really sweet about always learning my lyrics, I know a bunch of her songs. And then with Kawika and Tavana, you literally could show up five minutes before (showtime), they never heard a song, you say, ‘This one’s in G,’ and they just make it sound beautiful. They’re so good.”
Johnson is famous for his commitment to environmentally friendly touring. All beverages at the concerts are served in reusable cups or cans, all utensils are compostable, and no single-use plastic water bottles are sold. Fans are encouraged to bring their own empty reusable bottles; water refill stations will be available throughout the venue.
“We really focus on a few different things on tour, one being single-use plastic and the other where we source food from,” he explained. “In the old days when we would play a festival, we would walk back out onstage after the crowd had cleared out, and it was like a sea of plastic. You’d just see bottles everywhere. It’s an obvious problem, but I think it broke my heart extra growing up in Hawaii and surfing, and the high tide line kept getting more colorful (with washed-up plastic). When we formed the Kokua Hawai‘i Foundation, we made the plastic issue one of the things we work on.”
Beach cleanups where volunteers remove truckloads of plastic bottles, abandoned fishing gear and miscellaneous plastic items are one way to address the problem, he says, but beach cleanups won’t solve it.
“There’s a little bay that catches a lot of plastic and it becomes part of the makeup of the sand. You dig down and it’s like colorful sand but it’s basically microplastic breaking down into the sand, and there’s that connection with being part of an industry that produces so much single-use plastic,” he said.
“It’s really important to us to try to turn that problem off at the top rather than try to keep putting a Band-Aid on it. Beach cleanups turn people on to the issue, and families go down there and say, ‘Whoa, this is a real problem. I see now,’ but you’re not gonna fix it by doing beach cleanups. It’s just gonna be a conversation starter.”
Another conversation starter is the Kokua Learning Farm near Haleiwa and three related businesses — Kokua General Store, Kokua Vintage and the ‘AINA Farm Stand — that promote local food production, waste reduction, environmental stewardship and community participation.
“The first Saturday of every month we have a community work day” on the farm, Johnson said. “One great way you can support the organization is coming out and helping out on the farm. It’s regarding food (production), but we also have certain areas where we have restoration of the (native) plants and wetlands, and we’ve seen native insects coming back and native birds even starting to come back.”
Speaking from personal experience, Johnson describes it as “a real exciting place to bring your kids and see something positive in the world.”
“We’re talking about some of these issues, climate change and whatnot, and it’s really important for kids to see positive change and to be able to dream up a beautiful future and not always be presented with the dystopian futures that you see in movies and whatnot.”
Johnson says the key to everything for him personally is his wife, Kim.
“She’s my wife, but she’s my manager too. In everything we’ve done, we’ve been partners. She’s the strength in all the things that I’m not good at. She keeps me organized. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without her. She’s always given me the confidence to do it. And so I’m really lucky to have her.”
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SURF LEGEND?
Responding to a final question, Jack Johnson said that despite the urban legends still circulating on the internet, he was never one wipeout away from a career as a professional surfer.
“I was like a lot of kids on the North Shore who flirt with a professional surfing career. I got to surf up there for a couple of years, and it was really, really exciting, but that was as far as I could even dream about that,” he said. “My plan was to go off to college, and I think my path would have led me to doing some of this stuff no matter what. These are the things I love doing.”
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Jack Johnson
>> Where: Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell
>> When: 4:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
>> Cost: $49-$99
>> Info: ticketmaster.com
>> Note: All net proceeds earned from Jack Johnson’s Hawaii shows, including platinum ticket sales, will be donated to the Kokua Hawai‘i Foundation to support environmental education in the schools and communities of Hawaii. In addition, $2 from every ticket will be directed to carbon offset projects in the islands.
Global livestream
>> The Saturday concert will be livestreamed, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Livestream tickets are $15. The tickets also grant access to unlimited, on-demand replays, which will be available for 48 hours after the live show has ended. Info: driift.link/JackJohnson
