 Before Jack Johnson perfected his rock star ways, he was a champion surfer on
the professional route with a sponsorship with Quiksilver. It was a life that was second nature for this
Hawaiian native, for he began chasing waves as a toddler, and by the time he was 17, Jack Johnson was an
outstanding athlete on the Pipeline.
However, Jack Johnson was also testing his other creative outlets -- one being film and
the other being music. It was during his college years as a film student at University of California at
Santa Barbara when Jack Johnson began writing songs. He and old mates, Chris Malloy and Emmett Malloy,
produced a surf cinema documentary entitled Thicker Than Water, in turn spotlighting Jack Johnson as a
talented cinematographer as well as a burgeoning singer/songwriter.
His peers in and around the surf circuit praised his work and Thicker Than Water
received props in Surfer magazine for Video of the Year during 2000. The follow-up surf flick The
September Sessions also earned the Adobe Highlight Award at the ESPN Film Festival that same year.
Still, Jack Johnson steered away from a blossoming pro sports career and stuck with music -- something
that would soon earn him additional honors. G. Love & Special Sauce quickly took notice to Jack Johnson's
lazy blues stylings, which also molded folk and hip-hop for a modern rock twist, and included Johnson
on "Rodeo Clowns'" from G. Love's 1999 release, Philadelphonic. Jack Johnson's four-track demo also caught
the ears of Ben Harper's right hand man, J.P. Plunier. This was surely mind-blowing for Jack Johnson, for
Harper's college rock mainstay Fight for Your Mind was one of his favorites and remained an inspiration.
Aside from Plunier's production work, Harper also added his lap steel guitar work on Jack Johnson's sultry
debut, Brushfire Fairytales (Enjoy Records) in winter 2001. Two co-headlining tours followed throughout
spring and summer 2002; Jack Johnson's sophomore effort On and On appeared in May 2003. Stateside dates
with Ben Harper followed in June and July. A third album, In Between Dreams arrived in March 2005.
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