August 21, 2025 • 27 mins
This week on Encore, we're going to talk about a bonafide sleeper hit of an album, with bonafide sleeper hit singles; a charmingly upbeat and wholesome record by a guy who surfed his way into our hearts some 20 years ago; with songs that equally resonate as much with a trip to the grocery store as a trip to the beach. But like - in a good way.
I am of course talking about Jack Johnson’s 2005 effort In Between Dreams - and its heartwarming first track - Better Together.
Son of surfer Jeff Johnson, Jack’s first love was of course: surfing. He was an avid surfer by the age of 5 - and by 17, he was the youngest invitee to make the finals of the lauded Pipeline Masters event in Hawaii.
Things went sideways for young Jack though, as he was involved in a serious surfing accident at the very same event; with Johnson needing over 100 stitches in his forehead and the removal of some teeth.
Soon after the accident, Jack would trade the surfboard for the director’s chair, and enrolled himself in film school, as well as joining a local band called Soil and playing the University of California, Santa Barbara campus’ party scene.
Ever the polymath; Jack Johnson also successfully put his film studies degree he earned at USCB to good use by combining his love of Surfing, Film, and music to direct the surfer-documentary Thicker Than Water with his pals Chris and Emmett Malloy in the year 2000.
It was around this time Johnson met stoner-soul-rock-funk musician G. Love of the band G. Love and Special Sauce. The fun-loving G. Love met Johnson through his surf-documentary circles, and invited Jack to collaborate on a song called Rodeo Clowns.
With his foot now in the door in a variety of artistic circles - Johnson then caught the attention of travelling bluesman Ben Harper and his producer JP Plunier. Plunier was a fan of Johnson’s Demo Tape, and offered to produce his debut album, eventually titled Brushfire Fairytales and released in February 2001.
Jack Johnson would open for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals throughout 2001 - and by late 2002, Brushfire Fairytales officially became his first platinum-selling album.
After a less successful second album - Jack Johnson would hit it big with his classic third album In Between Dreams. This is the story of its biggest single, Better Together.
Written by Clayton Taylor for iHeartRadio.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
There's no combination of words I could put on the
back of a postcard, but I can tell you that
I'm Ruby Carr and this is the story of Jack
Johnson's Better Together.
You know the songs just making people feel something. It's
been a pleasure to work on this song with her,
but do you know the history to struggle making any
kind of record? I don't always have the direction or concept.
(00:22):
This is Encore, an in-depth look at the stories behind
the music. Here's Iart Radio's Ruby Carr.
Hey, do you guys remember albums? They were these things
that had music on them and you would listen to
them from start to finish. They came in various shapes
and sizes from vinyls to tapes to CDs. OK, I'm
(00:44):
just gonna stop myself right there. Everyone knows what an
album is. Yes, even in today's streaming dominated playlist loving
music economy, there are plenty of artists that still aim
to release the perfectly curated.
Long form experience of their music and plenty of adoring
fans that judge their favorite artists on their album-based output.
(01:06):
Take Taylor Swift's eras, for example. Those eras are defined
predominantly by a corresponding album cycle. We know Taylor through
who she was around the time of Red, 1989, reputation
or lover, and in turn she reflects that back to
us and we'll find.
out even more when Life of a Showgirl comes out.
(01:27):
Justin Bieber at the time of writing this very episode,
has just released his first full length album in over
4 years, shocking the world with a full 21 track
output that really showcases the significance of what happens when
an artist we love drops a fully fleshed out vision
of where they are musically, and then I listen to
(01:47):
it on the subway just vibing.
So I think that when the age old artists just
don't care about making good albums anymore or kids these
days just want TikTok hits debate pops up from time
to time in the online discourse, what people are really
looking for is a far more personal sense of nostalgia,
a time when they discovered an album at just the
(02:10):
right time and were able to relate to a collection
of songs so perfectly.
Now obviously everyone has their own completely subjective take on
what a classic album is with a potentially endless list
of criteria on the reasons why. Maybe you're a no
skips kind of listener where an album can only truly
(02:31):
be one of the greats if you can listen to
every note of every song tirelessly. uh, maybe you're the
most hit singles person where you're looking at the facts
of how many songs from an album charted and entered
the general.
of the most people selling the most copies or maybe
you're the exact opposite, you lovable little hipster you, uh,
(02:53):
where you measure the classic album experience by the very
fact that it isn't the most loved work in an
artist's catalog, but the most artistically experimental or influential, or
maybe you just love saying your favorite album is one
that no one has ever heard of, you know who
you are. And listen, you can also be a mixture
of all of those things. I'm not judging you.
(03:15):
This week though, I want to talk about a bona
fide sleeper hit of an album with bona fide sleeper
hit singles, a charmingly upbeat and wholesome record by a
guy who surfed his way into our hearts some 20
years ago with songs that equally resonate as much with
a trip to the grocery store as a trip to
the beach, but like in a good way.
(03:36):
I am of course talking about Jack Johnson's 2005 effort
In Between Dreams and it's heartwarming first track, Better Together.
In what is truly one of music's chillest origin stories,
Jack Johnson was born in beautiful Hawaii in 1975. Son
of surfer Jeff Johnson, Jack's first love was of course surfing.
(04:00):
He was an avid surfer by the.
age of 5 and by 17 he was the youngest
invitee to make the finals of the lauded Pipeline Masters
event in Hawaii. I was lucky enough to have two
older brothers who surf and my dad, and even my
mom used to go out and boogie board with us,
and so just got turned on to that at a
young age, and that's definitely the funnest part about life
(04:22):
for me is riding waves.
Things went sideways for young Jack though, as he was
involved in a serious surfing accident at that very same
event with Johnson needing over 100 stitches in his forehead
and the removal of some teeth. Soon after the accident,
Jack would trade the surfboard for the director's chair and
enrolled himself in film school, as well as joining a
(04:45):
local band called Soil and playing the University of California
Santa Barbara campus's party scene.
In what sounds like the plot of a straight video movie,
Soy played the university circuit to some success, even opening
for up and coming chill dude legends like Sublime and
Dave Matthews. But Soy weren't the only ones. As legend
(05:08):
has it, psychedelic pop band Django Reinhardt were also on
the come up, gaining in popularity and rivaling soil for
the eyes and ears of the California diehards.
Fronted by multi-instrumentalist Zach Gill, who, according to his Wikipedia
plays piano, accordion, ukulele, guitar, banjo, and vibraphone, Django and
(05:30):
Soy's rivalry ended not with a battle of the bands
for the ages, but an amicable mutual respect for each
other and lifelong friendship that saw the two eventually joining
forces as bandmates and collaborators to this very day, but
we'll get to that.
Ever the Renaissance man Jack Johnson also successfully put his
(05:52):
film studies degree he earned at USCB to good use
by combining his love of surfing, film, and music to
direct the surfer documentary Thicker Than Water with his pals
Chris and Emmett Belloy in the year 2000. My friends
and I, we were all surfing all the time and
kind of wanted to be pro surfers, at least we
thought at the time, you know, when we were like 1415,
(06:14):
so we started.
I got a video camera for my birthday and my
friends and I would take turns filming each other, but
it wasn't about doing the film and it was about
being in the film, so we had a trade off.
It was like a half an hour doing the camera
between 4 friends, each guy would have to film for
half an hour, and you get to surf for an
hour and a half, and then we'd come in and
we'd edit all the footage together on, you know, take
2 VCRs and go from tape to tape.
(06:35):
I never realized that that, you know, had an influence
on later in life doing the surf films, but I
went to film school for a while. I didn't really
think I was gonna make surf films. I thought I
was gonna go off to Hollywood and make productions, but
I tried that for a minute. I didn't dig it
too much, just being in that area.
And so, um, just started going off on surf trips
and doing the surf films and I fell in love
with it. It was really cool. What Johnson would score
(06:57):
the film himself while also leveraging his relationships with some
of the best surfers in the world at the time
in surfing hotspots like Australia, Indonesia, India and Hawaii, of course.
If Johnson's co-directors.
Sound familiar to you, by the way. It may be
because the Malloys went on to become quite successful music
video directors themselves, directing countless videos across rock, pop and
(07:20):
hip hop throughout the 2000s and beyond, perhaps most notably
former encore episode subject Avril Lavigne's girlfriend music video.
It was around this time Johnson met stoner soul rock
funk musician G Love of the band G Love and
Special Sauce, the fun loving G. Love met Johnson through
his surf documentary circles and invited Jack to collaborate on
(07:44):
a song called Rodeo Clowns.
With his foot now in the door in a variety
of artistic circles, Johnson then caught the attention of traveling
bluesman Ben Harper and his producer JP Plunier. Plunier was
a fan of Johnson's demo tape and offered to produce
his debut album eventually titled Brush Fire Fairy Tales and
(08:04):
released in February 2001. Jack would regale the story of
stumbling into success to much. Uh, well, at first, I mean,
and the same thing I was talking about, I was
just making surf films and then.
Basically got this chance thing to all these, what happened
was I got on G Love and Special sauce, so
I got a chance to meet Garrett, the singer from
that band, and I showed him some of my music
(08:26):
and he ended up putting one of my songs on
his record that we played together in the studio. And
then all of a sudden I started getting all these
phone calls from labels just out of nowhere. I was
never even thinking about putting on a record, and I
was just kind of intimidated, you know, and people started
telling me stuff like be careful of this and that
and don't sign this or that.
And the whole thing was just real inseminating and I
just wanted to get in a situation where I wasn't
working for somebody, mainly and so it worked out really
(08:48):
good because.
I think us being so scared about the whole thing,
we ended up getting ourselves in a much better situation
by accident. Complete with a co-sign from Ben Harper himself
contributing his signature slide guitar sound to his first single Flake,
Brush Fire Fairy tales would become a cult favorite in
the singer-songwriter acoustic.
Crowd who were just discovering the likes of the more
(09:10):
commercially packaged John Mayer and the loyal folk music and
blues rock Ben Harper acolytes who were often the specific
type of hipster who would always go on about real music,
you know the type.
As David Bannon wrote in his irreverent 2021 retrospective of
the album for online publication The Quietest, Johnson was buff,
(09:33):
he was rugged, he was handsome, he was easygoing, he
was sensitive, and above all, he was authentic. He was
authentic the way expensively marketed jeans and pleasantly appointed woodland
cabins and ethically sourced coffee beans are authentic. It wasn't
just the bong fancier fraternities.
Both Scholastic and Dropout who loved the guy. He brought
(09:54):
the sororities in too. Dude was catnip to the ladies.
I can't believe he actually said that. Dude was catnip
to the ladies, and when you look at him, it's
hard to blame those ladies. Plus, he understood. You could
tell from his songs that he understood. Granted, he understood
in the most generic fashion conceivable, the way your horoscope
or an inspirational meme understands. But then some
(10:17):
Times the thing becomes hugely popular because it dazzles the
senses and stirs the passions of a multitude and sometimes
the thing becomes hugely popular because it's basic AF but
to Johnson, Basic wasn't a bad thing. He really was
just a guy and he really was just writing songs.
So was it so wrong that people were connecting in
(10:39):
the most basic sense of the word? Here, I'm gonna
let Jack explain. I guess I'm not a.
I always think of it as folk because I always
sit around with an acoustic guitar and write, you know,
and then I'll show the songs to the guys in
the band and they'll add the bass and the drums.
So then it ends up not sounding too, doesn't sound
always like folk, you know, sometimes it sounds more like
uh reggae or a little touch of hip hop or
(10:59):
kind of what they end up adding, you know, the
beats they had and whatnot. But um, I always think
of it like funky folk, you know, I think some
of the songs are right, touch on issues that uh.
Might be good for the younger generation to hear, and
some are just dumb love songs that I was writing
around the house that are kind of trying to make
my wife laugh or something, so I just feel like
the responsibility doesn't change. I feel just as responsible to
(11:20):
make a dumb love song that people you know, dance
around and have a good time at a show. So
I think the main thing is just to not change
up what you're doing.
Once things change around you, you tell him, Jack. Jack
Johnson would open for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals
throughout 2001, and by late 2002, Brush Fire Fairytales officially
became his first platinum selling album.
(11:43):
Now with a bit of name recognition behind him, also
in 2002, Johnson was able to release his follow up
surf documentary and its soundtrack, the September Sessions. While all
of these artistic endeavors paint a very clear picture of
a super talented, super motivated Johnson, it took a while
for him to warm up to the idea that Jack Johnson,
(12:05):
full time musician, was ever really truly a thing telling much.
I don't know, I guess I just didn't want to.
Put too much pressure on myself, but you know, because
it was all it was just a side thing. I
always thought I was gonna go back just to making
surf films after uh putting our record out. The first
record was just kind of a chance thing and somebody
heard a tape and decided that, you know, they put
(12:25):
us on their label and.
So we ended up doing that record and I kind
of thought we're gonna tour for a few months and
then go back to making surf films and it just
kind of kept on rolling and that was cool. I
enjoyed it, but I just didn't want to make myself
think it was gonna happen, you know.
Johnson's follow-up record On and On, produced by Mario Caldado
Junior famous for producing Beastie Boys sabotage, profiled last season
(12:47):
on Encore, was a bit of a disappointment. All Things
Considered critically panned by most major outlets at the time
for being a bit too much like brushfire. Rolling Stones's
Barry Walters would say the acoustic guitar and easy rhythms.
On and on, don't build much on 2001's brushfire fairy tales,
which already comes across as formula. Jess says it's hard
(13:10):
to believe that all those rap metal groups could be
so genuinely angry, it requires a leap of faith to
trust that Johnson could really be this calm. But that's
the thing, he really was that calm in researching this episode.
I came across a not specifically relevant to the music
story that I just thought was so wholesome and spoke
(13:31):
so perfectly to what appears to be Jack Johnson's character
involving growing up in Hawaii and why one of his
brothers calls him Gandhi. Um, now your brothers call you Gandhi.
One of them sometimes. Well, they used to be um.
You know, Hawaii's a pretty aggressive place out in the
water and so like a lot of fights go on.
(13:53):
And my one brother, he used to get in a
lot of fights, but he was the oldest brother and
he kind of had to look out for us. And
then I never got in fights and like somebody, if
somebody drops it on your wave, like if you're riding
a wave and somebody takes off in front of you.
A lot of times people get in fights about that, and, uh,
I just thought it was so silly because surfing is
just a fun thing to do. And so I was
always trying to calm my brothers down, like, don't fight
(14:14):
and stuff and.
But it's easy for me to say because they're always
fighting for me, you know, like somebody would get a
hassle of me and they'd be an older person, they'd
want to fight on and stuff. So anyways, he would
just always joke and call me Gandhi because I was
always trying to like make peace out in the water so.
I am once again saying, you tell him, Jack. While
sales of On and On were not at the levels
of his debut, I think you can tell by now that,
(14:36):
you know, wasn't such a big deal to our guy Jack.
And the thing is, I've been realizing lately.
I don't really care too much because I'm not a rec,
I'm not like a businessman. I'm not a, you know,
and so, um, the key is just to make music
and get excited when people are hearing it at all,
you know, and.
If somebody, you know, in the end I guess I'm
making a living too, so it's to my benefit if
they figure out a way, you know, to help us
(14:57):
keep making a living doing it, but it's kind of
more up to the business people to figure out, you know,
how to make it all work. Yeah, it's cool, but
I feel plenty of success and like when people say
the music industry is in trouble or whatever, you know,
it's like.
I got into it right as it was, as I
was getting in trouble, I guess. Hey, quiet down, kids.
Speaking of kids.
Yeah, quiet down kids don't you know we need this
(15:20):
audio 20 years later for a podcast? Sorry about that.
After finishing his tour with his pals G Love and
Special Sauce and Donovan Frankenrier, Johnson returned to the comforts
of the Mango Tree studio in Hawaii to record album
number 3. Now you might not be surprised to hear
that Jack Johnson isn't exactly one to try and reinvent
(15:41):
the wheel. Jack would write most of the music and
lyrics for the album.
Just as he'd always done, he'd bring in On and
On's producer Mario Caldado Junior to produce the record, as
well as enlisting stalwarts on his previous efforts, Adam Tel
on drums and Merlo Podlewski on bass. But what Johnson
would do for the first time ever in his professional
(16:02):
career is open the doors to the Jack Johnson extend.
Universe and bring bitter rival turned BFF Zack Gill of
Django Reinhart into the fold. That's right. Johnson's old university
jam band rival Zack Attack was back. Gill would live
up to his multi-instrumentalist moniker on the record, playing piano, accordion,
(16:24):
and melodica on select tracks.
While I don't have too much more info on the
motivation behind Gil's return to the fold, what I can
say is that since coming in to help with album
number 3, Zack and Jack have been inseparable, with Gi
becoming a permanent member of the touring band and the
album personnel for each subsequent Jack Johnson album right up
(16:46):
to the current day. I just love a happy ending.
Released in March 2005 on his own label, Brush Fire Records,
the album In Between Dreams featured a bright yellow front
cover with a simple silhouette of a mango tree and
Johnson himself, guitar by his side, picking a mango. The mango.
was of course a nod to Johnson's beloved recording studio,
(17:08):
while the title of the album was a reference to
the space between dreams and reality, a metaphor for his
own surreal life as a successful musician. On the title,
Johnson would tell much. It's fun. It's kind of a
second adventure that I get to go on every once
in a while I see what the title for the
new record kind of refers to is.
Uh, in between the dreams is when I'm back at
(17:30):
home and in my reality. Cause even, you know, right now, this,
and I have to do some other interviews and, uh,
kind of going around doing a week of press right
now and it's, it's fun. It's
I try to keep a positive attitude and just think
of it as being a fun adventure I get to do,
but it's not my reality. It's just a strange thing.
First single Sitting Waiting Wishing released in January 2005, was
(17:54):
an adult alternative Billboard number one hit that told the
simple tale of unrequited love.
As he was of course happily married, the song was
not supposed to be a story from Jack Johnson's perspective,
but a fun little song to cheer up his friend.
He would tell the Honolulu Advertiser, a friend of mine
was trying to get this girl named Michelle, and I
(18:15):
tried to write a song that would help him have
a laugh at himself because he was spending so much
time trying to get her, and it obviously wasn't leading anywhere.
This one was just to cheer up a friend.
It seemed as always that relatability was Johnson's only real
goal for the record as he had really begun to
notice that fans of his would often revel in the
(18:35):
comfort of the normality of his music, songs that they
themselves not only saw themselves in.
Narratively, but almost as if they could have written them too.
I guess, yeah, that's a good point. Like one thing
I hear a lot is just that I feel like it's,
if I was able to put the words together, that's
the song I would have written, you know, that it
really speaks to me. I feel like it's about my
(18:56):
life a lot of times. So I think just, I'm
probably just your average Joe enough that when I write
a song, it speaks to a lot of people and.
A lot of people, if they were to put together
a song that's the one they would have written, so, um,
and I feel that we're playing a show and you
hear everybody singing the words back.
It goes, it's not your song anymore, it's everybody's. Once
they listen to it and they identify and they put
(19:16):
it into their own life and they're singing the words, um,
it's everybody in that room, you know, you feel the
energy and so.
I like that about the songs that you know everybody
shares them. Second single Good People was as cheery of
a protest song as you'll ever hear, which also became
an adult alternative number one, and third single Breakdown gained
(19:38):
Johnson a bit of a sly hip hop cred when
it was interpolated by underground avant garde rap duo Handsome
Boy Modeling School.
But of course it was the subject of today's episode,
4th single Better Together, that would become Jack Johnson's signature
song released in early 2006. Better Together is the introductory
(20:00):
track to In Between Dreams and features all the hallmarks
of a classic Jack Johnson joint.
The soothing slinky acoustic guitar lulls you in before Johnson
begins the romantic ode, fitting in more syllables than the
beat allows for singing. There's no combination of words I
could put on the back of a postcard, but better
(20:20):
than that, uh, like an overexcited kid just dying to
tell you the tale that they've embellished a few of
the details of the kids do that.
Oh, do I do that? From there, as mentioned, it's
just straight up relatability, simplicity and authenticity packed into a
song that somehow sounds like the most elevated campfire tune
(20:41):
you've ever heard. The lyrics could be interpreted as sickly
sweet for sure, but nothing overstays its welcome.
Grounded in both idealism and reality all at once, written
for his wife Kim, Johnson would say it was a
song that was pretty much complete before entering the studio.
It was really just a song that I wrote for
my wife. The love songs always start out for her,
(21:03):
but then I try to make them pretty broad, so
they're for everybody by the end.
The little piano breakdown in the middle of the song,
by the way, uh, if it sounds familiar to you,
is an interpolation of the piano class favorite Heart and Soul,
a song released so long ago, 1938, that I'm pretty
sure Jack Johnson didn't even have to credit the original
composer Hoagy Carmichael, who was born in Yield in 1899
(21:28):
and died in 1981. The catchy little chord progression is
also often referred to as the 150s progression.
Thanks to its common use in doo-wop songs in the
50s and 60s, now you know, while initially only a
modest sleeper hit in the United States with about 500,000
copies sold over the years and decades actually, Better Together
(21:49):
became Jack Johnson's calling card worldwide, going 4 times platinum
here in Canada, 6 times platinum in surf loving Australia,
double platinum in the UK, and 4 times platinum in
New Zealand.
While a lot of these platinum certifications came on the
basis of sales equivalent streams on streaming platforms, Better Together
(22:10):
has become Jack Johnson's most viewed video from the Inbetween
Dreams era on YouTube, and his most streamed song of
his on Spotify, no doubt soon to be included in
their lauded Billions Club. Around the same time of the
release of Better Together, Jack Johnson also released the iconic.
and wholesome singalongs and lullabies for the film Curious George,
(22:32):
a delightfully cheery soundtrack of Jack Johnson originals and covers
artists like The White Stripes, Ben Harper, and a reimagined
recycling anthem from the Schoolhouse Rock series. While the Curious
George movie itself wasn't exactly a blowaway hit, making a
respectable $70 million on a 50 million.
budget. Johnson's kid friendly hit Upside Down from the movie's
(22:56):
soundtrack became a platinum seller number one adult alternative hit
and his longest ever charting song on the Billboard Hot 100.
Johnson was actually only originally commissioned to write two songs
for the film, but was just so gosh darn enthused
about the project and inspired to write more songs for
his eldest son that he.
A crucial part of the film's storytelling. Cathy Nelson, president
(23:20):
of film music at Universal at the time, would tell
the LA Times, Music is so important to the movie.
Our main character doesn't speak. He makes little noises, he squeaks.
Since George doesn't speak, Jack Johnson decided he wanted to
be the voice of George, so his songs provide the narrative.
You tell him, George or Jack.
(23:41):
In Between Dreams would solidify Jack Johnson's legacy forever, going
double platinum around the time of Better Together's release and
garnering a Grammy nomination in 2006 for Sitting waiting Wishing
while also buoying the Curious George soundtrack and 2002's On
and On to platinum status in its own right.
Never really concerned with chasing a hit, Johnson's next album,
(24:04):
2007's Sleep Through the Static, would also become a platinum
seller with lead single If I Had Eyes telling a
forlorn tale of the breakup of a long-term relationship. But
fear not, it was not autobiographical. Jack and Kim, who
married in 2000, are still happily married to this day. Unfortunately,
the song was inspired by friends of Johnson's who were divorcing.
(24:29):
In 2009, the happy couple created the Johnson Oh Hana
Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit charity supporting environmental, art, and music
education worldwide.
These days, Johnson is living a simple eco-friendly life with
his last album released in 2022. Music has become more
of a byproduct of life well lived than a primary
(24:51):
concern for him. His most recent tour in support of
the record featured songs from his now 20 plus year career,
but Johnson ended every night's encore by sending the crowd
home happy with an epic singalong of, you guessed it,
Better Together.
Coincidentally, at the time of writing, Jack Johnson did an
interview with CNN's Bill Weir just a couple of weeks
(25:14):
ago to talk about his efforts to make concerts around
the world more environmentally friendly for a documentary that featured
the likes of Billie Eilish and Bonnie Raitt, to name
a few.
Shot at his glorious Hawaiian farm, Jack explained what inspired
him to reduce his own environmental footprint and what he's
doing at home in Hawaii to care for the planet.
(25:35):
Going back to those early shows when you have these
sort of awakenings, you know, it's like everything's great and
it's like wow, what a night.
And then you walk out on the stage after everybody's
gone and you just see a sea of plastic water
bottles and all of a sudden you're at a at
an amphitheater and you look out back and you realize, well,
there's multiple trucks here there's multiple buses this is a footprint,
you know, an environmental footprint that's kind of bigger than
(25:56):
I realized it's all of a sudden it gets here
and it's a little wake up call of OK, what,
how can we do better? What can we do? I
just started looking OK, Willie Nelson is, he's running all
his trucks and buses.
Biodiesel. Let's do that. Neil Young's putting on the bridge
school benefit every year. Let's do something like that in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
While some of my musical heroes would demand bathtubs of
booze or other pleasures in their concert riders, he started
asking for composting stations, locally sourced food, and plastic free
shows until such demands became known among promoters as the
Jack Johnson package.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yes, the Cocoa farm, a word that means to help
with joy, is Johnson's home base, a place where he
and Kim teach kids about caring for the planet and
living sustainably. You might even say better together.
I'm Ruby Carr. Thanks for listening to another episode of Encore. Listen,
they won't always be this wholesome, but they'll always be fun.
(26:52):
New episodes every Thursday. Encore is an iHeart Radio Canada podcast.
Download the free iHeart Radio app and subscribe. Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming.
There's no combination of words I could put on the
back of a postcard, but I can tell you that
I'm Ruby Carr and this is the story of Jack
Johnson's Better Together.
You know the songs just making people feel something. It's
been a pleasure to work on this song with her,
but do you know the history to struggle making any
kind of record? I don't always have the direction or concept.
(00:22):
This is Encore, an in-depth look at the stories behind
the music. Here's Iart Radio's Ruby Carr.
Hey, do you guys remember albums? They were these things
that had music on them and you would listen to
them from start to finish. They came in various shapes
and sizes from vinyls to tapes to CDs. OK, I'm
(00:44):
just gonna stop myself right there. Everyone knows what an
album is. Yes, even in today's streaming dominated playlist loving
music economy, there are plenty of artists that still aim
to release the perfectly curated.
Long form experience of their music and plenty of adoring
fans that judge their favorite artists on their album-based output.
(01:06):
Take Taylor Swift's eras, for example. Those eras are defined
predominantly by a corresponding album cycle. We know Taylor through
who she was around the time of Red, 1989, reputation
or lover, and in turn she reflects that back to
us and we'll find.
out even more when Life of a Showgirl comes out.
(01:27):
Justin Bieber at the time of writing this very episode,
has just released his first full length album in over
4 years, shocking the world with a full 21 track
output that really showcases the significance of what happens when
an artist we love drops a fully fleshed out vision
of where they are musically, and then I listen to
(01:47):
it on the subway just vibing.
So I think that when the age old artists just
don't care about making good albums anymore or kids these
days just want TikTok hits debate pops up from time
to time in the online discourse, what people are really
looking for is a far more personal sense of nostalgia,
a time when they discovered an album at just the
(02:10):
right time and were able to relate to a collection
of songs so perfectly.
Now obviously everyone has their own completely subjective take on
what a classic album is with a potentially endless list
of criteria on the reasons why. Maybe you're a no
skips kind of listener where an album can only truly
(02:31):
be one of the greats if you can listen to
every note of every song tirelessly. uh, maybe you're the
most hit singles person where you're looking at the facts
of how many songs from an album charted and entered
the general.
of the most people selling the most copies or maybe
you're the exact opposite, you lovable little hipster you, uh,
(02:53):
where you measure the classic album experience by the very
fact that it isn't the most loved work in an
artist's catalog, but the most artistically experimental or influential, or
maybe you just love saying your favorite album is one
that no one has ever heard of, you know who
you are. And listen, you can also be a mixture
of all of those things. I'm not judging you.
(03:15):
This week though, I want to talk about a bona
fide sleeper hit of an album with bona fide sleeper
hit singles, a charmingly upbeat and wholesome record by a
guy who surfed his way into our hearts some 20
years ago with songs that equally resonate as much with
a trip to the grocery store as a trip to
the beach, but like in a good way.
(03:36):
I am of course talking about Jack Johnson's 2005 effort
In Between Dreams and it's heartwarming first track, Better Together.
In what is truly one of music's chillest origin stories,
Jack Johnson was born in beautiful Hawaii in 1975. Son
of surfer Jeff Johnson, Jack's first love was of course surfing.
(04:00):
He was an avid surfer by the.
age of 5 and by 17 he was the youngest
invitee to make the finals of the lauded Pipeline Masters
event in Hawaii. I was lucky enough to have two
older brothers who surf and my dad, and even my
mom used to go out and boogie board with us,
and so just got turned on to that at a
young age, and that's definitely the funnest part about life
(04:22):
for me is riding waves.
Things went sideways for young Jack though, as he was
involved in a serious surfing accident at that very same
event with Johnson needing over 100 stitches in his forehead
and the removal of some teeth. Soon after the accident,
Jack would trade the surfboard for the director's chair and
enrolled himself in film school, as well as joining a
(04:45):
local band called Soil and playing the University of California
Santa Barbara campus's party scene.
In what sounds like the plot of a straight video movie,
Soy played the university circuit to some success, even opening
for up and coming chill dude legends like Sublime and
Dave Matthews. But Soy weren't the only ones. As legend
(05:08):
has it, psychedelic pop band Django Reinhardt were also on
the come up, gaining in popularity and rivaling soil for
the eyes and ears of the California diehards.
Fronted by multi-instrumentalist Zach Gill, who, according to his Wikipedia
plays piano, accordion, ukulele, guitar, banjo, and vibraphone, Django and
(05:30):
Soy's rivalry ended not with a battle of the bands
for the ages, but an amicable mutual respect for each
other and lifelong friendship that saw the two eventually joining
forces as bandmates and collaborators to this very day, but
we'll get to that.
Ever the Renaissance man Jack Johnson also successfully put his
(05:52):
film studies degree he earned at USCB to good use
by combining his love of surfing, film, and music to
direct the surfer documentary Thicker Than Water with his pals
Chris and Emmett Belloy in the year 2000. My friends
and I, we were all surfing all the time and
kind of wanted to be pro surfers, at least we
thought at the time, you know, when we were like 1415,
(06:14):
so we started.
I got a video camera for my birthday and my
friends and I would take turns filming each other, but
it wasn't about doing the film and it was about
being in the film, so we had a trade off.
It was like a half an hour doing the camera
between 4 friends, each guy would have to film for
half an hour, and you get to surf for an
hour and a half, and then we'd come in and
we'd edit all the footage together on, you know, take
2 VCRs and go from tape to tape.
(06:35):
I never realized that that, you know, had an influence
on later in life doing the surf films, but I
went to film school for a while. I didn't really
think I was gonna make surf films. I thought I
was gonna go off to Hollywood and make productions, but
I tried that for a minute. I didn't dig it
too much, just being in that area.
And so, um, just started going off on surf trips
and doing the surf films and I fell in love
with it. It was really cool. What Johnson would score
(06:57):
the film himself while also leveraging his relationships with some
of the best surfers in the world at the time
in surfing hotspots like Australia, Indonesia, India and Hawaii, of course.
If Johnson's co-directors.
Sound familiar to you, by the way. It may be
because the Malloys went on to become quite successful music
video directors themselves, directing countless videos across rock, pop and
(07:20):
hip hop throughout the 2000s and beyond, perhaps most notably
former encore episode subject Avril Lavigne's girlfriend music video.
It was around this time Johnson met stoner soul rock
funk musician G Love of the band G Love and
Special Sauce, the fun loving G. Love met Johnson through
his surf documentary circles and invited Jack to collaborate on
(07:44):
a song called Rodeo Clowns.
With his foot now in the door in a variety
of artistic circles, Johnson then caught the attention of traveling
bluesman Ben Harper and his producer JP Plunier. Plunier was
a fan of Johnson's demo tape and offered to produce
his debut album eventually titled Brush Fire Fairy Tales and
(08:04):
released in February 2001. Jack would regale the story of
stumbling into success to much. Uh, well, at first, I mean,
and the same thing I was talking about, I was
just making surf films and then.
Basically got this chance thing to all these, what happened
was I got on G Love and Special sauce, so
I got a chance to meet Garrett, the singer from
that band, and I showed him some of my music
(08:26):
and he ended up putting one of my songs on
his record that we played together in the studio. And
then all of a sudden I started getting all these
phone calls from labels just out of nowhere. I was
never even thinking about putting on a record, and I
was just kind of intimidated, you know, and people started
telling me stuff like be careful of this and that
and don't sign this or that.
And the whole thing was just real inseminating and I
just wanted to get in a situation where I wasn't
working for somebody, mainly and so it worked out really
(08:48):
good because.
I think us being so scared about the whole thing,
we ended up getting ourselves in a much better situation
by accident. Complete with a co-sign from Ben Harper himself
contributing his signature slide guitar sound to his first single Flake,
Brush Fire Fairy tales would become a cult favorite in
the singer-songwriter acoustic.
Crowd who were just discovering the likes of the more
(09:10):
commercially packaged John Mayer and the loyal folk music and
blues rock Ben Harper acolytes who were often the specific
type of hipster who would always go on about real music,
you know the type.
As David Bannon wrote in his irreverent 2021 retrospective of
the album for online publication The Quietest, Johnson was buff,
(09:33):
he was rugged, he was handsome, he was easygoing, he
was sensitive, and above all, he was authentic. He was
authentic the way expensively marketed jeans and pleasantly appointed woodland
cabins and ethically sourced coffee beans are authentic. It wasn't
just the bong fancier fraternities.
Both Scholastic and Dropout who loved the guy. He brought
(09:54):
the sororities in too. Dude was catnip to the ladies.
I can't believe he actually said that. Dude was catnip
to the ladies, and when you look at him, it's
hard to blame those ladies. Plus, he understood. You could
tell from his songs that he understood. Granted, he understood
in the most generic fashion conceivable, the way your horoscope
or an inspirational meme understands. But then some
(10:17):
Times the thing becomes hugely popular because it dazzles the
senses and stirs the passions of a multitude and sometimes
the thing becomes hugely popular because it's basic AF but
to Johnson, Basic wasn't a bad thing. He really was
just a guy and he really was just writing songs.
So was it so wrong that people were connecting in
(10:39):
the most basic sense of the word? Here, I'm gonna
let Jack explain. I guess I'm not a.
I always think of it as folk because I always
sit around with an acoustic guitar and write, you know,
and then I'll show the songs to the guys in
the band and they'll add the bass and the drums.
So then it ends up not sounding too, doesn't sound
always like folk, you know, sometimes it sounds more like
uh reggae or a little touch of hip hop or
(10:59):
kind of what they end up adding, you know, the
beats they had and whatnot. But um, I always think
of it like funky folk, you know, I think some
of the songs are right, touch on issues that uh.
Might be good for the younger generation to hear, and
some are just dumb love songs that I was writing
around the house that are kind of trying to make
my wife laugh or something, so I just feel like
the responsibility doesn't change. I feel just as responsible to
(11:20):
make a dumb love song that people you know, dance
around and have a good time at a show. So
I think the main thing is just to not change
up what you're doing.
Once things change around you, you tell him, Jack. Jack
Johnson would open for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals
throughout 2001, and by late 2002, Brush Fire Fairytales officially
became his first platinum selling album.
(11:43):
Now with a bit of name recognition behind him, also
in 2002, Johnson was able to release his follow up
surf documentary and its soundtrack, the September Sessions. While all
of these artistic endeavors paint a very clear picture of
a super talented, super motivated Johnson, it took a while
for him to warm up to the idea that Jack Johnson,
(12:05):
full time musician, was ever really truly a thing telling much.
I don't know, I guess I just didn't want to.
Put too much pressure on myself, but you know, because
it was all it was just a side thing. I
always thought I was gonna go back just to making
surf films after uh putting our record out. The first
record was just kind of a chance thing and somebody
heard a tape and decided that, you know, they put
(12:25):
us on their label and.
So we ended up doing that record and I kind
of thought we're gonna tour for a few months and
then go back to making surf films and it just
kind of kept on rolling and that was cool. I
enjoyed it, but I just didn't want to make myself
think it was gonna happen, you know.
Johnson's follow-up record On and On, produced by Mario Caldado
Junior famous for producing Beastie Boys sabotage, profiled last season
(12:47):
on Encore, was a bit of a disappointment. All Things
Considered critically panned by most major outlets at the time
for being a bit too much like brushfire. Rolling Stones's
Barry Walters would say the acoustic guitar and easy rhythms.
On and on, don't build much on 2001's brushfire fairy tales,
which already comes across as formula. Jess says it's hard
(13:10):
to believe that all those rap metal groups could be
so genuinely angry, it requires a leap of faith to
trust that Johnson could really be this calm. But that's
the thing, he really was that calm in researching this episode.
I came across a not specifically relevant to the music
story that I just thought was so wholesome and spoke
(13:31):
so perfectly to what appears to be Jack Johnson's character
involving growing up in Hawaii and why one of his
brothers calls him Gandhi. Um, now your brothers call you Gandhi.
One of them sometimes. Well, they used to be um.
You know, Hawaii's a pretty aggressive place out in the
water and so like a lot of fights go on.
(13:53):
And my one brother, he used to get in a
lot of fights, but he was the oldest brother and
he kind of had to look out for us. And
then I never got in fights and like somebody, if
somebody drops it on your wave, like if you're riding
a wave and somebody takes off in front of you.
A lot of times people get in fights about that, and, uh,
I just thought it was so silly because surfing is
just a fun thing to do. And so I was
always trying to calm my brothers down, like, don't fight
(14:14):
and stuff and.
But it's easy for me to say because they're always
fighting for me, you know, like somebody would get a
hassle of me and they'd be an older person, they'd
want to fight on and stuff. So anyways, he would
just always joke and call me Gandhi because I was
always trying to like make peace out in the water so.
I am once again saying, you tell him, Jack. While
sales of On and On were not at the levels
of his debut, I think you can tell by now that,
(14:36):
you know, wasn't such a big deal to our guy Jack.
And the thing is, I've been realizing lately.
I don't really care too much because I'm not a rec,
I'm not like a businessman. I'm not a, you know,
and so, um, the key is just to make music
and get excited when people are hearing it at all,
you know, and.
If somebody, you know, in the end I guess I'm
making a living too, so it's to my benefit if
they figure out a way, you know, to help us
(14:57):
keep making a living doing it, but it's kind of
more up to the business people to figure out, you know,
how to make it all work. Yeah, it's cool, but
I feel plenty of success and like when people say
the music industry is in trouble or whatever, you know,
it's like.
I got into it right as it was, as I
was getting in trouble, I guess. Hey, quiet down, kids.
Speaking of kids.
Yeah, quiet down kids don't you know we need this
(15:20):
audio 20 years later for a podcast? Sorry about that.
After finishing his tour with his pals G Love and
Special Sauce and Donovan Frankenrier, Johnson returned to the comforts
of the Mango Tree studio in Hawaii to record album
number 3. Now you might not be surprised to hear
that Jack Johnson isn't exactly one to try and reinvent
(15:41):
the wheel. Jack would write most of the music and
lyrics for the album.
Just as he'd always done, he'd bring in On and
On's producer Mario Caldado Junior to produce the record, as
well as enlisting stalwarts on his previous efforts, Adam Tel
on drums and Merlo Podlewski on bass. But what Johnson
would do for the first time ever in his professional
(16:02):
career is open the doors to the Jack Johnson extend.
Universe and bring bitter rival turned BFF Zack Gill of
Django Reinhart into the fold. That's right. Johnson's old university
jam band rival Zack Attack was back. Gill would live
up to his multi-instrumentalist moniker on the record, playing piano, accordion,
(16:24):
and melodica on select tracks.
While I don't have too much more info on the
motivation behind Gil's return to the fold, what I can
say is that since coming in to help with album
number 3, Zack and Jack have been inseparable, with Gi
becoming a permanent member of the touring band and the
album personnel for each subsequent Jack Johnson album right up
(16:46):
to the current day. I just love a happy ending.
Released in March 2005 on his own label, Brush Fire Records,
the album In Between Dreams featured a bright yellow front
cover with a simple silhouette of a mango tree and
Johnson himself, guitar by his side, picking a mango. The mango.
was of course a nod to Johnson's beloved recording studio,
(17:08):
while the title of the album was a reference to
the space between dreams and reality, a metaphor for his
own surreal life as a successful musician. On the title,
Johnson would tell much. It's fun. It's kind of a
second adventure that I get to go on every once
in a while I see what the title for the
new record kind of refers to is.
Uh, in between the dreams is when I'm back at
(17:30):
home and in my reality. Cause even, you know, right now, this,
and I have to do some other interviews and, uh,
kind of going around doing a week of press right
now and it's, it's fun. It's
I try to keep a positive attitude and just think
of it as being a fun adventure I get to do,
but it's not my reality. It's just a strange thing.
First single Sitting Waiting Wishing released in January 2005, was
(17:54):
an adult alternative Billboard number one hit that told the
simple tale of unrequited love.
As he was of course happily married, the song was
not supposed to be a story from Jack Johnson's perspective,
but a fun little song to cheer up his friend.
He would tell the Honolulu Advertiser, a friend of mine
was trying to get this girl named Michelle, and I
(18:15):
tried to write a song that would help him have
a laugh at himself because he was spending so much
time trying to get her, and it obviously wasn't leading anywhere.
This one was just to cheer up a friend.
It seemed as always that relatability was Johnson's only real
goal for the record as he had really begun to
notice that fans of his would often revel in the
(18:35):
comfort of the normality of his music, songs that they
themselves not only saw themselves in.
Narratively, but almost as if they could have written them too.
I guess, yeah, that's a good point. Like one thing
I hear a lot is just that I feel like it's,
if I was able to put the words together, that's
the song I would have written, you know, that it
really speaks to me. I feel like it's about my
(18:56):
life a lot of times. So I think just, I'm
probably just your average Joe enough that when I write
a song, it speaks to a lot of people and.
A lot of people, if they were to put together
a song that's the one they would have written, so, um,
and I feel that we're playing a show and you
hear everybody singing the words back.
It goes, it's not your song anymore, it's everybody's. Once
they listen to it and they identify and they put
(19:16):
it into their own life and they're singing the words, um,
it's everybody in that room, you know, you feel the
energy and so.
I like that about the songs that you know everybody
shares them. Second single Good People was as cheery of
a protest song as you'll ever hear, which also became
an adult alternative number one, and third single Breakdown gained
(19:38):
Johnson a bit of a sly hip hop cred when
it was interpolated by underground avant garde rap duo Handsome
Boy Modeling School.
But of course it was the subject of today's episode,
4th single Better Together, that would become Jack Johnson's signature
song released in early 2006. Better Together is the introductory
(20:00):
track to In Between Dreams and features all the hallmarks
of a classic Jack Johnson joint.
The soothing slinky acoustic guitar lulls you in before Johnson
begins the romantic ode, fitting in more syllables than the
beat allows for singing. There's no combination of words I
could put on the back of a postcard, but better
(20:20):
than that, uh, like an overexcited kid just dying to
tell you the tale that they've embellished a few of
the details of the kids do that.
Oh, do I do that? From there, as mentioned, it's
just straight up relatability, simplicity and authenticity packed into a
song that somehow sounds like the most elevated campfire tune
(20:41):
you've ever heard. The lyrics could be interpreted as sickly
sweet for sure, but nothing overstays its welcome.
Grounded in both idealism and reality all at once, written
for his wife Kim, Johnson would say it was a
song that was pretty much complete before entering the studio.
It was really just a song that I wrote for
my wife. The love songs always start out for her,
(21:03):
but then I try to make them pretty broad, so
they're for everybody by the end.
The little piano breakdown in the middle of the song,
by the way, uh, if it sounds familiar to you,
is an interpolation of the piano class favorite Heart and Soul,
a song released so long ago, 1938, that I'm pretty
sure Jack Johnson didn't even have to credit the original
composer Hoagy Carmichael, who was born in Yield in 1899
(21:28):
and died in 1981. The catchy little chord progression is
also often referred to as the 150s progression.
Thanks to its common use in doo-wop songs in the
50s and 60s, now you know, while initially only a
modest sleeper hit in the United States with about 500,000
copies sold over the years and decades actually, Better Together
(21:49):
became Jack Johnson's calling card worldwide, going 4 times platinum
here in Canada, 6 times platinum in surf loving Australia,
double platinum in the UK, and 4 times platinum in
New Zealand.
While a lot of these platinum certifications came on the
basis of sales equivalent streams on streaming platforms, Better Together
(22:10):
has become Jack Johnson's most viewed video from the Inbetween
Dreams era on YouTube, and his most streamed song of
his on Spotify, no doubt soon to be included in
their lauded Billions Club. Around the same time of the
release of Better Together, Jack Johnson also released the iconic.
and wholesome singalongs and lullabies for the film Curious George,
(22:32):
a delightfully cheery soundtrack of Jack Johnson originals and covers
artists like The White Stripes, Ben Harper, and a reimagined
recycling anthem from the Schoolhouse Rock series. While the Curious
George movie itself wasn't exactly a blowaway hit, making a
respectable $70 million on a 50 million.
budget. Johnson's kid friendly hit Upside Down from the movie's
(22:56):
soundtrack became a platinum seller number one adult alternative hit
and his longest ever charting song on the Billboard Hot 100.
Johnson was actually only originally commissioned to write two songs
for the film, but was just so gosh darn enthused
about the project and inspired to write more songs for
his eldest son that he.
A crucial part of the film's storytelling. Cathy Nelson, president
(23:20):
of film music at Universal at the time, would tell
the LA Times, Music is so important to the movie.
Our main character doesn't speak. He makes little noises, he squeaks.
Since George doesn't speak, Jack Johnson decided he wanted to
be the voice of George, so his songs provide the narrative.
You tell him, George or Jack.
(23:41):
In Between Dreams would solidify Jack Johnson's legacy forever, going
double platinum around the time of Better Together's release and
garnering a Grammy nomination in 2006 for Sitting waiting Wishing
while also buoying the Curious George soundtrack and 2002's On
and On to platinum status in its own right.
Never really concerned with chasing a hit, Johnson's next album,
(24:04):
2007's Sleep Through the Static, would also become a platinum
seller with lead single If I Had Eyes telling a
forlorn tale of the breakup of a long-term relationship. But
fear not, it was not autobiographical. Jack and Kim, who
married in 2000, are still happily married to this day. Unfortunately,
the song was inspired by friends of Johnson's who were divorcing.
(24:29):
In 2009, the happy couple created the Johnson Oh Hana
Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit charity supporting environmental, art, and music
education worldwide.
These days, Johnson is living a simple eco-friendly life with
his last album released in 2022. Music has become more
of a byproduct of life well lived than a primary
(24:51):
concern for him. His most recent tour in support of
the record featured songs from his now 20 plus year career,
but Johnson ended every night's encore by sending the crowd
home happy with an epic singalong of, you guessed it,
Better Together.
Coincidentally, at the time of writing, Jack Johnson did an
interview with CNN's Bill Weir just a couple of weeks
(25:14):
ago to talk about his efforts to make concerts around
the world more environmentally friendly for a documentary that featured
the likes of Billie Eilish and Bonnie Raitt, to name
a few.
Shot at his glorious Hawaiian farm, Jack explained what inspired
him to reduce his own environmental footprint and what he's
doing at home in Hawaii to care for the planet.
(25:35):
Going back to those early shows when you have these
sort of awakenings, you know, it's like everything's great and
it's like wow, what a night.
And then you walk out on the stage after everybody's
gone and you just see a sea of plastic water
bottles and all of a sudden you're at a at
an amphitheater and you look out back and you realize, well,
there's multiple trucks here there's multiple buses this is a footprint,
you know, an environmental footprint that's kind of bigger than
(25:56):
I realized it's all of a sudden it gets here
and it's a little wake up call of OK, what,
how can we do better? What can we do? I
just started looking OK, Willie Nelson is, he's running all
his trucks and buses.
Biodiesel. Let's do that. Neil Young's putting on the bridge
school benefit every year. Let's do something like that in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
While some of my musical heroes would demand bathtubs of
booze or other pleasures in their concert riders, he started
asking for composting stations, locally sourced food, and plastic free
shows until such demands became known among promoters as the
Jack Johnson package.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yes, the Cocoa farm, a word that means to help
with joy, is Johnson's home base, a place where he
and Kim teach kids about caring for the planet and
living sustainably. You might even say better together.
I'm Ruby Carr. Thanks for listening to another episode of Encore. Listen,
they won't always be this wholesome, but they'll always be fun.
(26:52):
New episodes every Thursday. Encore is an iHeart Radio Canada podcast.
Download the free iHeart Radio app and subscribe. Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming.
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