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Jack Johnson will be performing two shows at Kings Park in November.

Jack Johnson Perth shows: Superstar songwriter heading to Kings Park for two concerts in November

Main Image: Jack Johnson will be performing two shows at Kings Park in November. Credit: Morgan Maasson/supplied

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Jay HannaThe West Australian
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Jack Johnson has performed with an array of superstar musicians over the years, from his good friends Ben Harper and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder to legends such as Willie Nelson and Jackson Browne. But there’s one duet that took place here in Perth that stands out in the Hawaiian singer-songwriter’s memory.

“My band and I have a memory of last time we were in Perth, we were backstage at Kings Park and we had our little practice room and as we were jamming, there was this frog that started making this noise and it was right in rhythm with our band,” Johnson says.

“I stopped singing and we all focused in on this frog and we played for about two minutes and this frog stayed right in time with us. I know it sounds weird but it’s just a fun, fond memory of Perth that my band and I always bring up, like ‘remember that time the frog jammed with us?’.”

Johnson is hoping Kermit might appear for a repeat performance when he returns for a two-night stint at the venue, his very first international shows since the start of the pandemic.

“Maybe if we are fortunate, the frog will be there,” he says.

But with or without his amphibian friend, Johnson is feeling pretty lucky to be finally returning to Australia, a place he holds dear not just for the many memorable shows he has played here over the years but for the many friends he’s made along the way.

Even before breaking into music, Johnson, once a budding professional surfer who went on to make surf films, was already well acquainted with our shores and had a swag of Aussie mates always willing to lend him a board or a place to stay when he was in town.

Johnson’s Australian connections are so strong that he was planning a family holiday to the east coast with his wife Kim and their three children just as the pandemic was kicking off in early 2020.

“Our bags were packed and the morning of the flight was right around that strange time when every day it was becoming exponentially clearer that you better not leave your home,” he says.

“We were holding on to the idea that we were going to go and visit some friends and go to Australia for a little family vacation but, yeah, sure enough, that morning we were like, ‘I think we’d better not go’ and by the next day it was almost even funny that we were considering going because everything changed so quickly. So if we had gone ahead or left earlier we almost certainly would have been locked down in Australia for a while — which wouldn’t have been bad.”

So after a lengthier than usual absence, Johnson is thrilled that the family finally get to return to one of his favourite places to tour.

“We are excited about putting some tour dates on the calendar so we have something to shoot for,” he says.

Jack Johnson
Camera IconJack Johnson has fond memories of his time in Australia. Credit: Morgan Maasson/supplied

Johnson comes armed with his latest record Meet the Moonlight. His eighth studio album and first in five years, it was written and recorded as the pandemic unfolded. With his family home and around him, he found writing the album often started out with a family jam.

“Me and the kids tend to jam a lot,” he says. “We don’t have a TV in our living room but we have a lot of instruments. Whenever you hear someone playing, other people just wander in and we start jamming. That’s how this album started. Once the kids get bored they walk off and I would be sitting there with a guitar and keep working on a song.”

Johnson, who released his first album Bushfire Fairytales in 2001 and has gone on to sell more than 25 million albums worldwide, says he tries not to ruminate on the songwriting process too much.

“I’ve tried to be careful not to get too reflective about how it all works because it feels like magic a little bit, the idea of a song coming together,” he says.

“I tend to start out with these little sparks of songs and I don’t always know where they come from and then once I have that, they tend to sit around, sometimes for a year, or sometimes just for a week or a month. I always have this idea that I am going to write a bunch of songs, they’ll all be finished and then I will go into the studio and make an album, but it’s never happened. I need the deadline to make myself finish original ideas so I usually just have a chorus and maybe a verse or two before I go into the studio.”

On the phone, Johnson is just as chilled out as his image would suggest. He takes a moment to contemplate his answers and takes his time to respond in his laid-back drawl. You can take the man out of Hawaii but you can’t take Hawaii out of the man and Johnson sounds like it’s very possible he’s chatting from a hammock with a coconut drink in hand.

He says the people of Hawaii are quite removed from the political turmoil in other US States but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an impact. As a committed environmentalist and humanitarian, who established his own non-profit public charity Johnson Ohana in 2008 and promotes environmental initiatives at all his shows, Johnson admits the political and social upheaval of the past few years made a mark on Meet the Moonlight, particularly on album opener Open Mind and Calm Down, both of which explore issues of empathy, acceptance and kindness.

“Hawaii is its own place, we are isolated out in the ocean and it’s got a culture that’s been here for a really long time,” he says. “There’s a lot of things that I’ve learned and my way of seeing the world is from growing up here in Hawaii. We are a State but at the same time we’ve got our own outlook on things as well.

Jack Johnson
Camera IconJohnson says his kids are at an age where they are taking an interest in the world around them. Credit: Morgan Maasson/supplied

“But it’s been a strange time and it’s definitely influenced the songwriting process for me just seeing friendships sometimes become divided over issues that felt a little out of our control. I tried to remind myself to keep an open mind and the song Open Mind is a bit of a meditation on that. It felt like a lot of people were showing up for conversations already with their minds made up these past few years and I would try to do my best to tell myself, ‘OK, you don’t necessarily agree with this person on these things but let’s just try to hear them out and see why they feel that way at least’.

“Being so interconnected now with social media and different ways of communicating, people feel for better or worse like they need to share their opinions on things. So it was interesting to watch sometimes, friendships falling apart but also beautiful positive things of people making sure everyone in their community had enough food.

“That became a worrisome aspect here in Hawaii at the beginning of the pandemic because so much of our food is shipped in, unfortunately, due to the history of agriculture in Hawaii so there was a big push to make sure that the distribution and ways of getting food to everybody were solid.

“It was really nice to see the community come together to make sure everybody had food. That was a beautiful story. Instead of just dwelling on the negative, you saw people coming together and helping each other.”

Johnson says his kids are at an age where they are also taking an interest in what is going on in the world around them and are engaged in meaningful conversations.

I love coming to Australia and playing there. Two nights at Kings Park will be great.

“They definitely keep me informed a lot and we have a lot of conversations around the table about things,” he says. “I definitely see it with this generation. They are so connected all the time. You can find the negatives in the technology but at the same time there’s a lot of positives, people communicate and rally together to try and protest things or gather or those types of things.”

Like many of us, he says there were aspects of the past few years he enjoyed, from the pause on the damage inflicted on the environment to spending time at home with family and loved ones.

“It was a time to play a lot of board games and be around my kids and watch them grow up,” he says. “The family comes on the road with me a bit but that’s different to being at home and grounded.”

But now that the borders are open and travel is back on the agenda he can’t wait to get back to see those friends he was meant to visit more than two years ago, and play a whole host of shows kicking off with two performances at Kings Park in November. The first show has sold out but a second was recently announced.

“I can’t wait,” he says. “I love coming to Australia and playing there. Two nights at Kings Park will be great. And the other great thing about coming there is that I have so many friends with boards that I don’t need to bring my own.”

Jack Johnson plays Kings Park on November 29 (sold out) and 30. Tickets from Livenation.com.au. Meet the Moonlight is out now.