Jack Johnson

23:49So that's the deeper level of it, the solitude you get. And if the waves are really good, you get really pulled into it where it's just like a craft you've worked out your whole life that you don't have to think about anymore. Like sometimes I'll see a friend riding a wave as I'm paddling out and the thing I'll see them do just seems like magic. You know, they'll get totally upside down as they're hitting the lip of the wave and then coming back down and I'll think, how in the world they just do that? And then on your next ride without thinking, you're doing the same thing, but it's all muscle memory and it's all just this flow that you get in.

24:24And so that's a really beautiful state to get into is to do something that feels almost like a magic trick like something you shouldn't be able to do but also in your body's doing it. Yeah. Does that ever come up when you're riding? Riding. Sometimes I guess there's two parts of riding for me is like, I like what Joseph Campbell talks about about how a myth is a dream for a culture and a dream is an individual myth, but they're kind of the same thing. And so for me, there's two parts to most songs. Not all, there's no rules, but like I'll find, and I'll start a song and I have no idea what it's about usually.

25:03And there's usually one line and that's kind of the myth part where it's, I don't know where it came from and it's either something I've heard somebody say or maybe it's just echoing in my mind. And it tends to end up being the chorus and for some reason, and I'll get a lot of those. I don't stick with all of them. There might be 30 and one of them will work, but it's like the song structure becomes sort of asking myself, why is this sticking around in my mind and why is it keep echoing all day long? And then the verses become trying to answer that question in a way. And so part of it, I'm not sure where it comes from and it's kind of that thing.

25:38And the other part is very intentional and I'll sit down and try to answer the question. And it's usually later at night when it's quiet around the house and I'll pick up an acoustic guitar. And intentionally write and think and struggle. And that part's more work. Yeah, that's the craft part. The craft part, but it's like, and you need some of that, I think, you know, but some of the ones that really connect, especially like just kind of goofy love songs, so I'll come really quick. So some of my songs, like I have songs that are, I literally have one song that was a reaction to my wife, not responding when I'd stayed up all night writing this other song.

26:13So I played her a bit of it and she kind of didn't seem to even care. And she has to hear them all the time. I kind of joke because she's really sweet and she's like my editor. She gives me feedback all the time on the songs. But this one morning she didn't respond. And I wrote this other one that was just joking. And I said, you hardly even notice, when I try to show you, the song is meant to keep you from doing what you're supposed to. And then she turned around and she's like, that's a good one though. And then it was so I was like, all right. So I kind of just worked on that for a minute. And I have that part of it.

26:46I have songs I write at two in the morning. And you know, I'm thinking about the way to the world. And then there's other songs that are just to make my wife laugh. And they're both valid. They're both music. And it's they're both parts of what I like to do. So anyway, some songs like that, they come really quick. And they're not meant to carry much weight.

27:07Have you always written songs the same way? Is the process always been the same? You know, I think it's interesting after you do eight or nine records. And then you're able to sort of look at them and analyze it the process. I think when I did my first album, and I think this is a case for most people, I had like 20 songs to choose from, because I've been writing for, you know, I guess I'd only been writing for a few years, but it was just flowing out. And there was all these ideas. And then, see, you choose 12 of those. And when I did my second record, there was already kind of seven things floating around and I kind of built off of that.

27:42I think after I got my third album done, that was the first time where I was like, well, I have no songs. Like, no, it's, if I do a fourth, I'm gonna have to start from scratch and start writing. And then the process became, I became more aware of the process. Before that, I didn't even think about it, it was just always happening. And then I started thinking a little bit, like inhaling and exhaling. It's like you can't constantly exhale. You have to inhale. And so, you know, you hear terms like when people would say things like writer's block, I think the very first time I didn't have any songs, I kind of like consider that idea, which I think is almost old naive is like, oh, do I have writers block?

28:21But all I was, I had to realize, I was just, I had to inhale for a while. I had to take the source back in. You know, I had to just read books and experience life and not even, sometimes I don't pick up a guitar for months. And I think when that used to happen, I almost felt guilty. Like, oh, should I be practicing or something? You know, but now I kind of enjoy the process when I know, oh, it's time to inhale. And then find like a little melody, and I'll either record that on my phone these days or back, I used to have a little four track recorders and I'd get the ideas down on those. And those are all floating around.

28:56And then at some point, my wife usually kind of helps me and she seems like you have an album, worth of ideas, you know, around now. And so then we kind of sit down and intentionally make a list. And we don't have names for him yet, but I got a, we'll call this one this. So she really helps me a lot. And she was actually, since we were 18 years old, we've known each other. And she saw me struggling on my very first ones and trying to do it. And so it's always been a fun process for us to, when all the potentials left in the song, you know, it's just the beginning. Yeah, it's so cool that you had, you found this partner in life and in work and in everything.

29:32Oh, yeah, beautiful. Now it was really lucky. I mean, both of us were lucky. We've been partners through it all. Do you write songs with the idea of I'm writing songs because I'm gonna make an album? Or do you write songs just because you write songs? Yes. I think just the right songs, but I think it'll also be foolish to not identify that I know that there's that potential. But I do like to convince myself, and I think I'm pretty good at doing it that I might not do another album. And I won't do another album until I know I have enough songs that feel like an album, and then I'll start thinking about the side of actually putting it out.

30:10We've always, I've been lucky since the very first album, I had somebody give me the advice of just sign a one record deal. In fact, then I remember thinking, why seems like I'd wanna make a lot of these things, right? And they were really adamant that that was the one thing they wanted me to do. And so I got lucky because that ended up being a really good thing in my case, because we've always done one record deals through the whole thing. And mostly for that thing of not feeling like I need to write for a upcoming album. Every time I've finished, I've told myself, that might be the last one.

30:42It's not like a dramatic thing. It's just like, I'm only gonna make one if I have enough stuff around. And the beauty of that is you don't feel any pressure. Yeah, no pressure. Which allows the work to be that much better. If you're under the gun, you're gonna make concessions that you wouldn't make if you're free. Yeah, definitely. I do need to set a deadline at some point, but it's only when I know there's enough potential and all these ideas that I've made a list of. And I know that there's something that you really know there's an album in there. There's an album in there. You just have to refine it and finish it.

31:13But I won't finish it until I say, okay, the album's gonna come out on this day and then we go backwards. Okay, that means I gotta turn in the mixes this one. This is usually like two years or a year before. And so I'll know, okay, we're gonna record in the fall. And we usually record for like kind of off and off. We'll do like a few weeks and take a break in a few weeks. And it might take two months for the recording process, but I still will give myself another month. If I don't like anything we did, that we could go back in and start over. And I'll kind of do all that backtracking, but I need all those ideas to be able to commit to that deadline.

31:48Over the course of eight or nine albums, how much has the recording process changed? Not a whole lot. I still recorded my garage. The very first album we did it a place called Grandmaster in LA, did it with JP Pluñe, who was working with Ben Harper and he was his manager and producer at the time. And JP was a fan of our surf movies. So he used to come in there and sit in the editing bay with us. And my friend Emmett Maloy, who co -manages me, my wife and my friend Emmett are my managers. And back then I didn't need a manager. He was just my friend. And he, uh, and he's a surf film maker as well.

32:23Yeah, so he was the editor on the films. I was the cinematographer and our friend Chris Maloy on Thicker than Water. He was basically the main producer. He kind of like got the trips together, got the surfers, figured out how we're gonna do it all. And he would, I would load the camera for him sometimes too and he would get some great water shots as well. So we made those Thicker than Water and September sessions. I made with Kelly Slater. As one of the producers kind of pulling it together and Emmett again was the editor. So Emmett handed JP a cassette tape. He was kind of managing for me back then.

32:57He was just an ambitious friend that saw the potential on it all, you know, and when I say potential, I just mean that he liked sharing my stuff. He was always sweet about being. Have you heard this? This is really cool, you know. He had passed it along. And so JP heard it and he actually called me and said, hey, I think you could actually make an album, you know. And it was one of the first people that even put that idea of really this could be more than just my four track recordings. I hadn't really even thought about it. And so I got to go on the studio. I think we went in for six days for the first album and recorded for six days and then mixed for another week or something and it was done.

33:37And that was the only record I did that wasn't in my garage. So once we, that album kind of went crazy for us, you know, compared to what I thought it was going to do, it ended up being a big album. Did you really been playing live before recording that album? I've been playing live, but just in a few clubs in between San Diego and Santa Barbara. It was called the Mint and LA. We used to play there. I was in one spot we kind of come back to. And during that time, it started getting more and more crowded. At first it was mostly Emmett's family. He had so much family in LA and he would just bring them all down.

34:11And I think when people would show up, they'd feel like, oh, this is happening. Look at all these people, you know. Kind of had that little lucky thing happen. And so then at some point that started selling out. And I was around the same time. We had one song off of our surf film called F Stop Blues that I'd written. It became kind of like a song the surfers started knowing from the surf film. And it was funny to think it was a real slow, peaceful song. But that was the most requested song at our shows at first because they didn't know any other ones. So that, I guess, before we went on tour of Ben Harper, when the first album came out and then Ben invited us to go on tour with him, I had only played small little clubs between Santa Barbara and San Diego.

34:51And I remember telling Ben, I don't think I'm really ready to do a real tour. And he was so sweet. He's always been like an older brother who was like, nobody's ever ready. And the thing is, is I get to choose. And you're like, let's do this. Come be fun, man. And so he brought me out. And it was, I can remember he's so nervous. I mean, I felt like I was going to pass out for a walk on stage for those first shows. But he was always, so his audience was kind of amazing. I got really lucky because he had a real, an audience who was really listening to music and really thoughtful and kind. And so they would, even the first shows, there was a lot of people there.

35:23It wasn't packed. And then it was kind of the beginning of when people could communicate on the internet too. I think it was mostly like on a website, they'd go to a chat room, you know, people could talk. But somehow during that first tour, when people started saying you should show up early enough to check the opening act. And by the end of the tour, it started to be pretty much full by the time we play. And what I thought was just going to be one summer getting open for Ben Harper. By the end of it, there was people that started kind of putting themselves in place. And that, you know, offering to be, hey, I could be your booking agent.

35:56Wow. This kind of thing. And it all just kind of fell in real easy. It was a lot of work. And like, it's a fine line between how to explain it in a sense of like, I felt like every step of the way just kept moving forward in a really easy way. But there was a lot of half four clubs in the beginning. And there was a lot of like, driving ourselves through the night. And like, having decided like, hey, we're really going to go for this, you know? It was like a mixture of kind of following this natural wave, but also working really hard. And like showing up in every town and doing an end -store and visiting the radio station and doing all these things in the day.

36:28But that all seemed really nice to me. It felt like a way of like the end -stores, you could play music with just the acoustic guitar and have all these people that already had the albums come down and get to meet. And it was really fun at that stage, you know, just to get to meet all these people that were into the music. And it was an exciting time at a lot of work. It was spending a lot of time. I didn't have kids at the time, so I didn't mind at all. It was fun. Oh, how did you meet Ben? Ben was through JP, who was a fan of our surf films, and then JP invited me to a show and I got to meet Ben backstage.

37:02And then that first time I'd met him, as we first met, he sang the melody to one of my songs. You know, like he had been listening to the music earlier in a day and a bloom of mine. I was such a fan, I was such a fan of his music. And the fact that he had heard it and remembered the melody. And he ended up playing a slide guitar on that song. He came into the studio and laid it down. But it was like, it took me a long time to get past being a fan of Ben. And like now when we see each other, it's like an old friend, it's like true. Like all the things he's done for me, I feel like he's an older brother because he's done so much for me.

37:35And he's been so sweet through the whole thing. But at the time, I was just like, every time I'd see him, I'd be kind of star struck for a while. You know, I was like, took me a minute to get past it. But that was the first tour I ever did. And I got to see before they go on stage as a band they'd come together and they would talk about how much they appreciated that people would come to the show and that they were getting to play music for people that night. And that they hope they'd all get home safe. And then there was times I'd be with Ben and the show would be over. And this one time, particularly I remember, he said, hey, come with me.

38:03We're gonna go to this kids house. And he had gotten a letter about this kid who got hit by a car and couldn't come to the show. And he was in like a body cast. And it was midnight. And it was after the show was over, he went to his kids house and Ben went and played a little concert for the kid. You know, this is before everybody had phones and that kind of stuff. It wasn't like he went to do it and then put it on social media. Like nobody ever even knew about it except for the couple of the five people that were with them watching. And it was just seen the way the relationship he had with his fans was really cool.

38:33That was a nice blueprint for me to be on my very first experience with how to do it. You talk about Ben's ritual before going on stage of getting together with the band and it sounds like setting an intention for the show and being grateful. Do you have any rituals that you practice in life? A big hug. It's like the one thing our band always does. We all hug each other right before we go on. One hug each, you know, it's really funny. It's like we've been together for 23 years now as a band, I guess. And same guys, I'm lucky I got, there's three other guys in the band. And we've, the drummer was the first one and we used to do gigs kind of like an acoustic white stripe.

39:13So it was just acoustic guitar and drums and the little clubs. And then the bass player came and then the piano player was an old college friend that we used to be in bands together before I ever really kind of had a shot of doing the music thing back in college. But then he joined the band a few albums in on the keyboards. And so yeah, it's just mostly given a big hug before we go on stage and just, you know, have fun out there kind of thing to each other. There's nothing very intense, but like we can't go on without all giving a quick embrace. You know, like it just happens every goes around hugged each other and we go on.

39:48Because if the day's been busy and this the first time we're seeing each other, which is usually not the case, but there are days where it's like, hey, let's not sound check today because we're in this beautiful spot. Monitors will be fine. Let's just go up there and we'll tweak them on the first couple songs. And everybody wants to go spend time with friends or family. And so sometimes we won't see each other until right when we're about to walk on. But usually we have a little backstage room. 90 % of the time we go back and jam for about an hour before we go on. We're really lucky because the crew is the same thing.

40:16Our crew has been the same people. The guy who mixes my sound, he used to mix it when the clubs were half full. He's been with us the whole time. So he still has the right to be like, oh man, you guys suck tonight. And he knows it. Well, I'll have a laugh and be like, yeah, I know. Or he's a lot of times tells us, hey, that was one of the most beautiful ones I've seen. You guys did great. He's a sweetheart. But he's a kind of like a Han Solo character. He's the reluctant hero. But the crew is really sweet because they always set us up a backstage room. We don't always soundcheck. We're not a real loud band.

40:47And we have a lot of fun sort of sometimes. Like when the mix is a little different, it kind of helps. But then I can just quickly look over and we have all signals about like a tie down or voice up and piano up and that kind of stuff. And we can usually make those changes in the first song or two and it's fine. And in that way, you don't got to beat the venue like in the afternoon. You get to kind of spend the day out in the place you're at. And it's funny how many times it'll be. We're like people meet that day. Then I'll see in the front, you know, and they'll have requested a song and I can put it in the set.

41:17We'll have time to go learn it and stuff. And so I guess the only real ritual we have is like a little jam before we go on usually. And I always tell my kids, my kids travel with us and stuff and they get to see the whole thing go down. And they're all, they love music. And I'm glad they get to see that. I always tell them, hey, the best part of the day is the jam. Like the shows sometimes go great. Sometimes you just got to get through them because they're not, you know, for whatever reason, everyone night can't be the best. But it's like the jam is always good. We always get to have fun in there.

41:44And like sometimes the kids will jump on with us and play something and they get to see the crowds come in and all that part of it is just a byproduct of getting to do something that you love.

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43:31How different are the shows from night to night for you? There can be times, there can be a little groundhogs there, you know, if you have four shows in a row. But in general, I'm really lucky because the guys in the band being they're really good friends, we got a lot of inside jokes. Like somebody will just do one little thing like make a gesture on a piano that we know, like I'll look over at him, he'll be smiling at me and he'll be trying to wake me up sometimes. And then my piano player, he sings a lot. He does a lot of the... Everybody in the band sings and we'll do harmonies and stuff but the piano player does most of the harmonies and he'll take the lead on a few spots and we've known each other since we were 18 years old, born on the same day in 1975.

44:14His name's Zach, my name's Jack. And he knows me almost better than anybody where he can see when I need help carry in the show and he'll do... he'll step it up a notch for me. Or he'll do something to make me laugh. Like there was one show that was going... It was so quiet. And quiet can be good when you want to play the quiet songs but we were kind of trying to put on more of a upbeat set and this crowd just wouldn't do anything. And it was so quiet you hear a pin drop. And at some point it was so quiet that no matter what somebody said, you could hear it and somebody said, I want your babies in the front row.

44:48And I said, I'm not going to give them to you. And I'm glad you think it's funny. Nobody else in the crowd even laughed. And then, but Zach over on the piano, he goes... He goes, Matt's real rump old, still is con vibe around here. You know? Because stealing the babies and stuff. And I couldn't... like the next two or three songs, like I couldn't stop laughing. I couldn't even get my lyrics out because I thought it was the funniest thing I ever heard. And part of the funniest thing is like in class when you get the giggles with your friend... And nobody else thinks what you think is funny. But you can't stop laughing in the awkwardness that you're the only two that think is funny.

45:21So we have that sometimes. And you're on stage. We're on stage. But looking back, it's like... That must amplify it. I imagine. It's one of the shows we talk about the most. So anyways, I'm lucky to have guys like that in a band that if it's the best show I ever have, I feel lucky to share it with close friends that we get to talk about all the time. But if it's the worst show I ever have, I also feel lucky that it's friends that we had this experience. It's like, oh man, can you remember that one or this one or the other? That time this happened. To get the share of that with friends, I feel really lucky for that.

45:50How different are the audiences in different parts of the world? You know, I used to think more... And I used to put that on the audience. But now I realize we can do a lot... Like sometimes it signals that we send that will allow people, or given the chance to get up and dance, or those kind of things. And sometimes you're in a seated venue, and everybody's sitting. And they don't want to block the person in front of them. And so sometimes if you say, hey, either way, but if you want to dance, I'm giving you permission. They're everywhere to get up and dance. Other nights you'll do that, and a couple of people will, and you realize, okay, let's change the set.

46:21It's more of an acoustic night. People just want to kind of chill and listen to lyrics. So we've learned to read crowds better, but I guess it can be... Sometimes places where I remember the show being one way, we get back there in this opposite. You know, it's like the group of individuals that are there that night make the show up really. Is it really different, would you say from night to night? Just the nature of how the crowd reacts. Yes and no. Like if we're playing amp... Like we do a lot of outside ampitheaters. And if there's like a standing pit in the front and then a seated area and a lawn in the back, those can feel pretty similar, because you got your dance and crew up front front.

46:54And then you can like... Sometimes you'll start noticing are people sitting or they stand in the next one. It helps us gauge like which way to go on the set. But Brazil's always like crazy. Brazil's always really fun. And now we know going in there, it's like you put on a party set and it's like they're gonna sing along with you. They're gonna start singing the melodies, even when you're not singing words. They'll start singing like the melody lines and stuff. So you can kind of always guarantee Brazil's gonna be nuts. You know, it's so fun. We love playing there. What was the first music growing up that was your music, not your older brothers' music or not your parents' music, where you felt like this is mine.

47:33Yeah. Fugazi. I remember driving. Gazi's incredible. It's just incredible. I mean, I literally was driving to school and we used to get a radio station on our side of the island. There was two, I think, back then. We'd have K2H, which was the College Station. And then there was Radio Free Hawaii for a while. And I forget which one of those two was on, but I was driving to school. And there was this one zone where the radio would cut out. And it was coming up. But when, when waiting room came on the radio and the first time I heard that song, I pulled the car over because I didn't want to get to this zone where the radio would cut out.

48:08And I sat there and I made sure to listen until they said, because I couldn't believe this sound I was hearing. And it was at that moment that I knew I had to go home and make a band. You know, it was like hearing waiting room. And we were all playing. Me and my best friend, we were playing the two of us. We'd sit around and show each other Jimi Hendrick's songs and like little licks in my bedroom. But it was just two guitars. And he was in the car with me and we were listening. And we're like, all right, who could play drums? You know, like from there, the rest of the car ride was like, we know any bass players.

48:38You know, we had like, and sure enough, like a week later, we had a band. It was one guy we just made play drums. He was kind of trying to learn guitar too. We're like, sorry, your drums, because we already got two guitar players. And then we had a guy who wanted to play bass. We got lucky. And we had pretty much a Fugazis, what got us into it. But then we got really into minor threat. Because we realized it was easier to sound like minor threat. Like we could learn those songs quicker, you know. Like Fugazis was a little complex for us still. But it was something to aspire to be. But the minor threat, we were pretty much a minor threat cover band.

49:10And then we started writing a few originals. Most he was the guy singing. We had all sing backups. But it was a lot of fun. We would practice a lot more than we'd actually play gigs. I think we played four backyards on that graduation and stuff. But it was, that was it. Just that feeling of getting together with the gang and being in a garage and making music. You know, everything. But Fugazis, yeah, Fugazis, the one though. Incredible. The thing that was so lucky about Stumbling on Up Band, it was like it was this energy of friends making music and something that a teenager could do and what you wanted to rock.

49:45Like a tar. But then the lyrics, like hearing those lyrics of like, you are not what you own and those kind of things of that age. And I really informed my songwriting as I started trying to make right songs. It was even though I started getting into other stuff. And it wasn't like I was only listening to punk. It was part of what I liked. But I loved listening like Kat Stevens. And I would sit in my room and try to learn Beatles songs and things like that. But together with the friends, it was that energy. You know, it was punk rock, but we were all wearing board shorts and slippers. You know, it was really funny.

50:17Little scene in Hawaii. That punk rock, ethos, do it yourself, ethos. Seems like your band has had that the whole time as well. You're in the music industry, but you're not really part of it. Yeah. Yeah, I've gotten lucky with that. I think big part of that is the partnership with my wife. And as things would come along, she was always really good. And someone like the early contracts and stuff. Because I didn't want to think about that stuff. Most artists don't. And I was lucky to have somebody who could at least look at it and she would read through and be like, I don't know. If somebody's going to give you that much money upfront, they're also going to want a lot from you.

50:55And so we kind of always had this thing. Like you said, it was really easy to have a partner. Somebody to kind of sit around or take a long walk with and discuss it. And we were really happy. Like it wasn't like we had a dream of what we wanted. Like wanted to be. We already had happiness in our little apartments. Wherever we were living. And we kind of would be like, hey, we don't want much more in this. But we can make this keep going. This is pretty cool. So we had this thing of like not needing the big advances and stuff, but just needing control. You know, so it was really just a thing of flipping all that and being like, all right, like we don't need that.

51:30But here's what we do want. And we would kind of just write in like that one record deal. Yeah. You don't get to see anything and tell us done. You don't get to hear anything and tell us done. And unfortunately, you do kind of need to plan ahead and think of that stuff. Because if you don't, you might like the idea of all that stuff, but contractually you're held to do these other things, you know. Like somebody can come in the studio and say, like, oh, I don't like that. Change this. And so we never had any of that. We just always had control of it all. And so even though it grew to be bigger than I ever thought it would, we maintained that control and sort of the ability to scrap everything if I wasn't like in the direction, you know.

52:05All right. I'm the same with band members, the same with the crew. It always feels like you have your own thing. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, it's a... It feels more homemade. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think it is. And when my wife, my best friend, or my managers, they also, all the choices are always more like what's best for our family and our friendships and things like that. And it's, you know, success is, it's fun when it goes well. It's like, we always used to think about like planting a little garden. And it's like, you plant the seed and you see it can grow. And you kind of water a little bit.

52:37You go play an in store. You visit a radio station. You see if you can go back and play a bigger club in that town. And like those kind of things were fun. I think sometimes people like get turned off from thinking like, oh, I don't want to think of any of the business stuff. But for us, it was all the homemade thing made the business kind of fun. Like we started our own little record label on the second album on. And we were able to sort of look at the business more as a garden and just see if it could grow things and how it would work. So it was always a lot of fun. And just getting us around ourselves with friends.

53:09Like the personality's always had to work on tour, the band, all those kind of things. Like people bringing their own families around and just, yeah, making a fuel homemade. And it was always really important to us. He said earlier when you start a song, you don't know where it comes from. And then there'll be something that you like. Tell me more about that. Trying to think of an example like, I had this, well, sometimes it's just the melody. And then I'll start filling those in. And a lot of times it'll be when I'll start a song with no intention of it being a real song. I have a song on my newest album called Don't Look Now.

53:49And I ended up liking it quite a bit. But in the beginning, it was one of those joke songs. My son, every day, would talk about, there's a rooster and it's living in the tree right outside his bedroom and it'll wake him up really early. And so like a breakfast before he'd be leaving for school, we'd be sitting there and he'd say, hey, dad, think he'd give me a gun. And I'd be like, I'm not going to get you a gun. And he'd be like, all right, well, I got a flying slingshot. I got killed this rooster, you know? And I told him, I was like, yes, up to you. But he's like, you know, if you kill it, you're going to have to deal with the killin' you done.

54:23Like you got to deal with the body and everything. And it became this funny thing where we were talking about this rooster. And I don't know if he really wanted to kill it, or if, because he seemed pretty pissed like every morning, it was waking up really early. So he was probably really thinking about killing it. And then I started thinking about what it means to kill something, even though I was kind of jokling my kid. So I was sitting around later and I had this song and it was like, I know that every morning my son says, someday I'm going to kill that rooster with the gun that you won't give me.

54:51If you kill it, you're going to have to deal with the killin' you done. That was the original idea. And I remember the melody. He words though. Yeah. Great. But those words never made it in the song. Yeah, yeah. But great. Yeah, thanks. Great phrasing too. I do that live now. Sometimes when we play that song, I'll just sing that line in it live. You know, that's fun. So would you say music usually comes before lyrics for you? Usually. I'd say usually, but there's a lot of times that I'll have a line or two, I'll write down somewhere, or that'll be around in my mind. And then I'll try them with melodies.

55:24Like those sometimes come independent. And then I'll think they're good. And I'll try them. And sometimes they work sometimes they don't. It's so much to me about when the melody and the sentiment of the lyrics meet and the chord changes underneath it. It's like I've never, I love the idea of poetry. I've never felt like what I write as poetry. It's like, it doesn't work for me until I hear the combination of the chord change and the melody and the lyrics together. But I do write a lot, like I'll write things, but I never can read it as a poem and then feel like it, then work on its own. It's like I've always thought of it melodically.

55:59I heard last thoughts on Woody Guthrie by Bob Dylan when I was a teenager. And it's a poem he reads out loud at a live concert. It's really sweet. He talks about how they asked him to write a few words about what Woody Guthrie meant to him as Woody Guthrie was dying. And so he said he couldn't just write a few several seven pages. And he's like, I'd like to read it. Now he reads it. And it's so good, the way it stumbles on itself and the lines, you can't tell where the beginnings and the ends are. I just love the way that sounded. And so a lot of times I'll write things that almost feel like that to me and then I'll try them with music later.

56:37But his is like, really good. It's when your head gets twisted or your mind grows numb, you think you're too old, too young, too smart, too dumb. You're lagging behind, you're losing your pace and the slow motion crawl of life's busy race. And it's just the way that it goes on for like five, seven minutes, you know, it's so good. It's all about hope. Like, where do you find hope? Then he gives like a page or two on where you're not going to find hope. And then he starts to discuss him where you can find hope. And how it's different for everyone. Anyways, that was really, I think important for me to hear when I was about 16 of just the lyrical flow.

57:08It gave me the idea of how to not let the one of the measure be, you don't have to end there. It could carry over, you know, and... Freed up your phrase. Yeah, freedom of phrasing quite a bit. Get the point across. Yeah, a lot of, I mean, a lot of hip -hop stuff, too. Like, I love the flow of most deaf and different people than... I think later I started hearing that and a lot of hip -hop. But when I was 16, that Dylan song really was it for me.

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58:58How does it work like you read a new batch of songs? Do you get together in the rehearsal before going into the studio? So the last two albums, I've kind of started on my own, built the tracks, and then some of those I played everything on them, and then some I'll have the band come back in. The first seven albums we did as a band, and so exactly what you said, I'd kind of start writing. We start playing, sometimes I wouldn't be done with lyrics, but we start getting a sound together as a band, and I get recordings, sometimes even finish a third verse. Once we had a recording. Now the last few albums, I've kind of approached them a little different.

59:39Partly circumstances, like during the last few years, there was like a few times where Blake Mills and I got together, and it was just... All the people we'd see were each other, my family, and kind of be pretty isolated during the whole pandemic, and it was like... So we were still being able to make music and work on things, and then some of the tracks I'd like to see how they were, other ones I had the band come in, and we kind of re -did parts. So it could be any different way, but I've done a lot of Blake and I, Blake Mills and I on this last album, started every song, just facing each other, and a lot of times it'd be as I was teaching him the song, or the chord changes, and sometimes he'd give me an idea of like, I'll try this instead.

1:00:20But as we were rehearsing it through, we'd be recording, and then sometimes it's that take where it's the first one that he's kind of learned it, but not too well yet, and we would end up keeping. But we'd always... we'd be committed to those two guitars, because we'd be three feet apart from each other. We'd have a microphone towards both of us, but the bleed between the two, there might be one song on the album where we'd turn his mic off, but you could still hear the ghost of it. But in general, we would start with those two guitars, see if that was enough and then build from there. Sometimes we'd just go in and we would then play like a percussion track, we'd find that we were racing to the instruments, and I feel like Blake and I...

1:01:06It was a learning curve at first, we didn't know each other before we started. We decided to spend a week together and just see if we liked it, before we even told anybody else. I mean, again, my manager is stuff my best friends, my wife, but like... so they all knew, but we didn't talk about any kind of a record or like thing like that. We just said, let's get together for a week, as you happen. And I think we were both admit that we weren't sure after the first week, and then we went home, not because we didn't like each other as people, but I think both of us had a pretty strong idea of how we do things.

1:01:41We both had to sort of bend a little bit. Like, he had a thing of never making a rough mix at the end of the day to listen to, because he didn't want people to hear it before it was ready. And I have a thing where like every day I want a rough mix, and when I'm having dinner with the family or friends over for barbecue, I put it on, and I'll tell everybody, hey, these are all like such close friends, they don't care about my music. These are guys I grew up with, and I'll just say, hey, I'm putting this on for me, don't feel like you got to listen to it. This is just so I know if it works or not in this setting.

1:02:11And I'm used to that and Blake's used to be in like, no, no, like don't make rough mixes too early, take a break from it. And both are totally valid. They're both ways to work. And so we had to kind of like learn when was the right time to bend to each other. And so the same way like on the instruments, it'd be funny to be like, oh, I got this idea for the drums, and I'd run over the drum set, and then he'd be like, how about this? And we were I think in the very beginning that ego was getting the way of being like, I'd have an idea for the bass. He'd have an idea. And then slowly we started being able, and I can remember times where both of us did it.

1:02:43I mean, like, your idea is better. I like that. You know, like, let's go with that. And so once we got to that point where we knew both of us wanted to make the best record we could, and just really listen to the ideas, don't come into it thinking this is my inner that's yours. Yeah. It was great. Then I loved working with them. We have a great relationship and keep in touch now. And so it was a lot of fun. But that's how we built this one, which is the two of us on guitars, and then slowly building percussion or if it needed bass or keys. Those have vocals at that time. We're not you would do them as instrumentals and then overdub vocals.

1:03:15Usually as instrumentals and over the or I'd whisper. So you knew where we're in the song. And then lots of different way. I mean, you know, all those different tricks that you could do is like, sometimes you need a scratch track. So sometimes I would even do one real quiet and just a vocal track that we could play to. There was like we did lots of different approaches. But I'd say most often we kind of got the guitars. How we liked them with me kind of lit to my eyebrows when the change was about to come and then built off of those. And it was so nice though. I guess a lot of times click or no click.

1:03:47No click on this album and we generally haven't done much to click. I think on like our second third album with Mario. We did some click and I was always a learning curve. And there was songs where I can still hear the click when I listen to it now. You know, like where it was holding us back like we wanted to push and I can hear the click pulling us on a few songs. But I don't know if everybody hears it. Like their songs actually are bigger songs for us sometimes. But I feel like that's not our best version. Like now we do a lot better live. I feel like. So I in general, I don't like to click too much.

1:04:20And especially once Blake was great about. He didn't mind if a chorus sped up a few BPMs and things like that. You know, or like. Well, this sounds good. Yeah, he ever sounds good. Exactly. It's good. And so there was something really nice though about having his. We had talked about it before, but he's just an amazing guitar player. And I was one of the things I actually was curious to hear his production ideas, but I knew I loved his guitar playing. And I really just wanted to sit around and get them played music with them and kind of learn his approach to guitar. And so I was my favorite thing is when I would show him a song and then he would.

1:04:55The way he he can shred and all that stuff. He's like somebody who if he wants to, he can just stand out on top. But he has this really supportive way of playing on this album with me where he would give these slight harmony parts to my guitar. And he would just make it feel more musical as we were recording it. There are times where you're recording the song and you have to imagine your mind, the jump part, the bass. And if you're building it in parts and you're not doing it live and starting with guitar, that it can feel a little lonely on that first track you're doing. And so something about starting together with the two guitars, it always just felt.

1:05:29It sounds it already sounds like a record. Yeah, exactly. I remember the first time I heard Blake, I didn't know who he was. I heard a... Someone was playing me a cover song and someone did for some project. And then the guitar solo came. And we hear guitar solos all the time. And I remember stopping and saying, who is that? And it wasn't even like a look at me guitar solo. It was just like the feeling in it was so powerful. Like who played that? And it's like, it's this kid Blake Mills. It was a long time ago. He was a little kid. Yeah, yeah. It's so loud about it is that almost every time we change it to like, he's done things where I'll tell my friends, check this out.

1:06:12And I, Blake, let's play a song. And then he won't do the same thing again. And I'll get frustrated at first because I'll be like, oh, remember that thing you're doing where you're making it sound like a shooting star. But if I open my mind, listen to a new thing he's doing. And it's like, oh, now you're finding something totally new and it's again. And it's like, he's sat in with us live a few times. And he's never repeated what he does. But every time the band's like, oh my god. What do you just do? It's like, again, it's like those magic trick moments. And I know as for him just having talked to him enough that he listens to guitar players, but not a whole lot.

1:06:43He loves other instruments from around the world need try. And it's something I've heard Hendrix talk about is trying to make his guitar sound like other instruments. Yeah, the whole truth is as well. Talk to most of the greats of people who've formed so low. Yeah, they've invented a whole new sound. It's because they're using the guitar as an instrument to be able to try to interpret something else they're hearing. And that's how Blake is. He's like so much fun to play with them. You mentioned Endless Summer before. Is it possible to live an Endless Summer life? In other words, can you spend the whole year traveling around the world going to the best surf spots?

1:07:19Is there always good surf somewhere? Yeah, I know I know guys that do that too. It's well Kelly Slater, a big good example. He hasn't lived in one spot since he was a teenager. You know, he's just like constantly following good waves. Yeah. And that's his whole thing. So it can be done. Yeah, it's just because the storm patterns change around the world. And there's always somewhere great and warm. And so definitely a lot of the the pro tour, I guess does that too. They're following the waves for their good. So it can be done. Where have you surfed in Indonesia? I've surfed all around Sumatra and just like Java and Bali.

1:07:57A lot of different islands kind of all around. How did those islands compare to Hawaii? I've never been to Indonesia. Oh, it's hard to put in the words, but they definitely have their own personalities. Like what happens with a wave a lot of times is how the water draws off of the reef. And sometimes like you see into heady that really exaggerated version where you can see the wave going below sea level off the reef. It's pulling off in it has to do with how fast the wave is traveling when it hits the reef. And generally that happens when you're coming from really deep water to really shallow, really quick.

1:08:34Where somewhere like California or it comes from deep to shallow, really gradually, it's like a big long incline. So the friction of the bottom of the ocean is slowing that wave down. So by the time the wave breaks, it just crumbles over instead of throwing over like it does in Indonesia or Tahiti is kind of the place where you see it the most. Hawaii is probably a little heavier most of the time, but you can find a heavy waves everywhere, but Indonesia is real perfect. It's real. I guess surfers are trying to find the tube, you know, the barrel and that raw hollow wave. It's a more playful version than say Tahiti or Hawaii, which gets real heavy.

1:09:11Like a lot of a lot of energy in the waves. Indonesia is really, the water can be so glassy. Hawaii has trade winds, most of the time the winds blowing side off shore. And it creates that really magnificent spray off the wave, you know, that you see. Whereas Indonesia is less wind and really glassy surface. Yeah, but in each wave has its own personality, you know, and surfers that surf the same wave, you get really used to that personality of that wave and you learn that wave. And that's why you get some surfers and ever change spots that surf their spot every day. It's a luxury to get the travel around and get to try and experience different personalities and waves.

1:09:49Is the goal eventually to get closer and closer to the same wave or is it more fun to experience different places in different waves? I think a little of each, you know, there's always, there's also like when you surf a spot often, you know, you know, the people out there and there's that aspect too, you kind of know where you are in the lineup and which spots are more friendly, which spots are more territorial. There's so many things that go into it. I don't, I think everybody's goals probably different. It's, and I think when you're a kid, you're in your improving every day, you have certain goals.

1:10:23And then when you had a level where maintaining as the goal, you know, maintaining your health, maintaining what you can do on a wave. And then maybe a summer, it's just being able to stand up as the goal, you know, get into your feet. I can remember my dad and his friends at one barbecue when they were getting older, sharing tips on like how to still get to your feet, you know, like some of them were just going out and just riding away on the belly at that point, they were getting too old. It was like, that was the hardest part was getting up to the feet. And so, yeah, surfing, it can be lots of different goals.

1:10:54What's the surfer who had the five sons who were all surfers, did a movie where they traveled around in a bus? Oh, the Pascuits maybe. Pascuits, yeah. I remember towards the end, he would surf on his knees. Yeah, yeah. When he really got over. Right, I remember that. Yeah, as long as you can ride, you know, I mean, really it's just being in the ocean too. I'll get somewhere on tour where there's no waves and just touching the source again, I get in the ocean. I remember, I won't get the quote right, but I remember something that I thought was moving and I kind of wanted to ask you what you meant by it because it struck something to me.

1:11:27But when you stand looking at the ocean, you'll see a clearer reflection of yourself than in front of a mirror. See, there's something about the vast impenetrability of the ocean. We see the beauty of life, the beauty of the life force on the planet. We're part of that. And that's closer to us than anything else. And it's mysterious in the way that we are with ourselves. Yeah, it's impossible to know what's going on inside of ourselves. Yeah, it's so true. I mean, it really struck me because a lot of times I'll be brushing my teeth or something and I'll get a glance. And I don't tend to want to stand there and just look in the mirror.

1:12:09I'll just think like, that's funny. There he is. And I'll kind of like usually walk out and brush my teeth somewhere else and I'll come back. It's but mirrors are funny. I like what Kervana get talks about them to call them leaks in one of his book where it's like a leak to another dimension. But it struck me with what you're talking about because the ocean could be so humbling too. It's like it's so vast. And when the waves get more powerful and you get out there and it's just you and the ocean. And yeah, it's I think that's so true. You really kind of learn yourself whether you're staring at it or in it.

1:12:42I like that saying and it had a lot of mystery to me too, the what she said that quote. I have a song called Only the Ocean. It's about my dad and it's about him and the thing I would see where he was at peace when he'd be in the ocean. The first verse is about him. I think by the say is better as an older song and the first chorus says it's only the ocean and you. And the second chorus it's only the ocean and me it's about passing of time also and just when you find the father and yourself and those kind of things. And it has that idea we talked about earlier when it's when you look around and only horizon.

1:13:18I think it's in this song. What I take away from that is that anything we put on it is a story we put on it. But if you take the story away, it's just rolling. Yeah, that that whole album was my dad had just passed away. So a lot of those songs were me processing. And we had just returned them to the ocean his ashes. And so. Yeah, that was the last song on the album. But it was a lot of the metaphors and thoughts on the album had to do with water in different ways. I'd read Iron John. Robert Blight. Robert Blight, recently and it was good timing for me and just a lot of a lot of the metaphors in that book really resonated with me at the time.

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1:15:35There seems to have always been a connection between music and surfing from Dicdale and the Beach Boys. There always seems to be some connection there. Why do you think that is? I can tell you my experience of the connection is going back to when we'd watch surf films. A lot of times it was us just getting excited for surfing. When it became when we had VHSs, you know, like a pop -a -man after school. We'd usually just fast forward to a part they wanted to see. We'd watch maybe 10 minutes. For me, it was Tom Kern. Most of my friends, if you were regular foot, you wanted to be Tom Kern. If you were goofy foot, you wanted to be Mark O 'Colupo.

1:16:18We'd watch those parts and then we'd go surf. As we were surfing, you would have that in your mind. If there was a song by the touchables, it would be like, Bern, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, while child was called. Mark O 'Colupo, I think, that's maybe the first area I'd ever seen in a movie. He barely gets out of the wave. But he pulls it off, you know, and it's a... So we'd go out surfing and that song would be in my head. And not just in your mind, but like, as I would take off on the wave, I would be er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er. So it's almost like the music was related to that trick.

1:16:56Yeah, the music was related to that trick or the music was related to just the feeling you got when you watched that person surf. And it made you feel like you were doing things that you probably weren't doing. You know, we were probably just wiggling down the line. But in our mind, we were doing aerials. In our mind, we were doing these roundhouse cutbacks, and we'd see current doing it. And it was like an escape. It was, er, yes, when you just said that, or in mind, in me too, it's like a lot of times for me, like, the first place I hear a song, where I am, is when I hear that song, and I think of that experience, or that place.

1:17:30And that might be the meaning for the song. The song might be for the writer, or something totally different. But for me, it might be where I was in a van, with my wife on a road trip listening, and I picture those same things I'm seeing. And even though, like, if I really listen to lyrics, and I about something else, it's like the meaning is in that road trip we were on, you know, if it comes its own thing. And it's, I guess, not too different with the surfing. It's like, I have no idea what the songs were meaning. And I just like, no, the feel was helping me find the rhythm on the wave. And there is a certain rhythm, but you can't put it to a meter, because as the wave change, you need to change your rhythm, to be able to harness the speed from it.

1:18:08So I don't know if that explains it, but I know there was a deep relationship between music in the surf films, and what we were trying to do on the waves. If you look at it all, the sets of waves come in rhythms, and usually they're about 12 seconds apart each wave. And so you can hear a rhythm hitting the shore every 12 seconds, like on a calm night, you know, coming from the ocean. And it changes. Is it a waste 12 seconds? No, that's kind of like the average. It could be 14, 15. It could be eight. It's like the longer it is, usually the cleaner the swell. And when it comes from really far away, and Hawaii, it's like that interval gets longer.

1:18:42And those are the really big ones. So you can hear it too during the night when a new swell starts to hit. And you can tell when there's an old swell that you can hear, and then the new one starts to become faster, the waves are faster, and they overtake those. And so it gives you weird rhythm sometimes in the night when a new swell is coming. So there's a certain rhythm, but it's such a slow rhythm. It's hard to think of it as music, but it's really calming. That's probably also like related to our heartbeat, you know, the fact that we are rhythmic life creatures. And so is the ocean, like it's rhythmic life.

1:19:16There's some relationship there. I think of music as a celebration. And I think in some way surfing seems like a celebration of life. They both have this exuberance and passion in them. And we talked earlier about how beautiful it is watching surf movies. And I can't think of another sport that you could watch for hours. You know, I don't want to watch baseball for hours or basketball for hours. You know, without knowing the story of the game, if you take the story out of it and you're just watching what's happening, I don't know that there's anything else like surfing. You also snowboard. And even that's different because you are moving to the mountains not.

1:19:57Right. Yeah, that's true. There's a big difference. It feels like one continuous drop when you're on a, when you're snowboarding. Yeah, I've tried it a few times. I'm not great at snowboarding, but it's fun. It's a lot more like skimboarding than surfing. Snowboarding because you're using the rail of the snowboard instead of the fins on the bottom. You skimboard on the, like sand slide in when you get on the wet sand. And then you kind of hit the wave. And we do that quite a bit when we were kids. I used to do that when I was kid too. It's really fun. Yeah. We'd spend hours and hours. And you try to like, you slide down and hit the wave and do a front flip or different tricks.

1:20:32You know, it's just a good way to spend time. And you learn a lot in the short break. There's a lot of lessons that kids learn. It's kind of an important place to start when you're real little. Do you ever play festivals or do you only do your own gigs? No, we do festivals. You know, I'm pretty often, you know, we do a little mixture of both. I like festivals for the collaboration with other artists. I love collaborating live. It's really fun. To me, it's like the best part of it is getting to meet people you like their music. And then you get a chance to meet backstage. And you kind of get a sense of who seems like they're willing to collaborate and who's kind of got their, their blinders on just wants to do their thing.

1:21:10And, but at any time we can, we always have our openers. When we're on tour, come up and play a song with us in the night. Just a lot of fun. When you do a collaboration with an artist that you don't know, might you do a cover song? Yeah, depends. Like, usually we'll find, or we used to be that we'd say, like what music do you listen to? And if we both do an artist, you know that song? We find something we all knew. And we'd have sort of like a go -to list of like the covers that we do with people sometimes. And then we start to realize in like, this happened a little more once we got further along that sometimes the openers would know some of our songs.

1:21:47So we'd be able to kind of like, they jump up for one of our tunes. Sometimes what we do now is we'll find, especially if the band has a little time, like we'll listen to some of the music of who's opening, find a song that we like and then do like a mash up where well, if it might just be the rhythm similar, and we can put them together and the keys can change in all that, that doesn't matter. Or it might be a similar key, and we're willing to kind of change the way our songs sounds, to match it with theirs, and go A and B between the songs we've done that a little bit. It's fun. I love when you get just somebody who has either guitar or horn or something, and you can just tell them what key it's in, and they'll come up and lift the song up.

1:22:25So get in a play with somebody like Gary Clark Jr. Or Lucas Nelson. Great. Just really good players, you know, like we love doing that. And sometimes Lucas is a really good friend now. He lives in Hawaii and over the years we've gotten to know each other. So if we're in the same town, he'll jump up and play a bunch of songs with us, you know, and just be part of the band for a little while. And he's great. I saw him do a version of Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground recently at his dad's 80th birthday, and it was just mind blowing. I told him it was like one of the best live moments I'd ever seen.

1:22:55It was so good. It was just him with a guitar singing, and then when it came part for the guitar solo, he did this beautiful solo, and it was just like, he stepped away from the mic, and it was the way his dad, he kind of like honored the way his dad plays solos, and it was wild and beautiful and gypsy, and it was like, and then he came back to the mic and just started singing again. And it was like something. I can't even explain the whole crowd as well. Have you ever seen Willie play love? Oh yeah. A lot of time. Yeah, so incredible. Ridiculous. I love Willie. He's like one of my favorite humans.

1:23:27You know, he's like, it's weird when he get a chance to, you know, just to meet people that inspire you as much as somebody like Willie, Neil Young, like getting to meet those kind of people has been a weird part of my life, like getting to say hello. And then Willie's just always been so welcoming into his family and his world, and living in Hawaii partly, we've done a lot of shows together. He's come and supported my wife and I have a nonprofit, Coco Kuhui Foundation, and he came and played at our Coco Kuhui Festival. And that's the first time Matt Lucas, he was a teenager and you're playing with his dad.

1:24:02And Willie's great. Actually, I have a song about Willie called Willie Gummy Stone and took all my money. It's a true gambling? It's a true story. Yeah, a true story. It is really funny because he saw himself on stage. Like he's so comfortable there, you know, and like we were on stage still, kind of waving to the crowd and doing the final bow at the end of this festival that we did on Maui one time together. And he's like, lean so over, he's like, hey, you want to go to my house, will you poke her? Like while we're still waving her, but he went over there and it was really funny. A lot of friends were with us and Ben Harper was there that night too.

1:24:36And so I wrote this song. I got as approval before I sang it live, but it's a funny song. I know that you're interested in conservation of the ocean. And in all the years that you've been focused on it, what's been the biggest breakthrough that you've seen that can really have impact on cleaning up the ocean? That's a good question. So like one of the things we do a lot, and it's really, it's important to do only to open people's minds to how big the problem is really, but beach cleanups, it's really just putting a bandaid on it because it's plastic, it's coming in and it's only one problem. I mean, there's some, there's lots of problems with what's going on in the planet right now.

1:25:21But if you look at plastic in the ocean, ending up on the shores in Hawaii, it's like one of the things that as a surfer grandpa, Hawaii, you've seen over our lifetime get exponentially worse, where the high tide line is just becoming colorful with bits of plastic. And after going on a expedition, we made a documentary called Smog of the Sea. We were doing this collecting out in the ocean with a trough. And every time we'd put it out, even if we were days away from land, there'd be plastic coming up. And so when you look at that problem and you have these beach cleanups, they're really, you clean that beach up, you come back in a few weeks and it's just full of plastic again.

1:25:59So it's really, the solution is turning the tap off of plastic being produced. And, but you see these conversations start, families come down, people come down, and it's really well -doing that beach clean up that you start talking. And they hear people talking and kind of opens their eyes to what's going on. And then to be able to see products you're using or like just to learn about the fish and industry and the amount of plastic being produced and those kind of things, it's kind of where it's like an aha moment for a lot of people. So it's, I think they're important to do. But I've heard other people say this too, is like, if you're only going to go to the beach for a day, don't make it a beach clean up.

1:26:36The beach clean up should be for people like myself who get to spend so much time down there and have the responsibility. Otherwise, you want to take your kid to enjoy nature. You don't want to like, hit him over the head with the problem. It's like really, the most important thing you can do, I think, is make a kid fall in love with nature. So as they grow old or they'll protect the things that they love and if they love nature, they'll protect it. So kind of through wine with all that, it's like one of the programs we do in Hawaii with is called Plastic Free Hawaii. And it's really about trying to give people the tools to go plastic free.

1:27:06So we go into the schools and talk with the kids. But we also have a storefront now called the Kukuu General Store in Hawaii. And it gives, we have bulk refill in there and reusable water bottles, all these different options. People can kind of go in and just get inspired, little parts of their life they want to change and try to take the plastic out of their daily, day -to -day life. I mean, so that's one part of it. It's like when you talk about the plastic problem, but there's so much with the acidification of the ocean. Also chemicals. Yeah, farming, on land, it's affecting our oceans. So I mean, it's just, there's so many things.

1:27:40So I don't know if I'd be able to point at like the one thing, the thing that my wife and I and our organization in Hawaii is we're doing is focusing on making kids fall in love with nature. And so we're doing farm to school program too. And we have a little farm, like an eight acre farm over in Hollywood, even now, and field trips can come there. And kids just get to have a lot of fun. We have an area that's a natural springs come up to and we've been taking all the invasives out. And work groups come in and we plant the native plants back in. And then you get to see the insects come back into birds.

1:28:13And I think when a kid can see those little bits of hope, even if it's just like you circle an area and say, hey, share there's lots of problems in the world. I'm going to work right here. I'm going to circle this and I'm going to work on this little native wetland. And then to see that like over a span of two years, you can get rid of invasives. You can put natives in. You can see the native dragonflies come back and then the native birds. Planting those little seeds of hope, I think, is really important. Like those are the things that's what I like to do at least. That's what I like to spend my time doing is seeing kids come and get the plant seeds.

1:28:49Have you seen that documentary? I think it's called Biggest Little Farm. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, really inspiring. It's a great story. I like that a lot. Cool, man. Anything else you can think of that would be good for us to talk about? Anything in your notes, you want to check? The notes. My biggest one was the one about the reflection of the water. Oh, yeah. I like that when I heard that in a book. That's cool. There's one really nice thing you do where you stop and you talk about all the senses you're feeling in a book and listening to two birds and whether they're communicating with each other.

1:29:27Again, it just reminded me of the process I went through to write. I wrote a song on this last record. It's the last song on the record. I can't remember the name right now, but it's, I literally woke up early as one of those days for some reason I woke up before the sun rose and I sat outside and I started by playing guitar and I was just having a cup of coffee and then I decided like, oh, it was really quiet at first and I could start hearing the birds. So I put the guitar down and I just kind of listened and the song wrote itself really quick. It was just, it was about the feeling of such a beautiful morning and getting to see the light.

1:30:00I came out and hearing the birds begin to sing and then realize you can't hold on to that moment. You have to let it go. And then even a part about watching, I don't know, a rising, I could see a storm going by and how a storm looks peaceful when you're far from it and you can watch it from afar. And there were some metaphors in there about the storms going on in our world at the time. That's the fun part about songwriting. Sometimes like something come from nowhere like we've been talking about and then being able to sort of find the layers and connect it back, even if it's other songs on the album and be able to think about how those songs relate to each other.

1:30:37And so that was a fun part of your book to listen to as well and to read. Typically when you go into an album project you don't know what it's going to be about. You just start writing songs and then eventually the songs tell you, oh, there's a bigger theme here. Yeah, I've always just sort of like every album has been a collection of what's been on my mind for the last few years. And then there's some times where I'll find a song just doesn't fit and then it gets put there's sometimes this song actually the melody for that same song. I was talking about the last one. I've been trying to work on to an album for like three albums.

1:31:13I had this and I kept thinking it was maybe my favorite one. And I just some reason like there was no words come into it and I kept ring it up and it was funny because I played it for Blake. When he was like, okay, we're getting towards the end here. We have an album, but is there any like other ideas you have or like little things? I feel like there's still so and I played him the song. I was funny because I played the part and he was like, this is the best one you got. Like, where has this been? This is the one and then we ended up working on that song and it was a. I really like how it came out.

1:31:43It was the last song that we did. It was when we were pretty much done. When you're singing, are you thinking about the words you're singing? Yeah, like as I usually if even live, I'll try to put myself back to where I was when I wrote the song. If it's an emotional song and I want to tap into that same feeling I had, I'll try to put myself back to where I was when I could really feel the meaning. Definitely when I'm performing, I'm trying my best in the studio. When you're new, you want to tap into that same emotion you had. Not just be reading words off paper, but feeling it as you're singing it.

1:32:22That one, I lost a really close uncle right before. So I was singing to him, but I was singing to my father who's been gone for a while now. Just like, you can always come home if you can hear me now because sometimes my dad will visit me in my dreams. And I just love it. It really feels like a real visit. I kind of know it is. But I was also singing on a way to my son who just gone off the college. And wanted to him to know he can always come, but he has a place. He has his home. I was singing to a lot of different people that are important to me. And then also singing to the self, which I think is often the case.

1:33:02Whenever the songs are a sort of meditation or an idea, I'm mostly trying to remind myself. The songs are almost like a meditation for me. And so it's a reminder to myself you can come back to this place. You can return to this where you're centered. So I think about that morning, it's a real thing. When you're in a moment, you don't want to pass sometimes. Time can really hurt. And then other times I feel like a pretty good relationship with time. That I'm okay with the passing. So that song in a way for me is just a meditation on being able to let it pass. And let it go. Rather than getting stuck in those moments that feel so good, the curve on it gets said.

1:33:42And I like this a lot is that when you find yourself somewhere really comfortable or nice, just say out loud, if this is a nice, I don't know what it is. And then you kind of let it go. But it's like to at least appreciate those moments where everything's comfortable and you're with people you love. Beautiful. Thank you so much for doing. Yeah, thank you. Great. That's a lot of fun.

1:34:28Thank you.