It was homecoming weekend across the Southland, and Jack Johnson and his team brought their A-game to the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday for night one of two sold-out shows: “Y’all came ready to sing, right?”
As Tropical Storm Rachel swirled off the coast, Johnson and his band treated L.A. to a collection of the singer-songwriter’s greatest hits for the final shows of his North American tour in support of SURFILMUSIC, an intimate documentary directed by Emmett Malloy chronicling Johnson’s evolution from surfer to filmmaker to musician.
Underneath a balmy, occasionally drizzly night sky, the laid-back 51-year-old delivered two hours of classic hits accompanied by his longtime band — which includes standout sidekick Zach Gill, who met Johnson during their early days at UC Santa Barbara and accompanies the rocker on everything from accordion and harmonica to piano and melodica — as surf footage and family videos provided a beachside backdrop.
For those of us in college when Johnson rose to prominence, it was a nostalgic night for the mostly Gen X crowd, as our own kids are applying to college these days. But middle age looks good on Johnson, and his commitment to the hits delivered a wave of feel-good moments throughout the quasi-beach party.
Johnson dove right in with “Mudfootball (For Moe Lerner),” from his 2001 debut studio album, Brushfire Fairytales, followed by “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing”; “Bubble Toes” (with a respective intro/outro of the Steve Miller Band’s “Keep on Rockin’ Me Baby” and “Take the Money and Run”); “Banana Pancakes,” followed by a soulful cover of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”; “You and Your Heart”; a stripped-down “Breakdown” (with Johnson’s vocals soaring alongside his trademark ukulele); “Upside Down”; “Staple It Together”; “Wasting Time”; “Constellations”; and “Do You Remember.” “Holes to Heaven,” Johnson’s 2003 song about a father-son bonding trip, resonated with the chorus, “And there were so many fewer questions / When stars were still just the holes to heaven.”
Longtime friend Ben Harper joined Johnson onstage for “Flake” and a cover of The Wailers’ “High Tide or Low Tide,” and fellow surfer Kelly Slater surfaced for a cover of Jimmy Buffet’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” just two guys trading verses back and forth late night on a beach.
The encore of “Better Together,” very likely a first-dance wedding song for many in the crowd, was a fitting reminder that, yes, we are.
Opener Hermanos Gutiérrez, a Latin instrumental duo formed in 2015 in Zurich by Ecuadorian-Swiss brothers Alejandro Gutiérrez and Estevan Gutiérrez, ably set the tone with soulful instrumentals, including the sweet slides of lap steel guitar. The brothers accompanied Johnson on the score to SURFILMUSIC — which premiered March 13 at SXSW and is now screening at select theaters nationwide — and joined the singer onstage for a mashup of songs from the soundtrack.