Music Club presents...
Jack Johnson

On-air: Saturday 5 January,
2000-2100

In concert and in conversation at the BBC's Radio Theatre in London.

Hawaiian singer-songwriter Jack Johnson has three passions in his life: music, surfing and his family. Raised on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Jack practically began to surf as he began to walk and was constantly seeking out the next best wave. As he hit his teens his tastes began to widen and he started to develop an interest in the guitar.

At eighteen Jack left the islands to study filmmaking at the University of California. After graduating he began a year long adventure around the world with some old surfing friends. The trip resulted in him directing and shooting an acclaimed 16mm surf film ‘Thicker Than Water’, which was hailed as a return to the purist beauty of early surf cinema.

It was during the scoring of the film that Jack found his musical voice. He was already becoming a name amongst the surfing community but after he recorded the song 'Rodeo Clowns', which quickly gained radio airplay, Jack’s reputation as a musician began to spread beyond the surfing fraternity. However despite offers to sign a record deal, Jack chose to ignore the growing attention to his music and instead returned to the South Pacific to make another highly successful surfing film. Finally a bootleg tape fell into the hands of musician Ben Harper, who convinced Jack to finally concentrate on his music.  By 2001 he'd released his first record 'Brushfire Fairytales'.

Six years on and Jack’s career has gone from strength to strength. He’s featured on film soundtracks like Curious George and released three albums of his own, with a fourth one due to be released in 2008.