Song Exploder - Jack Johnson - You Can't Control It

Episode Date: March 28, 2018

Jack Johnson is a grammy-nominated singer-songwriter from Hawaii. He's had four number one albums on the Billboard charts. In September 2017, he released his seventh album, All the Light Above It Too, and in this episode, Jack Johnson breaks down a song about parenting, politics, and the ocean. It’s called "You Can't Control It." songexploder.net/jack-johnson

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hirwe. Jack Johnson is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter from Hawaii. He's had four number one albums on the Billboard charts. In September 2017, he released his seventh album, All the Light Above It Too. And in this episode, Jack Johnson breaks down one of the songs from that album. It's about parenting, politics, and the ocean.

It's called You Can't Control It. I'm Jack Johnson and happy to be here. This song, it started from a little jam that my good friend Zach Gill, that Zach and I had made. He's got this little space in his garage. We go in there sometimes and just jam around, make noises and stuff. And this one day, I jumped on the drums. And he started playing on the keys. And then I added a little bass part to it.

Zach, we're like brothers. He was born on the same day, same year, everything. We've been friends since we're 18. We would get together and stay up all night and get a four track out, write down ideas, and then try to sing them. And I learned a lot from that. He was the first person I ever met where, you know, I felt that comfort to share lyrics with and those kind of things. I love playing the drums. Probably my favorite instrument to play, but I'm pretty limited in my drum beats. But it's just so meditative to sit there and get into a groove.

So we're just goofing around. And I think it was time for dinner. And we're like, don't forget the idea. I just put it down. Yeah, he sent it to me like a month later. He's like, hey, remember this jam? And I was thinking, oh, that's nice. So when I started making the record,

I played it for my friend Robbie that was helping me produce Robbie Lackwitz. And he dug the groove with the first thing that Robbie said when I played it to him was like, oh, that's cool, but we got to get rid of those 90s drums. Sounds like every 90s hit right there. And I was like, no way. I was like, James Brown, funky drummer beat. He's like, nah, not at all. He was like, that's more of the Wonderwall beat.

And so anyways, I was like, all right, whatever. I was a little offended, but not that much. So when we started, I went with like a cross stick on the snare. And instead of trying to use my foot, which is pretty clumsy, I just took the mallet and hit the kick drum with my hand. Just started with the boom. So then I would go with the hi-hat, and it was nice because I could use two hands on it. You know, I could do all these things that I can't do if I'm sitting behind the drums.

We just kept layering it. And then we were kind of both thinking like it needs a little more like an ambience, a little more ethereal kind of a feel. We had this old-school tape machine. Robbie patched it in through the tape. As soon as it came through that machine, I was like, oh, record that. That sounds so cool. And then he started doing those, like, I don't even know what they recall.

We kind of throw it. Every time on the snare, he was, like, cranking it up and, like, throwing it. The guitar part was the next part I added on. I played so much alone that I used to try to fill a lot of the space with my guitar on tracks, all on the acoustic guitar. That's been kind of something nice over the years. It's just starting to realize, like, oh, yeah, guitar doesn't need to be on everything, and I'm pulled it out a little bit.

So this one is cool because it doesn't have any kind of rhythm guitar track. I like the way an acoustic kind of grounds it, you know, and then the electric is that one that has a nice sustain. It's the first time I've worked with Robbie in the studio, and it was fun. Robbie brought his family over, too, so we were on the exact same schedules. Robbie and I would shape sounds and stuff in the day, and then be finished around dinner time.

Sometimes you'd be really excited to get back in there, so we get the kids of bed, like, okay, call me and your kids are down. I'll call you a minor down. And then we'd get back in the studio. A lot of times I would write the words back at home at night because I was thinking about how your environment influences your music, like the noises you hear. I live in Hawaii.

And so for me, it's like I heard a lot of this wave hitting the sand real soft in the summertime. And it's like it happens by every 12 seconds. And it's a pretty relaxing slow sound. So yeah, the ocean's a big part of my kid's life too. Yeah, I have a 13-year-old, 11-year-old and a 7-year-old. And they know the ocean is really powerful. They see it when it's really calm and they can snorkel and it's, you know, very inviting.

And then they see it where there's like days that it's coming up over the bank and underneath our house and like pulling trees down, you know, it's just like a monster that you have to just stay away from. And so they see every side of it. So then I was thinking about trying to explain things to my children sometimes. Things you see on the news, things you're reading books. And you do your best as a father. But every once in a while, I think it's the best thing just to admit. It's like, look, Dad, don't know everything. just little beings out here in the middle of this vast universe that goes on and on and we have no

idea where it ends. And so that's kind of what this song is to me is like a dad telling his kid, I'm going to do my best, but in the end, understand one thing. Like once you drink from this ocean, you can't control it, you know, just life itself. Understand one thing if and when you drink from this vast, Then I got to control it now. Then I added the guitar line that the vocals do in the chorus. There was this one sound Robbie found that I really liked it. It was kind of like, whoo.

It was almost more air than it was a tone, you know. It sounds kind of like watery almost. That's the OP one. It's just a little small keyboard. That's Robbie's little. tool. It's very funny because it always has these strange sounds. Like sometimes he hit me like, like, come on, man, give me something I can relate to.

But once I heard that the first time, I really liked it. It's a really interesting time in our country right now. There's a lot of division and the political climate definitely influenced. Even a song like this. The verses become a little bit about thinking about people who are in charge of things and maybe taking a whole culture into a war. Sometimes you look at these people making those decisions and you think what's wrong with this person?

I don't know. So that's where it began. It's like, did your mom forget to tuck you in? Mom forget to tuck you in. Make you begin a war within your head. One that you could never win. To me, it was like trying to be empathetic with somebody like that since I'm kind of singing to my own children in the song.

I tried to take it all the way back to when they were a child, even though, like, the first instinct is to be like, what a jerk. I mean, it's not going to be empathetic to the point where I, where I pretend to agree with it or anything, but I think it's important to go deeper. It's really about anybody who wants to build any kind of walls that are going to divide us, by race, by culture. I mean, I grew up in Hawaii as a very multicultural place.

Like, I've learned so much, made my life so much richer. So whenever I feel anti-something, I try to, like, quickly catch myself and say, okay, well, if I'm against these ideas, then what ideas am I for, you know? And I try to at least come from this place of, if you're going to try to tear something down, what are you trying to build? Have you actually sung the song to your kids?

Yeah, they've heard it. They've heard all the songs. They are really sweet about letting Dad play the songs around the house a lot to listen to mixes. I'll put them on while they're doing homework and just by the end, it's funny I hear I'm singing the little words. For me, music has always been a very family thing. Even before I had my own kids,

I learned how to play guitar on the front porch and, like, in the living room, where it was always a lot of people around my grandma used to live next door, and she was always at her house. My brother's kids were always around. It was just real natural for me to always kind of write in a way of knowing my grandma's going to hear these songs. My kids are going to hear these songs. I'm going to sing all these songs at my house at some point with everybody around.

Now here's You Can't Control It by Jack Johnson in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Jack Johnson and for links to buy or stream this song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Keish Sheer Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists,

and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. and this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wynrope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live.

Thanks. If there's a sponsor you heard about in this episode that interests you, you can always go to songexplor.net slash sponsors to find all of the current links, offers, and promo codes that are available for songexploder listeners. That's songexploder.net slash sponsors. This episode was produced by me, along with Christian Coons, with help from intern Olivia Wood.

Carlos Laramah creates original illustrations for each episode of the podcast, which you can see on the Song Exploder website or Instagram. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of creative independent podcasts made possible by listeners like you. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. Let me know what you thought of this episode. You can find the show on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder.

You can also leave a review or a rating on Apple Podcasts. My name's Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.