About The Artist
"I can't tell you anything but the truth." These words, sung by Jack Johnson in his latest studio album, To The Sea, define the ethos of a man born and raised in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

You could say it was a father's solo sail from California to Hawaii that opened his son's future fate and underpinned it with a personal mythology, but it was Jack's ability to learn his own lessons from life and the sea that birthed his astonishing alchemy of music and poetry.

Truth has found plenty of room to breathe in each of Jack's albums (and in all of his work, from surfing films to his nonprofit, the Kokua Hawaii Foundation), and it comes home to a deeper heart in To The Sea. Here, with his brothers in music - Adam Topol (drums), Merlo Podlewski (bass), and Zach Gill (piano and melodica) - he's on a journey to the center of himself, and to all of us.

It's a transformational crossing, a wide gyre (musically and lyrically) circling home. "You and your heart shouldn't feel so far apart," he sings in the album's opener ... and then:

Road signs were stolen Left here holding this flame Who stole my patience Who stole my way I'm lost I'm too tired to try

Jack is all about closing the distance, bridging the gap between who we are and the invisible stories that have shaped us. But even while his music is about bringing things together, he always seems aware of the larger truth:

You're so sweet to me In a world that's not always fair ... We could watch it from the clouds We can't stop it anyhow It's not ours

It's not ours ... and then there's the realization that all of this is transient, that this moment and this time will vanish from our lives as surely as our ancestors:

I don't want you to know Let's not go to sleep tonight It's not that it goes too fast It's just that it goes at all

Out there in the so-called real world, some things are inevitable:

These problems they breathe Their fire is real ... Even when you're asleep They'll be here still Breathing out or in

So the call is to dig deep, and then dig deeper:

Run my dear son We've got to get to the trees And then keep on going all the way ...

We've got to get right down to the sea "Water is the subconscious," says Jack, "and that water for me is the ocean. To get to the sea is being able to dig in and touch things that aren't on the surface. That reference - that `we've got to get to the sea' - is about a father leading his son to try to understand himself."

Inevitably, each of us is here to follow our own path, to discover the inner myths that have unconsciously formed us and framed our journey:

It said, shadows cut across the hero's face He falls from grace until a little bird sang `The truth is never ending we're just here pretending lets all laugh so that we don't cry' ...

Jack's music has a way of winning you over and bringing you back into yourself, which is to say that his music and lyrics have a universality. He's found a language that goes to the heart, borne on music that seems to bridge lost connections. If not exactly explaining, this effect at least points to his worldwide appeal and his way of bringing all sorts of people together. Jack Johnson's music is like something contagious that's also good for you.

So ... there's a myth about a young man who goes to sea, and he sails alone across the greatest ocean. He sails through storms. He catches fish, he learns to navigate by the stars ... he comes to Hawaii ... and he has a son, and the son, too, goes to the sea ... again and again, following and leading ... into the present ... into the very real and unknown.

I can't tell you anything but the truth. What is this place? Who am I? Why did we come here? I don't know. But I don't know that we're meant to know.

Product Description
2010 release, the fifth studio album from the acclaimed singer/songwriter. The album was produced by Robert Carranza, Jack Johnson, and his bandmates Merlo Podlewski, Zach Gill and Adam Topol. To The Sea features guest appearances from the likes of G. Love, and Paula Fuga. The album was recorded at the Mango Tree Studio in Hawaii, and the Solar Powered Plastic Plant in LA using 100% solar power.

1. You And Your Heart
2. No Good With Faces
3. At Or With Me
4. When I Look Up
5. From The Clouds
6. Turn Your Love
7. The Upsetter
8. To The Sea
9. My Little Girl
10. Red Wine, Mistakes, Mythology
11. Pictures Of People Taking Pictures
12. Anything But The Truth
13. Only The Ocean

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003C1QIO6/?tag=imwan-20

Jack Johnson Reveals To The Sea Album Details
'We try to get it live as much as we can,' Johnson tells MTV News of his recording process.

By James Montgomery
Mar 3 2010 4:12 PM EST
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/163311 ... jack.jhtml



Jack Johnson's last album, 2008's Sleep Through the Static, bested the likes of Alicia Keys and Sheryl Crow to debut at #1 on the Billboard albums chart. He then surprised pretty much everyone by staying there for a second week, selling more copies than Amy Winehouse's Back to Black (which had just won Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys) and Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Mitchell Sessions, which had just won Album of the Year. Oh, and then stayed at #1 again the following week too.

The point is, eventually, people are going to have to stop being surprised by Johnson's success. He is, after all, one of the most popular singer/songwriters on the planet (perhaps the most), capable of selling millions of albums, selling out stadiums around the world and staging an annual concert — the Kokua Festival — on his home island of Hawaii. Perhaps the surprise comes from the fact that Johnson is arguably the most down-to-earth musician in the business, shunning the spotlight and donating 100 percent of the proceeds from his tours to charities. Calling him a celebrity just doesn't seem right.

Still, there's a pretty good chance that later this summer, you will begin reading the same stories about Johnson's unlikely success, because that's when he'll release his new album, a deeply personal collection of songs that's almost certain to top the Billboard charts yet again (and stay there for an extended period of time).

"The album is called To the Sea. I guess it's a reference to a father leading his son to the sea, with the water representing the subconscious. So it's about trying to go beneath the surface and understand yourself," Johnson told MTV News on Tuesday. "I have three kids ... so the album is about that. It's both me as a son of my own father and me looking down at my kids. I'm 34, right at this transition of still feeling like a child sometimes, but other times feeling like a father, and finding the father in myself. It's all about those things."

Recorded in just three weeks in Johnson's Mango Tree Studios, Sea is meant to capture the man and his band as they're supposed to be heard: live and loose. It was mainly committed to tape in one room, with minimal use of overdubs, and an increased focus on letting the instruments bleed into one another. It is very much the sound of a band setting up in a room and just playing.

"We don't need much time. Just four guys in the band, we try to get it live as much as we can, keep as much of it with the bleeds in it," Johnson smiled. "Three weeks is about as long as we could spend, because we tend to start overthinking things if we go longer than that. We're a pretty small band, with pretty simple songs."

Sea is scheduled to hit stores June 1, and the first single from the record — a tune called "You and Your Heart" — will debut on radio next month.

"[That song] started off with this guitar riff that I had around for a while, actually had it on the last record, and we liked it, but we didn't have any words for it yet, nothing came natural, so I didn't use it," Johnson said. "And at some point, some of the books I was reading started leading me in a certain direction, kind of like this broken king character. That area you get in sometimes, where you stop trusting your heart and you start thinking too much about logic and this and that. So it's basically about that separation that can happen between the self and the heart and trying to trust your heart again."

Other standouts include the title track (which Johnson said was written "in, like, 10 or 15 minutes") and "At or With Me," a buzzing, punching number recorded "in one take, one time." And while the whole idea of working fast and loose isn't exactly a new one, Johnson's reason for doing so might be. After all, he was making it in Oahu.

"You know, the studio doesn't have any windows in it, and it's kind of this closed-off space," he said. "We went in there to work. But it's also the kind of place you want to spend as little time as possible in. You wanna go outside. Or, at least, I did."

Interview video: http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/489122/j ... ngle.jhtml