Jack Johnson returned to Tampa for his first Bay area show in seven years. This time it was in support of a new album, All the Light Above It Too, which was released less than a month ago. A large crowd that felt larger than the anticipated 14,000 got to take in a set where Johnson & co. worked in covers of songs by Tom Petty, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett and more. Our reviewer described part of the show like this:
And while “Staple It Together,” “If I Had Eyes” and “No Other Way” unfolded into medleys that included covers of Led Zeppelin, Sublime and Jane’s Addiction, big cheers came early in the set when Johnson flipped “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” into “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty, the Gainesville rock icon who, in the last 36 hours, managed to die twice (once by news headlines and later in the day by an announcement from family). The Petty worship was especially poignant on a cover of “You Don’t Know It Feels” from Petty’s carefree 1994 album, Wildflowers. The song features a pre-chorus (“…let me get to the point/let's roll another joint/And turn the radio loud…”) as freewheeling as the song’s harmonica parts, but the rest of it is a rock and roll reminder that biological clocks really do tick at an alarmingly fast rate that nobody should ever take that for granted.
Read the rest of our review and see photos from the show here. Listen to a playlist featuring songs from the show below. Download it via Spotify.
Related Stories
Jack Johnson’s summer tour comes to Tampa next year
This article appears in Oct 5-12, 2017.