While it was nowhere near Buffett-levels, there were enough of those to go around in Tampa on Friday night when Jack Johnson landed at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre for his first Bay area show in five years. Whether it was an 18-inch margarita, ruby red cocktail in a plastic shaker, Corona tall boy, or plastic pint filled to the brim with beer, the adults in the room came ready to unwind after the workweek—and a few of them brought their kids to the family-friendly gig that felt a lot like a backyard barbecue.
Another thing you need are friends, and the former surfer brought along plenty of those—15,170 through the turnstiles to be exact—all ready to sing along during a 23-song set which stretched across the breadth of the Hawaiian songwriter’s 21-year-old discography.
Clad, per usual, in jeans, flip-flops and a T-shirt (black for this, his third show ever at the venue, with the phrase “Protect What You Love” on the chest), the 47-year-old filmmaker came onto the stage flanked by familiar faces: forever drummer Adam Topol of Culver City Dub Collective, longtime bassist Merlo Podlewski, and former college bandmate Zach Gill on the keys (be they a piano, synth, melodica or even accordion).
Photo by Phil DeSimone
Adam Topol plays MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, Florida on Aug. 19, 2022.
Johnson warmed up quickly, even tapping out some percussion on his guitar at the tail end of “Never Know” from his 2003 album In Between Dreams, but the room’s energy first cut through the balmy Florida night heat when the band launched into a “Flake,” his breakout tune and a staple on local stations of yore like WSSR Star 95.7-FM.
The song—released as a single a full year after the album it comes from hit shelves—arrived with the post-9/11 world we're still living in and peaked at just no. 73 on Billboard’s Hot 100. That didn't keep a gigantic chorus of fans from singing along to it as the last bits of sun set over the old Gary amp.
The choir made its voice heard, loudly and proudly, several times during the two-hour set, including on Grammy-nominated "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing,” “Curious George” soundtrack highlight “Upside Down,” Bruce Lee-inspired “Inaudible Melodies” and another old-school Johnson favorite, “Bubble Toes” where the crowd screamed the songwriter’s unfinished lyric/hook, “La-da-da-da-da-da-da.”
Many of those songs turned into medleys, with covers of Mungo Jerry (“In The Summertime”), Sublime (“Badfish”) and Steve Miller Band (“The Joker”) all peppered in. Even The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” managed to get sandwiched in between a brand new Johnson tune (“Don’t Look Now,” complete with an homage to the Ybor City roosters outside the touring party’s hotel) and his sleeper-fan favorite, nerdy filmmaker song “Shot Reverse Shot.”
Photo by Phil DeSimone
Ziggy Marley plays MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, Florida on Aug. 19, 2022.
But one take on another artist’s work stood out above all the others on Friday. With the help of show opener Ziggy Marley, Johnson performed “High Tide Or Low Tide,” an outtake from The Wailers’ Catch A Fire sessions. The tune, according to legend, was born when Bob overheard his mother praying. To be in the room when the eldest son of Bob, who sounds more like his dad than any of his talented siblings, sang “He needs protection / God, guide and protect us” was spine-tingling, and the moment was not lost on either performer.
Really fun to see, as well, was how Johnson has evolved as a showman.
Laidback to his core Johnson and his dreamboat smile have always had an easy way with his audience. Humble as all get out, he perennially messes up some part of a song at least once a night; this time it was repeating the first line of “Banana Pancakes” and totally blanking when he tried to fulfill a request for From Here to Now to You single “Radiate.” And while he’ll never be Bowie, Jagger or Taylor Swift, Johnson found a new bar trick to connect with fans over when he introduced another new song, “Costume Party,” which features beer bottles on the studio recording.
After a roadie brought out four beer bottles, Johnson attempted to explain how the level of beer in a bottle can change its pitch when you blow into it. He claimed to have performed Led Zeppelin’s take on “Dazed and Confused” on bottles in a green room once. Hilariously, thanks in part to one Corona foaming up unexpectedly, Johnson could not replicate the feat, instead resorting to just blurting out, “oh shit,” through laughter before surrendering, “that’s the worst setup I could possibly do for a song.”
He did, however, proceed to double fist beers in each hand during the beginning of the song, blow some semblance of a melody, then take hold of a red Gibson ES-335 for the rest of the tune.
Clearly, Johnson was having a lot of fun, which was great to see considering how heavy his new album, Meet the Moonlight, can feel at times.
In an interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay ahead of Moonlight's release, Johnson explained how several cuts on the album are him working through “the last few strange years.” Detailing some of the arguments, uncertainty and fragility of the pandemic, he admitted that he had to make a conscious decision “not to lose friends,” over it all, and instead zero in on more empathy and listening than pushing back.
Johnson was admittedly not perfect. But no one ever is, and as evidenced in the set on Friday, we don’t need to be to get by. Especially in the world we’re living in today.
Johnson’s album release schedule has strangely synced up with rough times in U.S. history. Brushfire Fairytales' aforementioned arrival happened in the same year as 9/11. His next album On and On coincided with the tail end of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2005, when In Between Dreams landed, someone threw a grenade at George W. Bush just months before Hurricane Katrina changed New Orleans forever. A full-blown recession was the hallmark of 2008 when Johnson released Sleep Through the Static, and Deepwater Horizon ruined the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the same year he put out To the Sea and played Tampa for the first time.
Hell, the last time Johnson was in town to support his 2017 album All the Light Above It Too, attendees were just a few days removed from a Las Vegas music festival shooting which left 59 concertgoers dead.
So while a few “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper stickers might’ve rubbed a some fans the wrong way in the parking lot, things were much more copacetic inside.
In fact, the only thing really missing from Johnson's backyard barbecue jam session was a campfire. But he managed to bring a little bit of that to the encore anyway by forgetting lyrics, playing his sweet anniversary present song “Do You Remember,” teasing a cover of Metallica’s “One” and reprising his 2017 Tampa performance of Tom Petty's “You Don’t Know How It Feels.”
During the encore-closer “Better Together,” the camera even panned into the crowd and caught a couple in coordinated shirts that said “Better” and “Together.” To the cynic, it all might’ve been too much kitsch and camp, but to Johnson and his fans, it's emblematic of his belief that, “Love is the answer,” to most every question in your heart and mind.
The world these days can sometimes feel like an endless conflict with more dead ends than solutions. But just trying to love each other better? Well, there aren’t a lot of people who won’t drink to that.
Setlist
Hope
If I Had Eyes
One Step Ahead
Flake>In The Summertime (Mungo Jerry)
Taylor
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
I Got You
Upside Down>Badfish (Sublime)
Inaudible Melodies
High Tide Or Low Tide w/Ziggy Marley (Bob Marley and the Wailers)
Bubble Toes>The Joker (Steve Miller Band)
Wasting Time
Costume Party
Breakdown
Don't Look Now>Just Like Heaven (The Cure)>Shot Reverse Shot
Banana Pancakes
Staple It Together
Good People>Rodeo Clowns
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Do You Remember (solo)
Radiate (solo, never happened)>A Pirate Looks at Forty (Jimmy Buffett)
You Don't Know How It Feels (Tom Petty)
Better Together
