The “mellow man” thing, Malloy said, is an incomplete picture.
“He’s a sweet guy to everyone, and he’s very caring,” Malloy said, “but I will say the big, big surprise is that he’s easily the most competitive person I know.”
Out in the ocean, in the surfing lineup fighting for a wave, for a magazine cover image, Johnson could be relentless. “You have to be kind of gnarly,” he said. “And that’s in Jack.”
Flip-flops onstage
Backstage in Saratoga, Johnson and his bandmates warmed up in a rehearsal room dotted with black and white photos of Pete Seeger, Tina Turner, and other stars who had graced the venue. Zach Gill, his piano player and old college friend, offered up hot toddies. Johnson eventually took the stage in the same thing he’d been wearing all day: a mustard yellow tee, faded jeans, and flip-flops.
Fans bopped and swayed and threw their arms around each other. When Johnson arrived at his hit “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing,” he instead sang a few bars of Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It.” He covered Sublime’s druggy ’90s anthem “Badfish,” and his guitar sounded, rather pleasingly, like liquid. A cool breeze blew through the Saratoga pines. Suddenly, everyone was Jackmaxxing.
Though the crowd spanned generations, from middle schoolers to Gen-Xers like Johnson, a huge swath of attendees appeared to be in the prime of their teen years. A trio of skater-looking dudes passed a joint. Some guys stood in circles in bright polos while eyeing circles of girls in cowboy boots and denim skirts.
A 16-year-old named Sam wandered the grounds with a couple friends. He’d been listening to Johnson his whole life, he said, and, like several teens interviewed, discovered him through the music he wrote for a “Curious George” reboot. One track for that movie, “Upside Down,” became one of Johnson’s biggest songs.
