Jack Johnson surfs the void at Morton

September 3, 2026

Allison Scavo, Brock Wilbur,

Jack Johnson. // photo by Allison Scavo

Jack Johnson
with Lake Street Dive
Morton Amphitheater
Tuesday, September 1

Working at The Pitch encourages writers to step beyond their comfort zones, to explore new parts of this city and culture-at-large that feel foreign, alien, and intriguing. After six years covering concerts here, I can look back at my roster of gig reports and clearly see where my boundaries have been drawn. I am not the guy who covers the concert where a man plays only acoustic guitar. I am certainly not going to be found dead anywhere near a stage where the performers are all wearing sandals—or, gasp, slippers? I live in dark backrooms where neon signs ask patrons to avoid doing cocaine in the bathrooms. I live standing directly in front of a wall of speakers because there’s nowhere else, and frankly there might not even be a stage, so posting up against a Marshall stack is safer for all of us. I live in a strobe light cut by other strobe lights under the crushing pressure of loudness itself from an orgy of dial-up modems run through Electro-Harmonix pedals.

That’s all to say that when I ask my writers to push beyond their comfort zones, I have to do the same. For me, a step away from covering an abrasive, formless din of audio terror is a step into the unknown and unwelcome. For me, stepping outside my comfort zone means stepping into… comfort. And that’s how I find myself at a Jack Johnson show on a balmy summer eve. He’s lost one of his slippers into the crowd and doesn’t really care if it comes back. I’m in shock that I’m watching a Slippers Concert—much more surprised to find that I don’t want it to end.

Jack Johnson isn’t a total musical blind spot for me. I mean, I was in college in the mid-aughts, and there was marijuana around; I know a lot of Jack Johnson songs. Much like the other genre artists of the era, I assumed that if he was touring these days it was some mix of festival sets and cruise ships. Learning he was hitting the road on a concept tour based on a childhood-dream documentary was a collection of words that made the event too intriguing to pass up.

A blistering opening set by Lake Street Dive set a high bar for the evening, but that bar quickly faded into the background when it became clear Johnson wouldn’t be competing in any sort of attention-economy show. Flanked by only his bass player, keyboardist, and drummer, Johnson took more than two hours to do exactly what he wanted, at exactly the pace someone chooses when they have nothing they need to prove.

Johnson breezily blew through a huge set list, topping twenty tracks plus a few interludes, covers, and ditties, but equally offset timing-wise by a few extended jam sessions.

The “SURFILMUSIC” tour is structured around a crossover between the musician’s primary work, his lifelong love of surfing, and that connective tissue of his recently released documentary—of same name. Most of Johnson’s only real banter rotated around stories from the era of his life where he served as a surf film camera guy, and the adventures from that era which begat songs, both famous and forgotten. Again, as much as I’d normally personally bounce off a musician in slippers, so too is the idea of washed-out surf footage with no narrative tissue. But the on-stage promotion for the documentary mostly served as a vibes-only series of crisscrossing the footage itself and the aural freedom the band took to move around it. At no point did Johnson try to promote/sell the other product he was ostensibly promoting, so much as just transition through it and let it wash over you, as much as any other part of the night. Again, it’s strange to watch a sold-out venue of this size, and a rockstar to match, with almost no interest in being a rockstar, or even in pushing you on his other interests. I struggle to imagine any other musician short of Taylor Swift on the precipice of releasing a theatrical feature film about their life, but taking no time or attention to try to remind people to go buy tickets or spread word of mouth to make sure the box office opening wasn’t a disaster. The degree to which the night could be about the man, yet entirely devoid of the man, was part of a multi-pronged zen crashout I was ill-prepared for.

My drive home from the show was spent trying to unpack what it was about this gig that left me struggling to articulate… not just that I’d had a good time, or been impressed by everything Johnson chose to do with his platform, but how to communicate that what I experienced at this show was fully other in a manner foreign to me. You know when you make an active effort to unplug? When your phone goes off, and you close the computer, and go outside? When you’re really making the effort to not think about things and let stress leave you, and return to a factory setting of a human being? For me, it never works—not in the way I hope for. I am still actively thinking about the idea of not thinking about a long list of anxieties and events and people. I can disconnect, but the wires I’ve pulled from the wall are still wires. A live Jack Johnson evening was a genuine experience of disconnect that was somehow hundreds of miles away for the most solitary experience I can craft for myself. If the best I can do as a person stuck in a city with a day job is the equivalent of turning on “airplane mode”, Johnson was the experience of actually chucking the phone into the ocean.

Johnson was very good at music. He performed songs that were well constructed, and he forced nothing. The songs he performed are unsettlingly devoid of negativity. He isn’t just writing songs about being happy, he writes songs about the feeling of having a nice day, every day. I don’t think there’s an artist I listen to who has no lyrics coming from a place of being mad about something, or sad about something, or horny about something. Jack Johnson writes music about being on a beach, and the beach is a metaphor for being on the beach. Occasionally, there is a wave. There is no politics, nor is there an inkling of anything darker, or even a push to change anything about myself or the world around me. It is a series of incredibly well-made scented candles.

SURFILMUSIC from title on down to the crowd around me should’ve been the kind of thing I’d normally mock on some level, but I don’t even have a turnaround take to play about being surprised by what Johnson brought to a live show. The show didn’t matter at all, beyond the fact that he was there and I was there and neither of us were upset about a single thing.

Make of that what you will. 5/5 night. I hope to transcend again sometime soon? Hope the surf treats you well, Jack, and that you find your slippers.

All photos by Allison Scavo

Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson setlist
Do You Remember
Taylor
What’s Love Got To Do With It / Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
Flake / In the Summertime
You and Your Heart
Holes to Heaven
Time Is the Master (John Holt cover)
Inaudible Melodies
Bubble Toes / Take the Money and Run
Wasting Time
Hold On to the Light
September Sessions Improv
Drink the Water
Time to Think / Symbol in My Driveway
F-Stop Blues
You Don’t Know How It Feels (Tom Petty cover with Lake Street Dive)
Upside Down (with Lake Street Dive)
Banana Pancakes / 9 to 5 (Dolly Parton cover)
Roadrunner / Shot Reverse Shot
Tape Deck / Tom Sawyer
I Got You
Staple It Together / Up all Night /
Good People
Happy Birthday Gretchen
Same Girl
Washing Dishes
Home
Angel
Willie Got Me Stoned and Stole All My Money (with “Roll Me Up and Smoke When I Die” intro)
A Pirate Looks at 40 (Jimmy Buffett cover)
Sunsets for Somebody Else
Better Together

Lake Street Dive

Lake Street Dive setlist
Bad Self Portraits
Hypotheticals
Baby, Don’t Leave Me Alone With My Thoughts
Laundy Day Overalls
You’re Never Around
I Want You Back (The Jackson 5 cover)
Linger (The Cranberries cover)
Dance With a Stranger
You’re Still the One (Shania Twain cover)
You Go Down Smooth
Good Kisser

Categories: Music