Jack Johnson and Zach Gill perform in the media trailer on Friday- photo by John Patrick Gatta

On Thursday night Jack Johnson made a surprise guest appearance with ALO during their set. While he thought that would be the totality of his performance experience at Bonnaroo, he stepped in for Mumford & Sons’ headlining slot on Saturday evening at the Which Stage (as the group was forced to cancel their appearance after bassist Ted Dwane’s emergency surgery to treat a blood clot on his brain). The Beacon caught up with Jack early on Friday afternoon and he shared his thoughts on Bonnaroos present and past as well as his forthcoming album, From Here To Now To You which is set for release on September 17 via Brushfire Records.

On his first Bonnaroo appearance back in 2002:

That was a crazy time for us, everything was growing so fast. I remember looking out from the stage at all the people going, “Well, now we’ve got to do this right now.” It was crazy. We walked out and the crowd here is just so warm and so welcoming. It’s such a music-loving crowd. You feel that right off the bat. You can really feel the difference when you have a crowd like that. I think the fact that people travel here they’re committing to the whole weekend so there are a lot of those music fans who are really here for the music and not just the social scene. I love it.

The decision to perform on Saturday night:

Heading out here I didn’t know I was getting a headlining slot, it was just excited to come to Bonnaroo and get to watch Paul McCartney and Tom Petty and Mumford & Sons. We were driving out here- we were on the way to Bonnaroo on the freeway and we got a phone call from the organizers letting us know that Mumford wasn’t going to be able to make it and asking if there’s any chance that we could do that slot on Saturday. So I had to call and check with the band to see if they could even make it and they’re all flying straight out.

It’s funny because we said yes real quick being that I was on the road to Bonnaroo with all these great memories of all the different times we played here, all these different experiences. And then the reality kicked in that I hadn’t played any of these songs in a year. We recorded an album but we have a lot of lyrics, a lot of chords to go over in the next day.

But no matter, it’s going to be fun. This is one of two places that I would have done this. The Byron Bay Roots and Music Festival and Boannroo. Those are both festivals that have a similar feel to me where people are so excited to be there, all the bands backstage. Nobody’s in a hurry to get out of there and people usually stick around when they’re done. So being that it was Bonnaroo made me say yes pretty quick.

Johnson with ALO at Bonnaroo – photo by Dean Budnick

*He joined ALO on stage Thursday night, and exclaimed, “I’ve been fans of theirs since I was 18.” *

When I first moved into the dorms at UC Santa Barbara I met a couple guys who were living in my hall and we started jamming out a little bit trying to form a band. We were in this infant stage of forming our sound and then we saw ALO play and they were just so tight as a band already. It gave us something to shoot for. It was inspiring, it was kind of competitive. Before we knew them, we watched them play and it was, “Whoa these guys are really tight.” Then we found out they’d been playing together since seventh grade, so they’d already been playing together 6 years by the time we saw them. We quickly became friends we started doing a lot of gigs together, collaborating quite a bit, so we’ve kind of grown up together.

Zach [Gill from ALO who is also in Johnson’s band] and I met when we were both just out of our houses going to college and we really have helped each other write songs, just bouncing ideas off of each other doing a lot of little home recordings that people have never heard.

On his forthcoming album, From Here To Now To You.

We have the same producer who did our second and third record, Mario Caldato, Jr., so it definitely took us back to the process of doing On and On and In Between Dreams. Pretty stripped down. With the last couple albums we produced as band, I tended to get stuck, “Oh, I can get a better vocal take,” over and over. It was nice to have somebody to say, " It’s nice. Move on, you can come back to it later if you want." And sure enough a few days later you forget what you were even tripping on that you didn’t like. So Mario helped keep things moving.

There’s also a different tuning on his record. This one guitar that I have around is open tuning on a nylon string guitar. It’s different tuning than what I’ve done. That has just changed the sound in subtle way. I wrote the songs on this tuning and what happens when you’re in a different tuning is you don’t realize you’re playing G C or D. I’ve also found new melodies on that new tuning that have brought out new songs.