JACK JOHNSON AND FRIENDS – BEST OF KOKUA FESTIVAL LIVE ALBUM OUT APRIL 17
JACK JOHNSON AND FRIENDS - BEST OF KOKUA FESTIVAL
LIVE ALBUM OUT APRIL 17 ALBUM PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT KOKUA HAWAII FOUNDATION Thursday, 23 February 2012 (Toronto, ON) -
Jack Johnson and Friends - Best of Kokua Festival is Johnson’s follow-up to his fifth studio album To The Sea, which debuted at #1 on the Nielsen Soundscan Album Chart when it was released in June 2010.
Culled from six years of his eco-minded music festival, Jack Johnson and Friends - Best of Kokua Festival highlights onstage collaborations with legendary musicians like Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Dave Mathews, Ziggy and Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley and more.
Johnson and his band team up with more than a dozen guest artists to perform both original works and spirited covers of classic songs. The album features several of Johnson’s breezy folk-rock gems, including “Constellations” (with Eddie Vedder), “Mudfootball” (with Ozomatli & G. Love), “Breakdown” (with ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro), and “Better Together” (with Hawaiian singer Paula Fuga).
Elsewhere on Jack Johnson and Friends - Best of Kokua Festival, Johnson joins his guests for stripped-down renditions of their own songs: Taj Mahal offers his bluesy “Further On Down The Road”, Jackson Browne revisits “Take It Easy” with the help of singer/guitarist John Cruz (who also shares his Hawaiian anthem “Island Style”), and the Marley brothers bring the reggae with Ziggy’s “Cry, Cry, Cry” and Damian’s dancehall banger “Welcome to Jamrock”.
Rounding out the record are an eclectic collection of covers, including Bob Marley’s “High Tide or Low Tide” (featuring Ben Harper), Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” (featuring Eddie Vedder) and Jimmy Buffet’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty” (featuring Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds). Willie Nelson, meanwhile, delivers a Harper-assisted take on “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”, the Fred Rose-penned classic he popularized.
Held on Earth Day weekend at Honolulu’s Waikiki Shell since its inception in 2004, the Kokua Festival serves as both a community-centered celebration of music and environmental awareness and as the major fundraiser for the Kokua Hawaii Foundation (a nonprofit organization founded by Johnson and his wife Kim in 2003 to support environmental education in the schools and communities of Hawaii). Like the festival itself, Jack Johnson and Friends - Best of Kokua Festival spotlights artists who share the Kokua Hawaii Foundation’s mission of protecting the planet and cultivating environmental consciousness.
As a leader in low-impact concert production, the Kokua Festival also reduces energy use and minimizes waste through a number of green measures, including:
• a bike valet service
• biodegradable concession-ware
• zero-waste stations for recyclables, compostables, and food waste
• free water refill stations to encourage the use of reusable water bottles
• festival generators and vehicles powered by locally sourced biodiesel
What’s more, the Kokua Festival offsets any carbon emissions by funding clean-energy development in Hawaii.
Jack Johnson and Friends - Best of Kokua Festival track listing:
1. Better Together - Jack Johnson with Paula Fuga
2. Cry, Cry, Cry - Ziggy Marley with Jack Johnson & Paula Fuga
3. A Pirate Looks At Forty - Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds
4. Mudfootball - Jack Johnson with Ozomatli & G. Love
5. Constellations - Jack Johnson with Eddie Vedder & Kawika Kahiapo
6. Take It Easy - Jackson Browne with Jack Johnson & John Cruz
7. Island Style - John Cruz with Jack Johnson & Jackson Browne
8. Breakdown - Jack Johnson with Jake Shimabukuro
9. Further On Down The Road - Taj Mahal with Jack Johnson
10. Welcome To Jamrock - Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley with Jack Johnson & Paula Fuga
11. High Tide or Low Tide - Ben Harper & Jack Johnson
12. Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain - Willie Nelson with Jack Johnson & Ben Harper
13. I Shall Be Released - Jack Johnson, Eddie Vedder, Zach Gill & Friends
About Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson grew up surfing and playing guitar on the North Shore of Oahu. He released his first album Brushfire Fairytales in 2001 and, in the last ten years, has released 5 more albums that have sold over 20 million copies worldwide. With his success, Johnson has always tried to take the spotlight and shine it on issues important to him. In 2003, Jack and his wife Kim founded the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and Kokua Festival to support environmental education in Hawaii's schools and communities. Johnson, his Brushfire Records label, and his touring crew have been leaders in the greening of the music industry in all areas of tour production and album packaging. In 2004, Jack became the 50th member of 1% For The Planet and Johnson's 2005 release of In Between Dreams became the first album to carry the 1% label. In 2008, Jack donated 100% of his Sleep Through the Static tour profits to establish the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, an endowment founded by Jack and Kim Johnson to support environmental, art and music education worldwide. 100% of Jack Johnson's recent To The Sea tour was also donated to charity. These tour profit donations, along with Johnson’s personal charitable activities, has resulted in over $25 million donated to charity since 2001. For more information, visit www.jackjohnsonmusic.com.