Just returned from a terrific Jack Johnson concert at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin. It seems I have been waiting a very long time for Jack to leave his home in Hawaii and tour on the mainland. I guess I missed a tour 2 or 3 years so I vowed I wasn't going to miss this one. My daughter Annie and I picked up my sister Judi, who lives in northern Illinois not far from the Wisconsin border and we made the hour trip up to Alpine Valley. Thunderstorms had been predicted but happily the weatherman was wrong and we had a very pleasant day.
Because of a very confusing website for this venue as well as out-of-date seating charts, my daughter had accidentally bought us fron floor tickets (100 level seats). Well, it turned out that the entire front floor area seats had been removed for this show, making a large standing room only "Pit" area. (A guy at the show told me this had been at Jack's request to allow people in front room to dance!). I knew my achey old knees couldn't stand for 3 hours so I immediately called the box office to see if we could exchange our tickets for real seats further away from the stage. No such luck. It was also going to be difficult if not impossible to re-sell our tickets because Jack's "Green" concert was using "paperless tickets" where you have to scan the credit card that you bought the tickets with to be admitted to the venue. I guess I sounded distressed enough that Alpine Valley finally took pity on me and said they would seat us in the handicapped region. I'm so thankful that they did this since, as we people-watched, we saw much younger folks than I having trouble standing through the show, seeking out anything that they could lean against or perch upon.
Our seats were a little off to the side but otherwise just fine. Two opening acts (ALO and G Love were fun but I was impatient to see Jack Johnson! His performance was everything I had hoped for - a great mix of his old and his new music, music you can't sit still to (the pit people DID take advantage of the room to dance but no matter where you sat, you had to jive to the beat. Jack is so mellow, so creative in his lyrics, so unique in his rhythms - I don't know how you could help but love his performance. And although this may have looked like a diverse, summer festival audience, you could tell from the loud singing of even his newest songs that these were Jack Johnson devotees. The sound of that unity, that Jack-love gave me chills several times during the night.
Jack occasionally chatted with the audience and interacted with the fans at stage-edge. At one point he gave (or actually loaned out) ear-protective head sets for 2 of the little tikes in the audience, but asked that they be returned because they were actually his kids' headsets!
Most of the video or graphic backgrounds on the big screen were attractive and artsy or what might have been window views as one drove the coastal highway around Oahu or one of the other Hawaiian islands. Only once or twice during the show did the big screen show Jack performing or close-ups of his guitar playing - I kind of missed those closeup views.
One one song Jack brought out the native Hawaiian woman songwriter to accompany him, on on the last few songs the guys from ALO and G Love joined Jack.
A Couple Favorite Older Songs:
A Couple New Ones:
Jack surprised with The Joker - I wasn't expecting any cover songs!
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