The feel of surfing isn't easily translated into music. How can anyone capture the rhythm of the sea? The focus that comes when you're riding a wave?
If you're someone like surf musician Jack Johnson, or his buddy Donavon Frankenreiter (who performs two shows at the Belly Up this week), you make songs with an easy, breezy vibe. Songs with gentle guitars and whispery vocals that make you feel as if you're perpetually wearing flip-flops and sipping piña coladas by the sea.
Over the last few years, real-life surfers Johnson and Frankenreiter have created a new sound of surf rock – a sound that's less hyper than The Surfari's “Wipeout” and a little more groovy than those early Beach Boys hits.
But there are plenty of musicians, including many from San Diego, whose passion for the ocean isn't quite as obvious as either Johnson or Frankenreiter.
Musicians like Alex Woodard, Jon Foreman, Sean Watkins and Tristan Prettyman surf every chance they get. Their music may not be directly tied to the ocean, but what they get from surfing helps them when they sit down to create.
Alex Woodard learned how to surf when he was growing up in Orange County. Now, there are surfboards all over his Encinitas home, including a heavy longboard his dad received as a gift for sweeping up at a surf shop.
But to listen to Woodard's Americana you'd never know he has a passion for surfing.
“I'm not one of those guys who feels the freedom of the ocean and then writes about it,” he said. “When I'm sitting out there in the water, my mind is not on anything, it's completely empty.”
Woodard said the quiet time in the ocean allows him to clear his thoughts and completely focus on songwriting when he gets back home. He recently released a self-titled album filled with tunes about non-surfy things, like lonely nights in broken Chevrolets and broken hearts in Memphis.
That may explain why the musician is better known in the Southeast than he is at home, with his song “Halfway” climbing the country radio charts.
But if surfing has had any influence on his music career, Woodard explained, it's in the friends he's made:
“There's definitely a community out there. I've forged great relationships from surfing.”
Those relationships include Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek. Their friendship has sparked an upcoming project where they create songs based on people's actual life stories.
“We don't have formal business talks or anything,” Woodard said. “We have meetings on the water, where ideas form more organically."
