Watch Jack Johnson Rock Three Stripped-Down Tunes

This week Jack Johnson scored his third consecutive Number One album with To the Sea, an "existential chill-out record that feels substantial, at times even edgy, without feeling forced," as Will Hermes writes in his RS review of the disc. As Johnson told Rolling Stone , picking up an electric guitar wasn't too much of a stretch: "In high school, I played in a band that covered Minor Threat, the Descendents, a little bit of Bad Religion." The new LP also features Mellotrons, crickets and a gecko, who makes a cameo on "Anything But the Truth."

The 35-year-old surfer and songwriter recently returned to his beloved acoustic guitar to lay down a few tracks at New York's Sirius XM studios. Click above to watch his performance of To the Sea's "From the Clouds," and check out two older tunes — In Between Dreams' "Banana Pancakes," and Animal Liberation Orchestra's "Girl, I Wanna Lay You Down" from Fly Between Falls here:

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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