The Surfer's Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick

From Kamakura, Japan, Takuji Masuda has been a progenitor of surf culture since the 1980s. After traveling the surfing world and competing professionally with the Oxbow Longboard team, whose members included Joel Tudor, Duane Desoto, and others, Masuda pursued an interest in storytelling and cultural production. In the 1990s, through his reverence of surf and skate magazines and inspiration from the booming technological innovations of the era, he established his own magazine, Super X Media, published in English, Japanese, and French, influential as a cross-cultural hub for the surf-skate industry. Masuda more recently pursued filmmaking, including his documentary 2016 film Bunker77. In this episode, he sits down with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about how surfing allows you to design a lifestyle that reflects who you are, the fashion industry, art and culture in Los Angeles, Pipeline, what drew him to the Bunker Spreckels story, and the joy of making friends through surfing.

The oldest of three brothers, all with prodigious surfing talent, Chris Malloy grew up riding waves between Point Conception and Point Mugu, where he learned how to navigate its competitive lineups. By the early 1990s, he was a core member of the Momentum Generation. An injury, however, forced him into the role of observer and ignited a career in filmmaking, resulting in projects like Thicker Than Water (2000), The September Sessions (2002), A Brokedown Melody (2004), One Track Mind (2008), 180 Degrees South (2010), and The Fisherman's Son (2015). He's also done work for brands like Ford and Chevy and Dodge, currently serves as a Patagonia Ambassador, and operates a working ranch not far from where he grew up. In this episode, Malloy sits down with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about his surf odyssey and the highlights of his career, California, the dichotomy between being a bubble-gum pro and traveling missionary, longevity, the importance of immersing oneself in one's environment, Indo trips with Tom Carroll and Kelly Slater, and maintaining a sense of play in life.

Born in Barbados and raised between Hawaii and California, the late Ashley Bickerton was a surfer, thinker, and artist whose mixed-media practice explored themes of identity and meaning, often critiquing consumerism, modernity, and social communication. He achieved early success in New York in the 1980s, alongside the likes of Jeff Koons and Peter Halley. In 1993, Bickerton abandoned the New York scene to return to surfing in Bali, where exercised a devotion to left-handed barrels. He also found in Bali expression for his work, through an increasingly characteristic use of bright colors. In the wake of what would come to be a fatal ALS diagnosis, Bickerton, prior to his passing in November 2022, spoke with show host Jamie Brisick about love, his recent New York exhibitions, the value of resolution, the evolution of the art world's relationship to surfing, his art-making philosophy, and his biggest inspirations.

When Selema Masekela, storyteller and son of South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela, moved to Carlsbad in high school, surfing became his doctrine. He spent years working odd-jobs to fund his habit until he began producing and commentating for Transworld Skate, before he found his calling as an action-sports commentator and storyteller, using his voice to broaden the scope of representation in sport on an international scale. In this episode, Masekela talks with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about the crossover between surf, skate, and snowboard culture, recounting his exploration of Africa's rich surfing history in his book AFROSURF, finding common ground through music and surfing alike, visiting South Africa after Mandela's release in 1990, fitness, and his father's legacy.

Lisa Andersen's surf story began in the mid 1980s, at age fifteen, in her Florida hometown, where surfing—especially women's surfing—was an underground endeavor. She soon ran away from home and wound up in Huntington Beach, California. By the turn of the decade, she was a professional surfer, turning heads with an elegant and aggressive style that stood out among the ranks of both genders, and changed the way women's surfing was perceived. By the turn of the next, she was an icon: a four-time world champion and the face of a multi-million dollar brand and industry. In this episode, Andersen sits down with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about self-worth, how motherhood has informed the way she carries herself as an athlete, marketability and it's challenges, fear of the unknown, her role in the creation of an industry, reinventing surfing for herself, and what the future of women's surfing holds.

Hawaiian stylist Gerry Lopez couldn't make a takeoff during his first time surfing Pipe in 1963 at age 13. Today, at 74, he is still widely known as Mr. Pipeline, after having devoted most of his life to the infamous patch of reef. His approach is the expression of a life lived in pursuit of stillness, mindfulness, and regard for the natural world. Sixty years after that inaugural and fateful session at "The Pipeline," Lopez sits down to talk with show host Jamie Brisick about the importance of having a meditative state of mind in and out of the water, the moment Pipeline clicked for him, why he doesn't remember many of his waves, the relationship between yoga and surfing, and pathways to a higher consciousness.

Listen to a roll call of and reflection on some of the most interesting people in surfing—including Gerry Lopez, Lisa Andersen, Selema Masakela, the late Ashley Bickerton, Chris Malloy, Takuji Masuda, Michael Scott Moore, Jock Sutherland, Thomas Campbell, Brad Gerlach, Keala Kennelly, and John John Florence—as host Jamie Brisick previews his guests ahead of the launch of Season 04 of Soundings, presented by The Surfer’s Journal. 

On stepping off the world tour, grief, finding solace in competitive surfing, and dealing with the aftermath of his near-shark attack at J-Bay.

On purism and art making, punk, surf culture, misheard song lyrics, art world disenchantment, what keeps him going as an artist, and Black Flag.

On the Gidget enterprise, surfing Malibu in the 1950s, feminism, Malibu's cachet among the Hollywood intelligentsia, the beach, and boys.