The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick

His father an olympic diver from Hungary, his mother a professional water skier, Brad Gerlach drew inspiration and drive from his parents’ athletic accomplishments and competitive mentality. He gripped professional surfing by the horns in 1985, when, as a rookie on the tour, he took out the tour’s major players to emerge victorious at that year’s Stubby’s Pro. Victories continued to color Gerlach’s early career, culminating in his finishing second in the world in 1991. He eventually grew disillusioned with competitive surfing and focused his efforts on big-wave surfing and chasing swells around the globe, where he saw more fruitful possibilities for personal growth, self-expression, and freedom. He’s also worked as an actor, teacher, founder, and coach. In this episode, Gerlach sits down with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about the road to realizing one’s dreams, unlocking potential, his proudest year, Wave Ki and his fitness philosophy, and fame.

Surfer, artist, and filmmaker Thomas Campbell’s unique perspective was informed by upbringing in Dana Point, California, his background as a skateboarder, and his experience serving as editor of Skateboarder magazine in the 1990s. His films The Seedling (1999), Sprout (2004), and The Present (2009), which function loosely as a trilogy, aestheticize surfing on the basis of its inherent capacity for playfulness, beauty, and style, standing in contrast to a society increasingly dominated by industry and consumption. Today, Campbell continues to work as a practicing filmmaker, artist, and producer, and is currently preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. In this episode, Campbell sits down with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about the divergent cultural possibilities between surfing and skating, the importance of having a strong work ethic, being driven by curiosity, the surfing industrial complex, and finding creativity in quietude.

One of the shortboard revolution’s seminal figures and a Pipeline pioneer, Jock Sutherland hails from a family of watermen: His mother swam the northern coast of the island of Molokai, a journey which she later detailed in her 1978 book, Paddling My Own. His father, a World War II navy officer, was a seasoned kayaker, fisherman, and surfer. Sutherland and his family moved to Hawaii from Long Beach, California in 1952, where he learned to surf on one of his father’s old planks. He began riding for Greg Noll as a teenager, and went on to place second at both the 1965 Makaha International Junior Surfing Championships and the Ocean Beach World Contest in 1966. In 1967, he won the Duke Invitational. In 1969, he won Surfer magazine’s Surfer of the Year award. In 1970, he left surfing to join the US Army at the height of Vietnam. At 74, surfing remains an integral part of Sutherland’s day to day life. In this episode of Soundings, Sutherland sits down with show host Jamie Brisick to talk about turning points in surfing’s evolution, living with Jeff Hakman in Maui, the psychedelic resurgence, why he enlisted in the Army, being incarcerated for drug smuggling, myth-busting, and Waimea’s mechanics. 

Journalist and author Michael Scott Moore’s interest in piracy emerged from research conducted for his first novel, 2010’s Sweetness and Blood, which traces the history and spread of surfing from pre-colonial Hawaii to the rest of the world. His interest in the issue spiked when a trial of ten Somali pirates began in Germany in 2010—the first time in 400 years that pirates had appeared in a European court. As the trial ran on, Moore became set on researching piracy outside the confines of a western judicial system, leading him to travel to Somalia in 2011, funded by a crisis reporting grant provided by the Pulitzer Foundation. In January of 2012, he was taken hostage by a local pirate group in Galkayo, and remained captive for more than two years. In this episode, Moore talks with show host Jamie Brisick about the devolution of hope into fatalism, the importance of remembering trauma, stoicism, his memoir The Desert and the Sea (2018), and learning to live with what you have. 

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.

Gerry Lopez, known as Mr. Pipeline, talks about his life dedicated to surfing and mindfulness. Topics covered include the importance of a meditative state of mind, the moment Pipeline clicked for him, the relationship between yoga and surfing, and pathways to higher consciousness.