Surfer Joe can’t wait to meet you

Lorenzo Valdambrini, known professionally as Surfer Joe, is on a bus somewhere in Idaho, and he’s pretty stoked about it.

“The tour is going really well, the turnout at the shows has been good, and there is very obviously a lot of interest in this kind of music, surf music, which has been enjoying a very big rise in popularity all over the world,” says Valdambrini. The Italy-born musician, based in Livorno, has been reached on the phone today as he and his band travel to Garden City, Utah. As he explains, they are happily in the early weeks of a month-long American tour that began in Portland, Oregon on July 1 and will bring Surfer Joe to Petaluma on Wednesday, July 20 before carrying him on to some of California’s most iconic surfing cities — Santa Cruz, Long Beach, San Diego — and then back home to Livorno, where he operates a diner named, unsurprisingly, Surfer Joe’s.

The Petaluma show, right downtown at the Big Easy, will include special guests Frankie & the Pool Boys and Chillingham Surfingsworth. It will be Valdambrini’s first time visiting Petaluma.

“Surf music takes a bit of homework, for some of the young people who come to our shows, because they might not have the references that older surf rock fans have,” he notes. “But the people at the Big Easy are very excited to have us, and I am feeling like this could be a very big show. It’s one we are very much looking forward to.”

Known as a traditionalist, a respectful interpreter of the music rather than a musician who feels the need to transform the style to match modern styles or expectations, Surfer Joe has become one of the most respected surf rockers in the world. The Surfer Joe Summer Festival in Livorno, Italy, has been called “the world’s number one surf music event” by The Florentine News Magazine.

An offshoot of the instrumental rock genre that arose in the 1950s, surf music enjoyed a huge boom in the early 1960s, with pioneering acts like Dick Dale, The Ventures and the Surfaris representing the instrumental side of surf rock, while groups like The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean led the charge of vocal surf pop. The themes around which surf music swirls, obviously enough, are gleefully wave-wind-and-beach-centered, as represented in the titles of such iconic hit tunes as “Surfin’,” “Surfin’ Bird,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfer Girl,” “Surfer Stomp,” “Surf City,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Shoot That Curl,” “Pipeline,” “Wipeout,” “Underwater,” “Bustin’ Surfboards” and the song from which Valdambrini’s sun-drenched stage name emerged, ”Surfer Joe,” by the Surfari’s, who produced what is generally believed to be the greatest surf rock song of all time, the aforementioned, “Wipeout.”

For many of Surfer Joe’s younger fans, his sound is permanently linked to such influential pop culture touchstones as Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” which borrowed heavily from the wider surf rock discography for its soundtrack, and even such reference points as the James Bond films and the original Bat Man theme, all of which are rooted in the springy, fast-tempo rhythms of surf music. To his older fans, many of whom grew up listening to surf music on the radio as they drove the to beach with their boards strapped to the roof of their Woodie and a can of Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax on the seat, the appeal is nostalgic, though Valdambrini is no tribute-tinged cover act. The majority of his most popular tunes are gorgeously melodious original compositions.

“The audience for surf music today is very large, and covers people of all ages, because there are so many different directions from which to approach this music,” he says. “We have people who come to our shows, not always because they are familiar with Surfer Joe, but because they just love surf music.”

Asked what he thinks the appeal of this music is, from back at the beginning of the genre’s infancy all the way up to 2022, Valdambrini wastes no time in saying that surf music is all about freedom.

“Coming out of the ‘50s and into the ‘60s, surf music was one of the first forms of really free music,” he says. “There is a freedom in rock ‘n roll, of course, but then you bring in the idea of these surfers on the beach, out on the waves, out of their clothes and feeling the wind, breaking the rules and letting other people go have the boring lives while they do exactly what they want at all times, it’s hard to resist that. It’s a very specific kind of story that surrounded those people and it is represented in the music just as much. Is it an exaggeration? Of course, but that does not really matter. Surf music will always be about freedom.”

When he is prompted to describe what a live Surfer Joe show is like, Valdambrini is bracingly frank.

“I talk a lot,” he says with a laugh. “That’s true. There is a lot of music, of course, but I do talk a lot about the music, because I find that it makes the experience deeper. So I tell stories. And I give the audience some background to the tunes, because I don’t sing. These are instrumental songs, so to hear the story in them you have to be engaged in the performance, and so I make that easier by setting the stage and giving the history of the songs. It’s good, because it helps you get into the mood for that song, and prepares you for the ride you will be taking with it.”

Which brings him back to next Wednesday’s show in Petaluma.

“We tour quite a bit, though obviously not so much the last few years, but we’ve got places we visit often, and that’s nice, but it’s very exciting and interesting to go to some new places, which is what we are doing with this tour,” Valdambrini says. “We’ve found that sometimes those place where we haven’t made friends yet are the ones that have the most exciting crowds. Because you are discovering us right along with us discovering you. We really can’t wait to be there in Petaluma. It’s true. We really can’t wait to meet you all.”