Jeff Mull’s Interview with Timmy Curran!
Our guest author today is Jeff Mull and his work features excerpts from his interview with Timmy Curran…with video (see below).
From the Lineup to the Stage…An Interview with Timmy Curran
On the most progressive and futuristic surfers of his era, Timmy Curran has added an extra element to his career as a professional surfer by doubling as an accomplished musician with a thriving fan base. Recently, we caught up with Timmy before his show at Surfer, The Bar to get his take on music, surfing, and what makes Hawaii so special to him.
As a professional surfer, you’ve undoubtedly been coming to Hawaii for quite some time, but I was curious if it feels any different coming here as a musician?
Yeah, I absolutely love coming out here, but it does feel a bit different not traveling with a bunch of surfboards. This time, I came with just a few guitars, but I leave some boards with a friend to make sure I can surf too. But other than that, it feels really refreshing coming out here and not having to worry about making it through heats or doing photo shoots. I’ve got my family here and we’ve been staying at Turtle Bay just having a great time. There’s so much to do; we’re stoked. It feels like a vacation getting to play out here.
How much of your life is split between surfing and playing music?
I don’t really see it as being split at all. It feels more like they go hand in hand. For the most part, I’ll spend the day surfing and the night writing and recording. It feels like everything is going really well. My life doesn’t feel like a grind at all and I’m not touring to places that I don’t really want to be. Through surfing, I was able to tour the world and now with my music, I’m able to pick and choose different spots or bands that I want to work with so it’s pretty great.
You released the film Union Express last year and it followed you as you took the train through the California coast, surfing and catching up with friends along the way. Do you have any plans to do another film like that?
Yeah, the film was a lot of fun to produce and I initially wanted to do a similar type of thing in Japan with the Bullet Train. I traveled with Donavon Frankenreiter a lot through Japan and we took the Bullet Train everywhere—it was great. We don’t have any plans yet to do another film, but if we did, I think it would be through Japan on the Bullet Train. That’d be a lot of fun.
Although you’re a really well-rounded surfer, you played a huge role in taking aerial surfing to the next level. I wondered what you thought of where progressive surfing today.
It’s amazing. Some of the stuff people are doing is really inspiring. A lot of the kids out of Brazil are doing some crazy airs but here in Hawaii, I’m really impressed with Flynn Novak and his flip. We were working on trying to pull those for a long time, but he’s really perfected it. I’m actually working on a new air that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, so we’ll see how that pans out.
So what’s the plan for the rest of your show?
We’ve been here at Turtle Bay for the past five days and have had such a good time. The weather has been amazing and the crowds in the lineup haven’t been too thick, so we’ve had a great week for sure. But after the show, I think we’re gonna head into Town for the night and then had back to California. I hope to be back soon, I love it here.






































