The Malloy Brothers Blood Harmony
The Malloys are a family of surfers, filmmakers, musicians and ranchers, the current generation of which have been emblematic for close to two decades in the popular consciousness of surf culture. But for all that, each of the family members’ agile feet is placed firmly on the earth and in the here and now. They are good ol’ boys. Forget that saying as cliché. They really are good ol’ boys.
There are eight of us here as we jam late into the evening – Chris, Keith and Dan Malloy, Chris’s wife, Carla, and their two-year-old son, Lucas, youngest brother Dan’s girlfriend, Grace, and old friend of the family and cameraman Scott Soens. Before long we become lost in music and conversation, washed in warm candle light, each of us with a belly full of Coors Lite, Californian red, as well as barbecued beef straight off the ranch.
The land that extends to all points around us here in this century-old house is part of a rancho that sprawls some fifteen thousand acres around the southern extremity of the Los Padres National Forest. Governed by the same family for over two hundred years, the place is part of an America that existed before America was America. As such, it represents a state of being that is ebbing into memory and whose lifestyle you wouldn’t guess still exists.
I’ve come here to get to the bottom of the importance of being Malloy. Soon I’ll go to meet Yvon Chouinard, the boss of Patagonia. Recently, Chouinard and the Malloys began to work together to develop the ocean-borne side of one of the most progressive, influential and environmentally focused companies on the planet. Call the Malloys brand ambassadors. Call them evolutionary throw-aheads or as yet rare, emerging examples of a new breed of professional surfer. Call them the cutting edge of the outdoorsman as practical, proactive custodian of nature.
Whatever you choose to call them, the brothers Malloy are vastly experienced media practitioners in their own right. Chris is at the time we meet in the closing stages of post-production of his film 180 Degrees South, a piece that takes a body of work that includes Shelter and Thicker Than Water into newly broken, environmentally campaigning territory. After a long, hard-charging career as a free-range pro surfer who was only rarely expected to compete and be a poster child for board shorts, he has focused all his energies these last few months into creating something that transcends the surf film genre. Youngest brother Dan is, meanwhile, one of the most creatively oriented tube stylists, sensitive musicians and neophyte farmers ever to grace a sequence – and is perhaps about to enter a new family-focused, materially productive phase of his own. Middle brother Keith, well, Keith is just Keith – a down-to-earth physical phenomenon with an incredibly calm centre whose newly grounded life here in Coastal California, after years of industry-sponsored surf competition and travel, is about to take a turn to who-knows-where.
Attempting to define a single person in this hall-of-mirrors of the surf media is neigh-on impossible. Attempting to define three brothers is bound to fail. It’s a complex conundrum, and one to which I don’t believe we are equal. We decide, therefore, to let the Brothers Malloy speak for themselves. As Dan mentions over breakfast the following morning whilst we discuss the structure of this piece, “How do you describe what we did last night without making it sound cheesy?”
MALLOY ON MALLOY: Chris, Keith and Dan try to define each other and the surfing triptych they represent. Vital stats:
Chris - Older brother, filmmaker and surfer, age 37.
Keith - Middle brother, wave maestro, country music aficionado, age 35.
Dan - Younger brother, tube stylist, surfboard experimenter, age 31.
Chris on Dan: ”I think Dan has never really come to grips with how good a surfer he is, or what his contributions creatively are to the films that we have made. He’s too humble for his own good. He still pictures himself as a kid tagging along with his big brothers. And when we surf, he’s always the best guy on it. He carries some of the biggest waves, but in his head he’s always still the youngest brother. He was just a little kid when my sister, Mary, was born. She was born with Cerebral Palsy and was born blind and deaf. So when your younger sister is born like that you don’t really have time to worry about yourself because there’s somebody that’s in such greater need than you. If she had been this ‘normal’, whiny little girl, he would have competed and he’d probably beat up on her. But in the grand scheme of our family it’s never all been about Dan.”
Dan on Chris: “Chris is the most creative and the most motivated of us all. He’s kind of a leader. If it weren’t for Chris, I’d have dug a lot more ditches in my life. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. I think that’s true for Keith, too. Chris helped us figure out a way that we could make a living through surfing. I think that figuring out the things you want to do is a great place to put your creative energies. Being creative doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be an artist putting on art shows. Figuring out the things that you really want to do, and figuring out how to work with people whilst keeping the vision true and consistent, that can be as creative as anything else.”
Keith on Chris: ”Chris has been addicted to doing creative things since he was a kid. Whether it was telling a crazy story or dressing up like Evil Knievel. We got our first VHS video camera one Christmas in the eighties, and Chris just played with it until it broke a couple years later. He’s just had that creative thing ingrained in him from day one.”
Chris on Keith: “I admire Keith because he’s no bullshit, and Keith doesn’t really care if you like him or if you don’t. If you piss Keith off, he’s probably never going to forgive you. It’s just how he is, and I wish I could be more like that. He doesn’t spend a lot of time brooding about this or about that, he just does it - and he’s just very consistent with how he lives his life, you know, he just does what he does.”
Chris on Dan: ”Dan grew up surfing with people like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado. So while he’s made these huge achievements in surfing, he’s never seen himself as a big success. With peers like that, he’s been made to feel humble in the water. You know, he’s never once in his life said, ‘I made it’. Sometimes you are defined by the people around you. You know, Dan’s sitting there jamming with Jack Johnson, these two nobodies in terms of music. Turn around a few months later and Jack is one of the biggest artists in the world, and Kelly meanwhile has got nine world titles. In that situation you don’t say, ‘I’m the man’, you say, ‘I’m nothing’.”
Keith on Dan: ”Dan’s the type of guy, when you talk about sessions on some sick wave on a trip somewhere, and you’re like, ‘How was it?’ and he’s like, ‘You know, got a couple, had fun’. That’s his version of the story. Then you see the footage and it’s 8-10ft, there’s ten-second barrels! He always understates everything.”
For the full interview check out HUCK#017, out now.
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