That One Time in the Maldives With Tom Curren

As I type this, Dashel Pierson should be sitting at the Tom Bradley international terminal at LAX, bound for the Maldives and the annual Four Seasons Champions Trophy, the most luxurious surf contest on the planet, bar none. Dashel was also recently in Tahiti for the Olympics. Some summers are just better than others. He's on a heater. Stay tuned for more from him coming up real soon.

Until he resurfaces, as the team here at SURER have been planning for the upcoming contest in the Maldives, this iteration features none other than Carissa Moore, Mikey February, Jeremy Flores and others, it got me thinking about ten years ago when I had the good fortune to make the trip.

The crew on hand was radical: Tom Curren, Martin Potter, Mark Occhilupo and Damien Hardman. I don't think I could have dreamed up a better lineup. Over the course of the week at the Four Seasons some amazing surfing took place, even more amazing stories were told, and I managed to embarrass myself pretty thoroughly in front of my all-time favorite surfers. (And yes, I'm still just an awkward fan boy around Curren today as I was a decade ago when we were in the Maldives together.)

Related: Carissa Moore Returns, Will Compete in 'World’s Most Luxurious Surfing Event'

The Four Seasons Champions Trophy offers a unique format in which competitors have to surf a round on a single-fin, another round on a twin-fin, and finally, they finish off on a thruster. If they did that on the Championship Tour Curren may still be on tour.

But that's not the point, after spending some time with the enigmatic three-time world champ, we'd struck up a bit of a relationship around music. Finally, one day, he says, "Umm, uhh, why don't you come over to my bure and we can jam a little."

Giddy as a school girl, I grabbed a guitar and tried to play it as cool as possible. Just be cool, Jake! And so, there I am, just me and Tom Curren and we're around to do the thing. Like, seriously, pinch me now.

Then Tom looks up and says, "I'm in DADGAD."

What? What does that mean? DADGAD? What the f--k is DADGAD? Proving that I'm just as much a hack with a guitar in my hand as I am with a surfboard under my feet, it turns out, DADGAD is an alternative guitar tuning and that's how Tom preferred to play. So much for my three-chords-and-the-truth approach.

We fumbled through a couple tunes together, but without a doubt, I was the kook in the room. It's hard not to be the kook in the room with Tom, but this was especially egregious.

A few years later, while at an event at the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center, I was sharing this story with bassist Chris Swann, who played in a band with Tom. I'd just met him and told him how bad I'd blown it.

He laughed and said, "I taught him DADGAD."

Mystery solved. And the moral of the story, if you want to play guitar with Tom Curren, learn those alternate tunings.

Related: Origin Story: Mark Occhilupo On The First Time He Saw Tom Curren Surf