And the waiter brought out a tray

Greg Johnson is a connoisseur of the finer things, when he's not songwriting. So GRAHAM REID does lunch

Greg Johnson is many things beyond being a pretty terrific songwriter. He's a well-travelled and witty raconteur, has an educated palate (friends attest to his fine dinner parties), and is readily tempted into a tipple.

Of the latter, it's enough to know he was a popular habitue of Auckland's nightclubs and bars, and recently was called "whisky-boy" in Los Angeles by Richard Dashut, the man who produced Fleetwood Mac's biggest-selling albums.

Johnson has been living in LA for more than two years and there is no better catch-up than to order a leisurely Thai lunch at Joy Bong, pour the wine and let the conversation run its course.

He's game, and even has his photo taken behind the bar among old friends. Later in the day he has a rehearsal for his brief return-home tour on the back of a new album. But that's later.

Just before dessert - a couple of whiskies - he admits that for the five years before he left for LA he was going nowhere here. There were some dark days after the sales failure of his fine Sea Breeze Motel album four years ago - he didn't realise the importance of singles and radio play, and the album delivered neither.

"The Cocktail Club gigs at the Metropolis three years ago were the start of my renaissance. Prior to that I was in a real hole. Then I started getting managed by Michelle [Bakker] and she was instrumental in putting that together. She believes in the music, it's as simple as that. It ain't for the money, that's for sure.

"I'd always known if I didn't get out of here it was going to go backwards at some point. So there's no turning back - we're not 20 and don't have anything else to fall back on."

Johnson is a natural optimist, a man for whom the glass is always - often literally - half-full. Even when things went belly-up in LA he would breezily observe it was still palm trees, blue skies and girls in bikinis. Hardly a wet winter's day in Grey Lynn.

So he delights in the title of his new album: Here Comes the Caviar.

"It's tongue-in-cheek because we've been eating brown rice and, if we're lucky, a piece of fish," he laughs over tom yum.

Despite a promising start when signed to Dashut's Immergent label - after six months' slog and studio work, making connections and playing in clubs - Johnson was released from Immergent when it hit financial trouble last May. So it was just Johnson, guitarist Ted Brown, Bakker and her daughter Luka as a tight, scared unit of expats in sunny Santa Monica.

"We didn't know how we were going to survive. But it's amazing how you can pare back the spending when you have to. It was a massive curve-ball, but Michelle always saw our original set-up as the stepping stone. We just had to step more quickly than we thought."

However, he is grateful to Immergent for getting them through the door and believing in their music. They were even introduced to Dandy Warhols' producer Clark Stiles - who recorded Caviar in his home studio - by Immergent's Mark Mazzetti on the day the deal went sour.

The band (with bassist Sid Jordan and drummer Malcolm Cross) had been working regularly - Bakker pulling the odd Kiwi corporate function - and has a weekly residency at Renne's club and monthly spots at the Hotel Cafe.

"Renne's has become a local scene and we play for tips, dinner and some drinks. Ted lives off those tips. At the Hotel Cafe we're starting to make an impact and the club is growing about the same rate as we are. Gary Jules [who had a recent hit with Tears for Fears' Mad World from the Donnie Darko soundtrack] is the first artist to break out of that club majorly.

"So we're riding that as much as we can and there's a compilation, recorded live at the club, that we'll be on."

When it came to recording Caviar, things moved quickly. In Stiles' studio at the foot of the Hollywood hills they ran through the songs and by the day's end had all the rhythm tracks recorded.

Between June and December last year - with a break when Johnson and Brown came back for three sellout gigs at Coast in Auckland - they continued to record and called on their widening circle of musical friends. Jordan and Cross work with Pete Yorn and Minnie Driver as Minibar, and Cross plays with the Wallflowers (so Wallflower and friend Rami Jaffe guests on piano accordion).

The Yamaha piano was recorded at the home of a producer friend, JJ Blair, who worked with the late June Carter Cash. Jeff Young on Hammond B3 organ was the friend who first introduced them to players in the LA scene.

When Caviar was done they toasted it with a bottle of brandy in a park near the famous Hollywood sign. Johnson says they had much to celebrate. They had an album which reflects exactly where he is at, is stronger than the EP he walked away from Immergent with, and it's a tidy 40 minutes "so after the 10 songs play you might want to put it on again".

"There's always the thought at the end of each album you could have improved on it - but this? Maybe I will sing and play better, but I don't think my songwriting can be better.

"The risk was always to try something else, beats or something. I did seriously think about that because it's easier to place that stuff on radio.

"Really it's about songs. These are pop songs but we haven't polished the juice out of them. If you put it on in five years' time it will still sound nice."

Here Comes the Caviar includes one of Johnson's finest songs, Save Yourself, written three years ago after "a very destructive relationship". He recalls sitting at the piano one morning - the time he usually writes - and getting the chorus, "first you save yourself, then you save the world ... "

"It was probably directed as much at myself as her. I have a subconscious that works in a more sensible manner than my conscious usually. It knows more about me than I appear to know about myself. It's scary and can be a dangerous portent of things to come and I have to be aware of what is coming out."

Although Desert of Doubt, which opens the album, was also written some while back, its first couplet captured what he was feeling when things were looking bleak in sunny LA: "When everything seems hopeless, just remember where you're from."

Those words encapsulated last year's Coast shows: they were broke but the welcoming audiences confirmed they should go back and give it a good go.


Even so, it's an uphill struggle in LA - but with an album in hand there is a refreshed spirit.

"I've grown up a lot and I'm not entirely there yet. But I'm still as hungry and the desire is as intense for food and women," he laughs. "There's reduced desire for the less healthy things. It's over five years since I had a cigarette."

Johnson has a generous spirit. He is amused by his shortcomings and reminds people who acclaim his songwriting that at his side he has an equal, now in his element.

"Ted has always written American-type songs, and he's writing country-styled songs now. You write country songs in New Zealand and people think you're a joke. But over there if Tim McGraw does one of your songs it's going to make you a kazillion dollars."

In his new hometown they may have a homeless guy living under their house but also a widening circle of friends. Bakker is well connected in film and television - and they can't just give up and come back.

"We are irrevocably changed by this. I was saying to Ted the other day that some things will never be good enough about Auckland now and some things that didn't seem significant before seem so much more important.

"It's changed our whole way of being and I'd recommend to everyone, move away from where you are. If you live in Lumsden, move to Invercargill for a year. It will change you.

"Fortune favours the brave and you have to carry on with the optimism," he laughs, raising his glass in a toast. Waiter!

PERFORMANCE

* Who: Greg Johnson

* Where and when: Coast Bar, Wednesday, March 31, Thursday, April 1, Friday, April 2.

* What: Here Comes the Caviar is released next Monday