Hollywood and Vine St story

By GRAHAM REID

Greg Johnson is already being noticed in Los Angeles where he's now based. As we leave the bar and step into the bright California sun he puts on his wrap-around shades. A guy follows us out and walks alongside saying, "Wow, I can't believe it's you man. Can I have your autograph? I just love your music. That thing you did on the roof? Wow!"

He's mistaken Johnson for Bono.

Just another day in crazy California where begging bums in the nearby mall carry signs reading, "Why lie. I need a drink".

Anyone who has followed Johnson's career won't be surprised we meet in a bar. We catch up not in some swanky place on Sunset Strip but in a genuine, smoky English pub in Santa Monica. Except, this being California, it's without the smoke, of course.

Johnson and guitarist Ted Brown, manager Michelle Bakker and her daughter, plus Bakker's live-in Kiwi nanny are in Los Angeles for six months at their American record company's expense to record an album. And it's quite some deal Johnson has. If the company, Immergent - headed by, among others, producer Richard Dashut who did all Fleetwood Mac's albums including Rumours - doesn't like the music it gives the master tapes back to Johnson, who can do what he wants with them.

The fact they offered that rare deal suggests they already like his music, and they signed Johnson back in April on the basis of just five new songs he'd written. They hadn't even heard any of his previous six albums, such as Chinese Whispers or Vine St Stories, or his Bluespeak jazz project.

The five songs will appear on the album he is recording in a studio in the town of Ojai about an hour north of this horsebrass, darts and soccer pub where the walls are lined with photos of famous patrons such as Black Sabbath, former Monkee Davey Jones, Noel Gallagher and a young Ian Botham in white test cricket clobber.

Ojai is a small town with a strong artistic community - Rikkie Lee Jones lives there - and the attractions of the studio are many: Immergent gets a good rate, the musicians stay in the attached apartment while working, and the studio is big. But it's also away from LA, "so there are no distractions, even I didn't want to go anywhere for a drink. The local bar looked, well ... I didn't go in."

Johnson and crew have been in LA eight weeks and have found themselves suitable accommodation - Johnson five minutes away from the beach and Bakker even closer.

"We could be living in Hollywood with a lot more money in our hands," says Johnson, "but we like it down here. It's by the sea, you can smell it and there's a constant wind off the ocean. I'm at 15th and Arizona, Wilshire Boulevard is nearby so we've got everything we need: a second-hand record store on the corner, a cinema and a 24-hour deli. I came home from something the other night half cut and bought a big leg of turkey for US$2 and I thought, this is a buzz."

Browsing the pub menu, he says he misses pies - "Mrs Mac's steak and vegetable" - and orders a hearty bangers'n'mash from the English cuisine on offer. And while he says he has been seeing a lot of music, from funk bands to rock outfits, he is here to work.

Recording - with local drummer Michael Miley and bassist David Sutton - has been diligent and already they've completed the rhythm tracks for 13 songs. They expect to finish the album in a month.

"The only song that will be familiar to anyone at home will be a remake of Beautiful Storm. We kept the verses and ditched the old choruses and rewrote it. And Ted's got a couple of co-credits, which is good."

He's also learning about the LA music industry. At one level it's as simple as recognising people here don't drink much or hang around after gigs because they have to drive everywhere. Then there's dealing with people such as Immergent's senior vice president of A&R, Mark Mazzetti, who helmed the career of Sting, Janet Jackson and Aaron Neville - "So no one really big!" - and now works closely with Johnson and Brown.

"I've never been in a studio where I've had an A&R guy, a producer, a first engineer, a second engineer, a runner and manager. It's quite a big operation, but we all get on well. We really like Mark and trust him. He's kinda the bridge between us and the company. He's hired by them, but he's more on our side than theirs in many ways.

"He definitely has an opinion on the music, but is overwhelmingly positive. He won't say, 'I don't like that', but his opinion is another one for us to hear and he'll say things like, 'I really want to hear that chorus again'.

"We listen to him because he's enthusiastic - and he sits there and says, 'It's a hit, I can hear it already'. So he's pretty funny. If you want an example of A&R in action, I had a song called Suicide on a Sunny Day, but he's convinced me that it's now called Sunny Day. That's A&R. It's gone from suicide to a sunny day."

Johnson is clearly comfortable with the advice he's getting. He considers producer Dashut a friend (Dashut calls him "Whiskey Boy", says Bakker, because of his penchant for a wee dram) and they have been winning friends everywhere. Most influential is Billboard magazine columnist Melinda Newman, who had seen Johnson play on their previous trip and has asked to do the first major interview for that bible of the music business.

"She's become a good friend," says Johnson, "and I think she likes us because we didn't know who she was, so when we met we weren't trying to kiss her arse. She likes our sense of humour and she's more dry than the Californians because she's from the east coast.

How Newman heard Johnson is significant in what it says about the LA music industry. Bakker got her to a gig through a friend, and Johnson admits: "We've used the six degrees of separation to the nth degree and probably now know 180 people in the business."

The appeal of Johnson to Americans, especially journalists, is obvious. He has A Story, and it's a good one: going to LA on a wing and a prayer, playing gigs and looking for a deal, Ted getting sick, running out of money, the day before leaving getting the record deal with a label on the cutting edge of technology as much as having credible management ...

Then there's the Kiwi Factor.

"It's great having Ted and Michelle and Kelly the nanny here too," says Johnson, "because as an overall impression they get a sense of us as New Zealanders, and the level of commitment."

Johnson might be in the vanguard of Kiwi musicians in LA, especially since he is recording for the DVD-era 5.1 system. It's the coming thing and many record companies now insist their artists record using 5.1 equipment which was developed by Ken Caillat of Immergent.

Johnson expects he will be the first Kiwi artist to use the gear and he will doubtless become a spokesman for the technology, says Bakker, when his album and DVD version are released, probably in January. They plan to get out a five-track EP to sell at gigs before then to get the buzz going.

Bakker has him playing a couple of gigs a week, one in the city and the other up or down the coast. What with the contacts, both business and musical, they are confident.

"I've honestly never sat on such a strong bunch of songs as I am now. I've never been in better shape as a player or singer, Ted is so in there and we've got really tight harmonies, and the whole band is going to sing and we can have four-part harmonies."

His bangers'n'mash finished, Johnson gets thoughtful.

"You know the thing is, we found The Way. I knew there was one and it seems this is it: you stay here and work it, and make the connections. Yeah, it's late in the career maybe, but the timing could be good - I'm not an idiot or drunk.

"Also the Coldplay album is going through the roof here and it's not that dissimilar to the kind of record I'm making - and that's exactly the kind of sound I've been making for 15 years.

"So maybe, finally, the timing might be right."