Jack Johnson and global warming

Reuters

GOING GREEN: Jack Johnson's concern for the environment filters through on his new album, Sleep Through The Static.

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Jack Johnson's music is coming out of the elevator. He tells Bonnie Sumner about how global warming got on to his new album.

Attempting to wriggle a decent conversation out of Jack Johnson is a lot like trying to dig a splinter out of your heel: painful, laborious and requiring a variety of angles to extract it.

To be fair, it's the middle of the day when I talk to the musician on a call from his home in Haleiwa, Hawaii. Perhaps he's thinking about the waves he could be surfing, or maybe he hasn't had lunch yet.

Probably he has had enough interviews for one day, promoting his new album. Johnson's fourth solo release, Sleep Through the Static, is in stores now.

He is vaguely anxious about it. "I like the record but I always feel insecure when it's time to put them out. I always get the feeling like I should've tried harder."

His fans won't agree. It is an undeniable continuation of his previous releases, full of supine musings about love, family and banal topics such as losing keys.

The man famous for riding into the public eye on the coat-tails of his surfing buddy Ben Harper writes ingratiatingly sticky songs, the kind that lodge in the part of your brain that stores cellphone rings, schmaltzy elevator muzac and Norah Jones paeans to love and lightswitches.

But there are two notable changes in Johnson's life coming through in this album that show another dimension we haven't heard before - first, they have employed a full-time pianist, Zach Gill, who lends a much-needed injection of Elton John rhythm and soul, and secondly, he has broadened his horizons and started to worry about the state of the world, too.

This is evident in the opening track, All At Once, concerning the idea that global warming is a kind of hell on earth, and the title track, which makes references to the war in Iraq. They are changes that may just lend him a wider audience, even if broadening his lyrical content was almost an accident.

"I've never really tried to write songs that have a particular message to them, but it's funny what people read into them in different ways. Like for instance I never tell myself I'm going to write a song about global warming. It just seems like it will be."

His dad calls him Chance the gardener, after the Peter Sellers character in 1979 film Being There, whose simpleton observations are misinterpreted by those he meets as meaningful insights and clever metaphors.

"I haven't ever seen that movie. I'm kind of afraid to watch it because I think I'll get mad at my dad for calling me that. But I am a bit like that. A lot of times I'd say a line I meant literally and then I'd start to see the analogies and start to write a song about it," he says.

But, for all his unintentional insight, Johnson and his friends are doing far more relevant work to counter the shabby state of the world than many others in the industry. His own record label, Brushfire Records, has a new eco-friendly studio, complete with solar panels on the roof, cotton from old jeans used as insulation, and eco-friendly floor polish.

His new album uses recycled paper for the CD booklets, and he sells organic cotton T-shirts at his merchandise stalls. He has even set up an environmental education programme, the Kokua Hawai'i Foundation, with his wife Kim.

And he struggles with the contradiction of travelling the world by plane, surrounding himself instead with those who try their best to negate the effects of all that jet fuel.

"It's a step-by-step process. It's a learning experience for me and there's two ways of looking at it: we could make less of an impact by not touring at all, but, at the same time, if you can help change the industry you're involved with, that's a more responsible thing than to just walk away altogether. Because I do have that guilt of flying airplanes wherever we go but it's fun. I like travelling and it's nice to go places."

New Zealand is one place he is looking forward to returning to, after a tour here three years ago.

"I love New Zealand, there are a lot of things that remind me of Hawaii when I'm there. I love the culture and the ocean is really powerful too." Just to set the record straight for all you rumour-philes out there, neither Jack Johnson nor Ben Harper own any property in Raglan or any other part of New Zealand.

His tour this time around features a community based "village green" where local stalls promoting sustainable and organic products are invited to set up. Johnson gives the credit for a lot of this environmental work to his friends who enable him to be green while he is uses his fame and money to spread the word.

"I wish I could take credit and act like all those ideas are my own, but those people that work on my tour could tell you better how we do it. And my wife could tell you how we offset and things, she's the one who has the time and energy her whole job basically is to make sure were using this attention for more important things."

No doubt the irony is lost on him that his new album will be heard in Starbucks and sweatshop clothing chains around the world, but Johnson really is just a surfer musician at heart.

"Sometimes I think that just putting positive feelings out into the world is about the best thing you can do for peace."

*Sleep Through the Static is out now. Jack Johnson plays Christchurch March 20, Napier March 22 and Taranaki March 23.