Laid-back Jack Johnson addresses critics ahead of album release

TORONTO -- Jack Johnson may be the undisputed dean of self-described "barbecue folk," but he's far from beyond reproach.

Far from it, in fact; he's been skewered for playing it safe with his sound, with critics dismissing him as mass-appeal acoustic fare. He's even been lampooned on "Saturday Night Live," as part of an Andy Samberg sketch called "The Mellow Show," which pokes fun at his sun-toasted, easygoing personality.

But once in a while, nice guys finish first.

After all, the 38-year-old is set to release his sixth album, entitled "From Here to Now to You." And critics be damned -- it's another collection of lilting, sun-dappled songs that are earnest and languid in all the same ways his past songs have been.

"I'm kind of in that generation right before the new one that's always on the phone," said Johnson in an interview from his Hawaii home.

"I don't find myself reading too much of that stuff, and if I did I probably would be too self-absorbed and get too insecure about it and not continue. It'd be hard if I was up to speed with all the criticism. The nice thing is that ignorance is bliss."

And Johnson had the last laugh with Samberg, too, when he appeared in a music video for a song off the singer's fifth LP where the two engaged in a comical on-camera bar brawl.

"Even Andy Samberg himself, he said, 'We weren't teasing you,"' said Johnson. "He had a funny line when we first met, and I'm forgetting the exact wording he used, but it was like, 'We were honouring your mellowness. Me and my friends were like, how bad-ass is that? The guy's playing in front of 20,000 people or whatever and he's just walking out there in his slippers.'

"Obviously, he was just back-pedalling just so I wouldn't beat him up, so," he added with a laugh.

These days, armed with a record label of his own making, an environmental-advocacy group and his still-bankable ability to sell out shows, Johnson's certainly proven his immunity to the criticism hasn't cost him a thing -- an attitude that's perhaps a relic of his younger days as a surfer on the pro circuit. But what's more remarkable is that even after 13 years, he still sees music as "kind of a hobby."

"I used to write just to share with my friends. I never really thought I'd have a career in music, and it was really easy to write when you didn't have an audience in the back of your mind," he said.

That casual approach to his musical career -- he mulls for a while before settling on "dad" when asked to name the job title he'd list on a hypothetical business card -- goes hand-in-hand with his musical consistency, preferring instead to do what he loves.

"I've never taken it serious that I'm some kind of artist that needs to reinvent himself," he said. "I mean, I dig musicians like that, where I'd be bummed if they put out the same record twice, whether it's Radiohead or Wilco or The White Stripes or whatever Jack White's new project is.

"I love to hear the way they do that, but I feel like that's a different genre than I'm in. I almost consider my thing to be more barbecue music -- I don't spend enough time, like, practising to try to really find new things."

But making the music is hardly as easy-flowing and relaxing as the songs themselves sound. It was, once, when he was recording his first two albums, plucking songs from the ether that already felt fully formed.

"But come the third album, it was starting from a completely blank canvas, and then that's when I wondered, 'Oh, is it going to be hard to write an album's worth of songs in a couple of years?"' he said.

"I haven't tried to write a song since whenever the first day we went into the studio was. I just don't really have the desire at all -- it's so much energy to put 'em all together. The reality is I can't just keep trying to put stuff out. That's really draining, and eventually you're just running on empty."

It's the kind of fatalistic musing that makes it seem like Johnson is considering hanging up his guitar and surfing off into the sunset. But while the ingredients line up -- a lengthy and unexpected career for someone who appears immune to the luxuries of his success -- he says it's just part of the ebb and flow he's learned to handle over the years.

"To be honest, every time I finish recording an album, I'll go out and tour for a year, and by the end of the year, almost every album you could ask me and I'll say, 'Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that's the last one,' he said.

"It's a lot of fun, but it's also just a lot of energy to do it all. So then I think I'm done, and you give me a few months of just being back at home, and my feet start getting itchy and the idea of travelling sounds fun again.

"It's an inhale and an exhale. Sometimes months would go by and I wouldn't write a song and I used to think, 'Oh my God, is it done, are they going to keep coming?' -- this was years ago. But now I realized that if six months go by and I haven't written anything worth anything, it's almost a positive.

"That's a time to take things in, and at some point, they start coming out again."

Johnson's bright new record "From Here to Me to You" floats onto shelves on Tuesday.