Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Conten ... 0599119419
Jan. 6, 2005. 01:00 AM
Free and easy with the pop
Michael Johnson doesn't feel proprietary
Part of Rivoli's Maple Lounge every Wednesday
VIT WAGNER
POP MUSIC CRITIC
You certainly can't accuse Michael Johnston of being overly proprietary or protective of his creative offspring.
On four of the 14 tunes from the newly released debut album, Curious Heart, the singer/songwriter surrenders the lead vocals to a favoured guest, the composer content to provide accompaniment on the piano. Two of the songs, "Apology" and "Sunday Afternoon," feature Oh Susanna's Suzie Ungerleider, "The Country North of Peterborough" employs Andy Maize of Skydiggers and "Three Days" uses Reid Jamieson, a Toronto tunesmith who moonlights as a member of Johnston's band.
"In some ways it's like getting a head start on making your own tribute album," Johnston jokes.
"I'm sort of amazed that songwriters don't do that more," he adds, more seriously. "I guess it's an ego thing that singer/songwriters don't want to pass them off. But songs exist as their own entities. Burt Bacharach only gave out his songs and would choose the best singer for each."
Johnston, who grew up in Peterborough and now lives in Winnipeg, where he teaches English as a second language, is spending January in Toronto as musician in residence for this month's Maple Lounge, the free concert series that runs Wednesday nights at the Rivoli.
Johnson, who will be joined by regular bandmates (Jamieson on guitar, Maury Lafoy on upright bass and Don Kerr, who co-produced the album, on drums and percussion), expects each of his guest vocalists to stop by at some point during the month. Not that he can't manage on his own, if required.
"It's not that I'm uncomfortable with my own performance," he says. "The songs weren't very new, so I'm comfortable enough with the way I do them. But it's a littler trickier after hearing these other interpretations hundreds of times through the mixing process and all of that."
The Bacharach allusion is not entirely incidental. "Birthday Card" quotes a melody from "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and other songs are more indirectly indebted to an avowed influence on Johnston's piano-based approach to pop songcraft.
"I like his sense of arrangement," Johnston says. "The music has a lot of polish but within that polish there's a very soulful side to it. That's what really attracts me to his music. There is also this whole idea of doing interesting things musically, like changing time signatures or keys without drawing attention to it. There's a real art to doing that in pop music."
Who knows he who appreciates Burt so?
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