JOHNSON POPS INTO COUNTRY

“It’s pretty hard for a song man to be in pop music these days,” says Michael Johnson. “It’s swung so much in the techno-pop area that the song and the singer are secondary to the overall sound.”

Johnson has solved this dilemma by going country. The balladeer, who scored big pop hits in the late ‘70s with “Bluer Than Blue” and “This Night Won’t Last Forever” before fading into obscurity, has resurfaced with back-to-back No. 1 country hits: “Give Me Wings” and “The Moon Is Still Over Her Shoulder.”

Johnson isn’t the first fallen pop star to find a second home in country music. Among the others to make this transition in recent years are Exile, the Bellamy Brothers, Michael Murphey, Dan Seals, John Schneider, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Osmonds.

Johnson, who will be opening for the Oak Ridge Boys tonight and Thursday at the Universal Amphitheatre, noted that country is closer to his musical essence than pop was.

“I find there’s nothing I have to leave out in country music,” he said by phone from Nashville, where he recently moved after 17 years in Minnesota. “In the pop stuff, I was really stretching for some of the things. Now I don’t try so hard to stretch. There’s a lot more of me on the records.

“It’s really satisfying to be in a format where songs and the meaning of lyrics are what’s important,” he said.

Johnson added that the transition from pop to country has been an easy one. “I’ve found it to be almost not a change at all, because I came from folk music and story songs. Even in the pop years, I was primarily playing solo at coffeehouses. I still felt a part of the folk-song tradition, and country music is closely related to that.”

While most pop followers would consider Johnson a one- or two-hit wonder, the Denver native has had a 20-year history in the music business, with many starts and stops.

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever done,” said Johnson, 42. “The starts and stops are in national visibility only. To me, it’s all been a maybe unlikely but continuous stream of events.”

Johnson released a single on Epic Records in the mid-’60s and an album on Atlantic in 1971. But he didn’t hit pay dirt until he was signed to the then-fledgling EMI-America label in 1978. He released five albums for EMI before being dropped from the label in 1983.

“I was stunned there for a while,” said Johnson. “I didn’t know what to do next, so I didn’t do anything. I think it shook my confidence and gave me an opportunity to be lethargic. I had been very busy for a long time, and I used it as permission to be lazy. It was also time to regroup, to watch my (two) children grow.”

Johnson supported himself in this period by playing bars and colleges and singing commercial jingles for Dial soap, Michelob beer and other accounts. While some might consider jingle work beneath a former hit maker, Johnson didn’t. “After I’d do one of those, I’d feel pretty good. Those are the tools of your trade, as opposed to your art.”

Nonetheless, he started calling on friends and associates in the business to see if he could generate any interest. One lucky break: Brent Maher, who had co-produced three of Johnson’s EMI albums, had gone on to become one of the hottest producers in country music, handling the Judds and Sylvia.

Johnson got in touch with Maher, who decided to feature him on a song he was producing for Sylvia, “I Love You by Heart.” The duet went Top 10 on the country chart in late 1985, and earned Johnson a contract with RCA Records. The first album under that deal, “Wings,” rode the country chart for nine months. The second is due early next year.

Johnson, who will open for Alabama on the group’s tour that begins in September, is more at ease in the country scene than he was in pop.

“I’m a lot more relaxed this time,” he said. “Before, I was pretty much petrified of TV and any sort of promotion--anything that was non-musical. Now I’m a lot more comfortable with people. It’s a good thing, too, because country music is a hands-on business.”