How He Got From There to Here

The first thing most people are going to hear about singer-songwriter John Oszajca is that he’s engaged to Elvis Presley’s daughter--which isn’t the best way to be introduced in the pop world.

Rolling Stone’s reviewer wrote only seven words in a review of Oszajca’s new debut album before making the connection to Lisa Marie Presley, and Entertainment Weekly needed just 11 words.

People magazine couldn’t resist a pair of playful asides--one involving Lisa Marie’s father, the other her famous former husband, Michael Jackson. “Oszajca is derivative,” the generally positive review stated. “But then, so was his late father-in-law.” In summary, the review added, “Well groomed talent, but no moonwalker.”

“I hated it,” Oszajca, a 25-year-old Hawaii native, says of the Rolling Stone review as he sits in an East Hollywood restaurant. “I think there was more reference to [the engagement] than my record. All I can say is, I know I made a record that I am proud of. I don’t know if it is obnoxious to say you like your own record, but I do.”

Oszajca (pronounced oh-zock-ah) won’t be alone in liking the album, which is titled “From There to Here” and is due in stores Tuesday from Interscope Records.

The songs’ images and the sound lean too closely at times on obvious ‘60s and ‘70s folk and rock models--notably the Lou Reed swagger and wild-side aura of “Bisexual Chick”--and there’s an overly Beck-ian flavor to “Funny Shade of Blue.”

Mostly, however, the collection is a highly promising start for a writer who exhibits a winning feel for melodies and, especially, words. He frequently uses humor to lighten feelings of uncertainty and doubt--as in the talking blues tradition of “I Might Look White (But I Feel Blue)” and the wry undercurrents of “Where’s Bob Dylan When You Need Him?”

The album’s highlight may be “Long Drive Home.” It’s a boozy, gospel-tinged account of feeling disoriented that would be right at home on a jukebox next to one of the melancholy songs from Tom Waits’ “Mule Variations.” It features the line “If my misery ends/ I’ve lost my only friend. . . . “

The recurring theme in “From There to Here” is feeling out of step, and that’s Oszajca’s story. He says he didn’t fit in as a child--a “haole” (Caucasian) growing up in the tiny Oahu town of Waimanalo. After high school, he headed for Seattle in 1992 and then to Los Angeles in hopes of finding a place for himself in the music world.

It took him nearly eight years of club dates, demo tapes and industry showcases to finally get a record to the stores. He now faces the challenge of getting radio programmers and pop fans to take his music seriously--a task complicated by the engagement to Presley.

Even though he landed his record contract months before they met at a party last May, many will assume that she was instrumental in his getting the contract.

“Some people say we should have kept [our relationship] quiet,” Oszajca says. “We did keep it [under wraps] for a while. We went through side doors and all that, but I finally made the decision to go out in public with her. Wouldn’t you? This is my girlfriend, now my fiancee. I am going to conduct my life the way anyone would lead their life.”

The irony is that few people have ever worked harder for a record contract than the lean, soft-spoken Oszajca.

From Hawaii to Home of Grunge

In Hawaii, he was in and out of a half dozen bands as a teenager, but none was satisfying for him. He headed to Seattle partially because it was the center of the rock world at the time, thanks to the success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

Oszajca did well enough playing his songs acoustically in clubs around town to be represented by Curtis Management, the same firm that handles Pearl Jam, and to get a demo deal with Epic Records. But Epic didn’t end up signing him, and a frustrated Oszajca moved to Los Angeles in the mid-’90s.

Fearing he’d be swallowed up amid all the wannabe musicians in the city, Oszajca, who cites Dylan and Warren Zevon among his musical favorites, set out to build his own scene. He and some friends put together a sort of “performance art” band called Popism, which he describes as a sort of “glammy Velvet Underground.” They even sponsored their own theme nights at Goldfinger’s, a club in Hollywood.

Popism caused a buzz on the scene but drew no record company interest, and eventually Oszajca tired of the project. His idea from the beginning was simply to build enough contacts and connections to eventually launch his own career.

By April 1998, he was playing occasional shows at such clubs as Goldfinger’s and the Dragonfly and handing out demo tapes. David Christensen, who was then co-managing such bands as Fishbone and Steel Pulse, was impressed by the tape and started managing him.

Soundtrack Selection Brought Attention

They tried auditioning acoustically in executives’ offices with no luck, then made a polished demo. Still no takers--until veteran record producer Glen Ballard decided “Bisexual Chick,” one of the songs on the demo, was perfect for “Clubland,” a soundtrack he was putting together last year.

Kevin Weatherly, the program director at KROQ-FM, heard the song on the soundtrack album and added it to the station’s playlist. The reaction was immediate. Not only did other rock stations around the country start playing the song, but record companies also raced after Oszajca.

“The second that we were on KROQ, it was like night and day,” Christensen recalls. “On Friday, I couldn’t get anybody to return my calls. On Monday, the phones were ringing off the hook. By Wednesday, we were in New York, meeting with the heads of Columbia and Epic. By Friday, we were back in Los Angeles having breakfast at [Giant Records’] Irving Azoff’s house and lunch at [Interscope Records’] Jimmy Iovine’s house. It was like seeing the American dream come true.”

In Oszajca and Christensen’s case, it wasn’t just seeing the dream come true, but capturing it on videotape.

Soon after they started working together, Oszajca came up with the idea of videotaping his quest for a record contract. The result is a 68-minute documentary, also titled “From There to Here,” that Christensen and Interscope will use as a promotional device.

The Documentary Joins the Tour

Besides putting the documentary on the Oszajca home page on the Interscope Records Web site, Christensen has arranged for it to be shown in a theater for a night in each of the cities on Oszajca’s upcoming West Coast tour. He’s playing the Whisky on May 13, before starting that tour.

The informal documentary may also help convince skeptics that his record contract wasn’t dependent on Oszajca’s relationship with Presley.

“You know how people talk about some people being the real deal?” Christensen says. “In terms of his desire and his story of getting from A to B, he is absolutely the real deal. He literally would take a bus to record company meetings because he had no money. He lived on nothing. I think his tax return for the year we met was $8,600. So he was living at the poverty level because he wanted to make his music happen. He didn’t take a day job because he wanted to be able to promote his music and do shows.”

For his part, Oszajca’s glad that his album is finally on its way to stores.

“I must admit there were times along the way when I wondered if this [album] would ever happen,” Oszajca says. “After Seattle, I didn’t come straight to Los Angeles because I think I was intimidated. I spent about a year in Long Beach first, which was like being in Kansas . . . a completely different [musical] scene. I remember thinking at one point that my career was really over. But I didn’t know what to do. Do I move back to Seattle? Is that home? Do I go to Hawaii? Is that home? I finally decided to give it a final try. I headed for Hollywood.”