Still trying hard to rise above

In the 26 years since Daniel Johnston gave away his first homemade music cassette, the Texas-based artist has been embraced and alienated by famous musicians, signed and dropped by a major label, in and out of mental institutions, on and off meds, arrested and on life support. Known as much for his battles with manic depression as for his prolific, stripped-to-the-soul songwriting and artwork, he has endured more -- and more severe -- ups and downs than is fair for a lifetime.

At least 2006 has seen more ups than downs.

In the last two months, Sony Pictures released an award-winning documentary about Johnston’s troubled life, “The Devil and Daniel Johnston.” A drawing of his was also featured in the esteemed Whitney Biennial contemporary art show in New York.

Most recently Johnston put out, on his Eternal Yip Eye Music label, a compilation of his old recordings, “Welcome to My World.” On Thursday, the now 45-year-old musician played two shows in support of the record -- his first L.A. performances in five years.

Backstage, before playing to a sold-out crowd at Spaceland, Johnston was in good spirits, though suffering from a touch of his usual performance anxiety. He chain-smoked American Spirits, letting the ashes collect on his sweatpants. The only time he removed the cigarette from his mouth was to drink glass after glass of Coca-Cola, which he often downed in a single gulp.

Johnston has a three-pack-a-day smoking habit, and he isn’t supposed to be drinking Coke. In addition to being manic depressive, he is also diabetic. Last December he was hospitalized for three weeks with a kidney infection, which not only nearly killed him but elevated the lithium in his blood to the point that he had to be taken off the medication he’d been on (and occasionally off) for almost 15 years.

He is now taking a different med for his manic depression and, “I love it. I feel great. Very sedated,” Johnston said.

Back at home, in Waller, Texas, Johnston is living on his own for the first time in years. A couple of months ago, he moved into a house his dad designed and had built on the property next door. Previously, Johnston lived with his mother, Mabel, who is now 84, legally blind and suffering from Parkinson’s, and father William, who has a pacemaker and is 85.

Although Johnston says he is “under my own care,” his older brother Dick, 52, looks after him, supplying groceries, housekeeping and ‘70s-style cassette recorders when the ones Johnston uses inevitably break down.

Johnston doesn’t know how many songs he’s written since he started playing piano in his parents’ basement when he was in junior high. “Countless,” he says. Today, Johnston remains as prolific as ever -- writing lyrics in notebooks and practicing them on piano or guitar before recording them to cassettes, at which point the notebooks and cassettes are put away.

There are so many thousands of songs that Dick says some of them have never been heard by anyone but Daniel. Their father has two filing cabinets filled with them and Dick, who has several boxes of them himself, has recently hired Beatles’ outtake archivist Doug Sulpy to organize them all.

It’s this wealth of material that formed the basis of the recent documentary, which garnered a Sundance best director award for filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig.

As for Johnston’s reaction to the movie, “It’s pretty good. It’s entertaining, I guess,” he said. But he said the title put him “in shock.”

Originally, the film was supposed to be called “Yip! Jump! The Movie” -- a title borrowed from an early cassette of his songs, which is still popular on CD -- but it was changed toward the end of production.

“I don’t like no devil. I don’t like no devil. I don’t like the idea. I don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to talk about it,” said Johnston, who still goes to church “about once a month to see the pretty girls.”

Pretty girls are, after all, a recurring theme in his songs, both old and new, as evidenced at his recent L.A. shows.

Both were packed. About 500 people turned out for his free, 40-minute performance at Amoeba Music in Hollywood -- the largest crowd the shop has drawn for an in-store performance.

Even though the shows were to support his new “greatest hits” record, Johnston steered clear of fan favorites, such as “Casper the Friendly Ghost” and “Speeding Motorcycle.” Instead, he played about a dozen songs, most of them new.

“I just pick some of my easiest ones to play,” Johnston had said earlier.

The first half were on keyboard, the second on guitar. In characteristic Johnston fashion, his fingers stumbled and the tempo wavered, but the emotions rang true as he sang, plaintively and quivering, the lyrics that have won him so much attention from speaking his own, pained truths.

“No death can catch you,” he sang in the closing song, “if you only rise above.”