UNIVERSAL CITY, California — A surfer since he was four, Jack Johnson lives for the waves. So it's fitting the seeds of his music career were sown in the Pacific Ocean.

After graduating high school in Hawaii, Johnson spent a few years in film school, where he decided to direct some surf movies. And since his films needed a soundtrack, he recorded several laid-back acoustic jams on a guitar he learned to play when he was 15.

His friends, including budding video directors the Malloys and such surfing legends as Kelly Slater, enjoyed his movies and his music, so Johnson gave them a few bootlegs of his songs, which were then passed on and on and ...

"I'd be out in the water, I'd be surfing and people would say, 'I like your record a lot,' " Johnson recalled recently. "And I'd be like, 'I don't have a record. What are you talking about?' "

One of those surfers was Garrett Dutton, better known as G. Love. He liked Johnson's song "Rodeo Clowns" so much, he recorded it with his Special Sauce band and Johnson for the 1999 G. Love album, Philadelphonic. After the tune took off at radio, Johnson started fielding phone calls from record labels.

Around the same time, another fellow surfer, Ben Harper producer J.P. Plunier, shared his liking for Johnson's material and offered to produce his debut album. The two, along with drummer Adam Topol, convened in a studio for just seven days to record Johnson's Brushfire Fairytales.

Although he felt the album was too mellow for radio, Johnson passed it along to some disc jockeys at XTRA-FM in San Diego, who had played "Rodeo Clowns" and asked for more of his music. They began spinning "Flake" and other stations quickly followed. "After a couple of weeks it kept going and everybody was like, 'What the hell is goin' on?' " Johnson said.

After that, Johnson let the radio station guide the album. "We never really picked singles, it was kind of just whatever 91X wanted to play, and other stations would kind of follow that," he explained.

While 91X is on a fourth single, "Mudfootball," the rest of the country is still catching up with "Flake" and "Bubble Toes," which are both being spun on a variety of formats. Soon, though, programmers will have to make room for new Johnson music, as the surfer recently finished his second album and is planning on a May release.

Tentatively titled On and On, the project was produced by Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys, Beck) at his home studio in Hawaii.

"[Mario] definitely brought his own influences and stuff, but we weren't really looking to change anything," Johnson said. "It was more just kind of one of those things the way it rolled, we just became really good friends and he was really excited to ... do a record that wasn't straight hip-hop or anything. I wanted to do something similar to what I did before, just like an acoustic guitar, and so that's pretty much what it is again. He helped me get some nice tones ... and subtle things like lyrical phrasing."

Again, Johnson thinks his album might be too laid-back for the masses. "We did it in Hawaii and it's kind of hard when you're over there. It's funny, the first time I listened to it back in California I was like, 'Uh oh, it seems pretty mellow,' but back in Hawaii, anything that has any amount of edge to it at all is a little bit too crazy."

To transition into his second album, Johnson released the soundtrack to his 2000 surf movie, "The September Sessions," on Tuesday.

The album features a cover of Jimmy Buffet's "Pirate Looks at 40," the first song Johnson learned to play on guitar, along with music from G. Love, Ozomatli and DJ Greyboy.

Johnson also recorded some instrumental music for the soundtrack with Dan the Automator and other musicians under the moniker the September Sessions Band.

"Me and some friends got together and went into a studio for a day and put up the footage on the monitor and just played to it," Johnson said. "I'm a big surf fan myself so it's fun to keep watching the footage when you get home, and I have it on all the time. It's like putting on the radio for me."

Johnson shrugs off the movie ("It's hardly a film, it's just like a trip with a bunch of friends and somebody has a camera"), but the way he gracefully portrays surfers in lush landscapes explains why he has won awards for his work.

Although his music career has certainly exposed him as a filmmaker and a surfer, Johnson plans to stay behind the lens.

"I am in an old Quicksilver movie," Johnson recalled. "I was 17. During the interview I got no teeth and a big scar, a big cut on my forehead. And my lip was like really fat 'cause I just cut the whole thing off by accident while surfing, and so that's a pretty funny movie to watch."