IN THE RECORDING STUDIO at the back of the 1920s Craftsman-style bungalow that serves as Brushfire Records' Los
Angeles headquarters, Jack Johnson taps out a groove on the snare and high hat while he whomp-whomps a bass drum with his foot. Johnson, 32, has put aside his guitar this November afternoon because this evening he'll be playing percussion for his piano player, Zach Gill, who's recording the first few tracks for an upcoming solo album. At the moment, Gill and a half dozen others are standing in the backyard, near an open entrance to the studio. In a scene that merges Home Improvement with Entourage, a woman from the healing center next door pops her head over the fence. "Is there any way you guys can shut that door?" she asks. "We're doing massages and stuff."

Someone in the Brushfire crowd quickly obliges. Maybe it's not what the guys in Pete Doherty's posse would have done. But Jack Johnson is a low-impact, less-is-more kind of guy. You hear it in his music—catchy little pop songs backed by spare guitar strumming that even at top volume are pretty inoffensive. You also see it in his Hawaiian country lifestyle. Johnson lives close to Pipeline, near his childhood home on Oahu's North Shore, and his free time is focused on family and friends, surfing, and using his celebrity status to help slow the despoliation of the islands. Not exactly the setup you might expect from an international rock star—and while Johnson doesn't seem entirely comfortable with that role, he's stuck with it.

Johnson has sold nearly six million copies of his 2005 release, In Between Dreams. Add in the rest of his discography, which includes a kid-friendly soundtrack for the 2006 movie Curious George, and his total sales top 13 million. He's something of an accidental icon, a surf filmmaker who became a multiplatinum recording phenom without really trying, and his noncommercial image is part of his appeal. "People see Jack as the anti-bling," says Mark Cunningham, a champion bodysurfer and former lifeguard at Pipeline. "He's a backlash to all that crap."

While he's not so radical that he gives away his CDs or sells concert tickets for $5, Johnson does have his rage—OK, exasperation—against the machine. At one point during the afternoon, he sticks out his puffy bottom lip, closes his eyes, and earnestly sings a line he loves from Fugazi's 1990 tune "Merchandise": "You are not what you own." Back in the day, he wore a T-shirt that said the same. "It was music that had a real message," he told me.

Johnson's music has a message, too, but it's not so much in the songs as in how he brings them to the public. He's toured on a biodiesel bus since 2005, and he requires that performance venues buy carbon offsets for every show and compost the organic waste from his concerts. He's staged the Kokua Festival in Oahu each spring since 2004—playing with friends like Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, and Willie Nelson—and donates proceeds to the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which he started to support environmental education in schools.

With the recent remodeling of the Brushfire offices, he and his business partner, Emmett Malloy—cousin of the pro-surfer Malloy brothers, Chris, Keith, and Dan—now operate one of the most eco-minded record companies in the industry. The Brushfire studios run on electricity provided by 32 rooftop solar panels; the building is insulated with blue-jeans scraps and outfitted with compact fluorescent lighting and low-flush toilets. Johnson even recorded Sleep Through the Static, his new album, which hits stores in February, in analog, on a hand-me-down 24-track Studer deck that reportedly once taped a David Bowie album.

Still, the reason millions of people buy Jack Johnson albums isn't because of his toilets or the fact that he donates 1 percent of his profits to environmental causes. It's because of his rootsy, campfire vibe and a distinctive sixties sensibility, which he's reclaimed for the new millennium. "I'm a hippie," he says. "I just have short hair."