‘A memorable and unique musician’
Chris Johnson - known both professionally and socially as Chris Fish - was a musician’s musician. An artist with an infinite capacity to improvise, prolific and inclusive, in a career that exceeded four decades he consistently resisted labels or genre classification, joyfully pushing himself and his collaborators into new, unexplored areas of experimentation. Says one bandmate of his friend, “he just felt it, felt the music, not really aware of chords...he completely fused with the instrument... music just came out of him”.
Christopher Johnson was born December 23, 1960, in Goomalling, Perth, Australia, the youngest of the four children of Leonard Adrian Johnson and Muriel Constance Johnson (nee Nayler).
Chris’s early years were spent on his parent's isolated Goomalling farm. Whilst his siblings attended boarding schools, Chris did not, a fact that meant his upbringing was closer to that of an only child. He developed an independent spirit.
As he approached school age, Chris's family moved to Safety Bay, Rockingham, Perth. Primary and intermediate education came at the hands of nuns, in a school that happily backed onto the beach.
Chris attended Rockingham Senior High School. He gained a Board of Secondary Education Achievement Certificate in 1976. The following year was spent studying at Fremantle Technical College, where he completed a Certificate in Sheep, Wool Classing, Shearing and Animal Husbandry.
Chris’s 18th year served as his musical awakening. Completing a Certificate in Audio Engineering, he acquired a second hand guitar.
No doubt the guitar was taken to the various outback sheep farms on which he subsequently found work and around Australia, as he traversed the island continent on motorbike with a friend. However, it took something serious for him to fall in love with the instrument.
Left paralysed in his right arm after a car accident, Chris retreated to sister Michelle's farm. Rehabilitation came via hard work but also through repetitive practice on the guitar. The more he played, the more feeling he regained in the injured limb. By the time he had fully recovered, he was an accomplished musician.
Exposure to early Flying Nun recordings piqued Chris's interest in New Zealand. Arriving in 1980, he initially found a job at a dairy factory in Frankton. After a period working in the bush, he took a position with the Tauranga Public Hospital.
Whilst living on the coast Chris founded his first New Zealand band, Some Social Deviants. They played punk and gigged on occasion with the country music singer Ritchie Pickett, who had an unlikely enthusiasm for the genre. If the outfit ran its course - “it got too rock ‘n’ roll and disintegrated", Chris later said - it wasn't before releasing their sole EP, Snearing a Pig. Relocating back to Hamilton in the mid-1980s, Chris joined an established pop band, Three Men Missing. His new bandmates were instantly attracted to an artist that one describes, affectionately, as an “outrageous character, game for anything”. Chris had the capacity to improvise on the spot, his instincts proving flawless. When recording, he always nailed a performance on the first take. The band's EP, Days on the Island was released in 1987.
Chris began a relationship with Three Men Missing's talented singer, Rhonda Hofmans. He formed a lasting bond with drummer Max Ward and was instrumental in encouraging a younger bass guitarist, Scott Brodie.
For Brodie, rehearsals at Rhonda's mother's farm constituted the best form of musical education. He describes Chris as “an open and creative person”, one who responded to “any sort of crazy ideas" with the positive refrain, “that's great!” Facilitating an atmosphere of purest creativity, where the starting point was the proverbial blank canvas and the end point a completed song, Three Men Missing came to an end in 1990. The same year Chris studied toward and completed a Trade Certificate in Advanced Farm Management.
Chris and Rhonda were married 31 January, 1991 in Safety Bay, Rockingham, Perth. Their only child, Angelesse Johnson, was born later the same year in Hamilton. Chris was to prove a loving father and grandfather, his creativity extending beyond music. A considerable builder, Rhonda says that "he was always transforming our outside living areas into...wonderful, peaceful creative place[s] to be".
In their early married life, Chris and Rhonda worked on dairy farms in Cambridge, Kio Kio and Morrinsville. Chris struck a balance between his working and domestic responsibilities and on-going musical projects.
Hoola Troupe was a hard rock band which lasted from 1988 to 1991, in which Chris again played guitar. In 1993 he joined the synth-heavy Love & Violence, featuring the Newth brothers, Scott and Andrew, a band which aspired to be, in Scott's words, "a bit darker, more industrial and [a] lot more brash". Grok, described by some as a Hamilton "supergroup", brought together Chris, Max Ward and Scott Brodie, together with Scott's brother Grant on keyboards. The name was a reversal of that which adorned Chris' Korg MS10 keyboard. He played the instrument with one foot, using the other to tweak a four track to record and play back audience and stage noise during shows. Grok improvised all its material and was in that sense the perfect band for an artist of Chris's talents. In 1996 it won the Contact 89FM Battle of the Bands competition, earning some Waikato Times publicity. The following year Grok released its only CD, Bubbles and Noises from the Aquarium.
In 1998, with Grok at an end, Chris, Rhonda and Max Ward established Beat Angels, an acoustic group described as "hypnotic folk". Initial recordings at the Rock 93 studio supported a modest grant application to the local arts council, leading to an album being recorded on Chris and Rhonda's Ōtorohanga farm. The music attracted some interest from universities on the West Coast of the United States. To capitalise on this, the band was required to change its name. Moofish, the new moniker which served as both band and album name, proved sufficiently enticing to ensure the album entered the College Music Journal Radio Charts.
Moofish was the band name under which Chris and Rhonda were to perform until the end of Chris's life. At times featuring other musicians and incorporating a side project entitled Dak Jandels, it saw the couple gig extensively around the Waikato and later far further afield. At the dawn of the new century Chris and Rhonda ceased farming and settled in Te Awamutu. Chris resumed study, completing a Bachelor of Information Technology in 2004. In 2007 Chris and Rhonda shifted to Canada. Chris took up a position rolling out computer technology to indigenous people on reservations, a job in which he was sincerely invested. Although travelling extensively, Ottawa became a base.
Not confident in his abilities to play the blues, the local music of choice, Chris nevertheless performed regularly at a popular bar, Irene's. Moofish, who enjoyed playing open night mics and other, more formal gigs, was accepted to perform at the Ottawa Folk Festival.
Chris’s work saw him collaborate with eight Cuban professors as well some Canadian academics on several computer books, employing Cuban methodology to incorporate indigenous concepts into mainstream learning. Chris and Rhonda returned to New Zealand in 2015. After a period of self-employment he worked 2017-2019 as a civil servant.
From 2019 onwards Chris dedicated himself to full-time recording, largely for pleasure. As Moofish, he and Rhonda sustained a prolific output, recording numerous singles and albums as well as conceiving, shooting and editing their own music videos.
In 2022, with Scott Brodie returning from London for a visit, the original line-up of Grok reformed for a one-off gig at Last Place, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bubbles and Noises from the Aquarium.
In the opinion of Scott Newth, Chris's performance that night demonstrated that he had "lost none of his zest or craft as a memorable and unique musician”. Moofish’s last completed album, Entropia, was released in November, 2023.
Christopher Johnson died suddenly, February 12, 2024.
He is survived by Rhonda, his wife of 33 years, daughter Angelesse, son-in-law Connor and two grandchildren.