Todd Hannigan gets into things in roundabout ways.

The Ventura-based singer-songwriter's career, flowering now with an album due out this fall and a spot on the bill for Saturday's Ventura Hillsides Music Festival, seems almost an accidental journey — at least the way the soft-spoken, 34-year-old Hannigan tells it.

At 19, not much removed from Ventura High School and a stint working on an offshore oil rig, Hannigan went to Australia alone, packing little more than a surfboard under one arm. He stayed with the only person he knew in a small town on the Land Down Under's west coast; he spent time listening to Dire Straits, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and Django Reinhardt albums.

He meandered the globe for much of the 1990s and into this decade — Indonesia, South America and points elsewhere. Ventura, his hometown since he was 4, served as a sort of tranquility base for his wanderlust, a place he returned to temporarily whenever he ran out of money.

He stayed with his supportive parents, "ate their food" and picked up menial work to help finance his vagabond ways on the global sands. He was a range picker at the Olivas Park golf course, scooping up balls while driving a tractor sitting in a metal cage.

"I'd put on the Walkman and get hit by golf balls all day," he said with a laugh.

He also was a bellman at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa and caddied there, too; "I've had a lot of odd jobs," he added.

"My parents were here," Hannigan continued, "and I always knew enough people in town where I could get work in a few days." Plus, he added with a slight smile, "the waves were still good."

What a long, somewhat strange and fractured trip it's been, one that Hannigan roughly outlined as he sat chairbound in the living room of a bandmate's midtown Ventura home long enough for an interview just before a rehearsal a couple weeks ago.

All these years later, Hannigan is frontman for the Heavy 29's — a name derived from the fact he formed the group when he was 29 and at a time when he had some heavy things going on in his life.

He's partners in a recording studio near Lake Casitas, where sound mixing and doing music for independent films are his fortes.

As he started Brotheryn Studios with two others in 2001, he was introduced to Jack Johnson. He recorded Johnson in his living room in Ventura — a place "kind of like this one" Hannigan said as he looked around the cozy surroundings, amps and instruments strewn among couches and coffee tables.

A few month later, Johnson did "Brushfire Fairytales" and exploded into what Hannigan called "this huge phenomenon."

"I liked working with Jack," he said. "He's a very mellow guy. You could tell he was on his way somewhere. Anyone who would walk into that house would say: Who is that? Can I get a copy of that?'"

Pop star Colbie Caillat rang up Hannigan last year and asked him to produce a few songs for her just before her smash "Coco" album. None of the songs they did together made it on that album, but they might be on her next one, Hannigan said.

"I still have a couple of unreleased tracks of hers laying around the studio somewhere," he said.

He's also worked with longtime pop hitmeister and area resident Kenny Loggins.

Hannigan needs neither map nor moral compass to find the heart of Saturday's Ventura Hillsides Music Festival, a benefit for efforts to preserve Ventura's foothills from development.

"I hiked up to Two Trees when I was in elementary school," he said of the verdant swath of land on the hillside.

It also ties in with the image he had of wealthy people buying hillside homes that helped inspire the title of his forthcoming album, "Volume 2: Courtside for the Apocalypse."

The more money, the better seats you have for the apocalypse, Hannigan said, not unlike a sporting event. The album is a call to action in the world arena as opposed to being a spectator.

"I'm not expecting an apocalypse anytime soon," he said, "but I am seeing things get worse."

A songwriter washes up

His world journeys flavor much of the new album, as they did "Volume 1," which came out in 2005. The new one is due out Nov. 18, the day before Hannigan turns 35. It will, he said, supply about 80 percent of the band's set list at Saturday's Hillsides Fest gig in Arroyo Verde Park.

A troubadour traveling the world and mining it for songs isn't exactly novel. Except, Hannigan noted, that's not why he did it; he globetrotted first and became a performer later.

"It wasn't a plan," he said.

Around the time he was forming Brotheryn, Hannigan learned one of his cousins, Jake Glanz, was chief engineer at Sony Studios in New York. He got an internship there as a sound engineer, working as Glanz's assistant. During the internship, Hannigan recalled, he came down with malaria he brought back with him from a surfing trip to Indonesia.

He seemed content to stay in the background, doing sound mixing for films, occasionally composing scores and contributing his music — work he does to this day. Even now, Hannigan considers sound mixing his specialty. He's worked on some 40-plus films, many of them surfing films and/or small indies.

Somewhere along the line, colleagues suggested he start playing. He wrote and performed the title track to the surfing film "Thicker Than Water," an endeavor that reunited him with Johnson and the surfing Malloy brothers — Chris, Emmett, Dan and Keith.

Johnson scored the soundtrack, contributed songs and co-directed the documentary with Chris and Emmett Malloy. Hannigan has known the Malloys a long time — in fact, it was Keith who introduced him to Johnson.

Hannigan used to surf with Johnson along the Rincon and off Montecito, though he noted Johnson is hard to contact now. He still hangs out with the Malloys; "lots of barbecues," he said.

The film and record studio work produced Hannigan the performer.

"I got into songwriting in sort of a backward fashion," he said.

The new vibes

A bit of Johnson's cool-cat, just-chillin' vibe can be heard in Hannigan's music. Like Johnson, Hannigan leans into that mellow surf music, alt-rock, acoustic-folk realm.

Ventura's the inspiration for two "Volume 2" songs — "Fast Lane" and "Heavy 29's."

"Fast Lane," Hannigan explained, is a tune about growing up and coming of age in a topsy-turvy world, yet still "hanging onto that special place."

The "Heavy 29's" song was a communal effort. One line reads: Life can get expensive when it's always your Friday / Too bad it's your Monday, get out of our way.

"All my friends wrote this song," Hannigan, who lives in the Pierpont area, said with a smile.

"We passed a typewriter around the room and everyone had to write a sentence. We did it at a barbecue."

Sprinkled throughout the album is Hannigan's concern for the state of the planet. On "Even the Sun," he writes of being "crushed by the weight of the material age"; on "Maybe," he pens "The world is upside down and it makes me sick."

A line from "Things Are Gonna Change" goes: Gonna have to problem solve, got to make some decisions / The men in the suits are just being some chickens.

"It's a wakeup call for all of us, myself included," Hannigan said of the album theme.

On "Flowers," he writes: All the flaws, we were bound to fail / But I'll leave it for the Sespe trail / Hear the sirens of the blue, blue whale / And the water of purest rain / And the flowers they came back again.

Jammin' and surfin'

At the recent rehearsal, Hannigan and bandmates Brent Harding (drums), Joe Baugh (lead guitar) and Sam Bolle (bass) whipped through a nice rendition of "Stay Awhile," as well as other songs. Hannigan sang and played rhythm guitar.

They worked on chording behind melodies, transitioning out of solos, holding vocal harmonies and scads of nitpicky details casual concertgoers likely never even notice.

They mulled the idea of taking a gig opening for Sharon Little, who won raves this year as an opening act for the Alison Krauss-Robert Plant tour.

They also reveled in the easygoing banter bands often have. A brief discussion of reggae music — they're big fans — led to a faux reggae riff and parodic singing from Hannigan that brought gales of laughter.

Things ground to a halt when a friend came through the front door. Suddenly, something else had higher priority; Hannigan looked up and said, "How's the surf?" The reply was short and swift — "Good."

Hannigan had gone surfing in the morning before the rehearsal, and planned to do so again after it ended in the afternoon.

He is hanging onto a special place, surrounded by friends and family who were there from the start.

For all his world travels and his work with Jack Johnson, Colbie Caillat and filmmakers, Todd Hannigan still has the stamp of a Ventura homeboy.