For Tom Johnson, the freelance music days are still fresh in his mind.

That time period where he took a break from college to travel from town to town to play a set or run a soundboard. That time when he made so little money that the IRS considered his profession a hobby. That time when he could tell you every restaurant in Lawrence that served a cheap bowl of soup.

Those days are done now. Johnson, 30, ended up settling down with a job as a general manager for a student-run radio station, with a wife, and with a house that actually is just a few blocks from his childhood home in Deerfield.

But Johnson — one of eight candidates running for the Lawrence City Commission — thinks it is important that he still remembers what it is like to be young and in Lawrence.

“Anybody can look at the candidates and realize I’m still wet behind the ears, comparatively,” Johnson said. “But I do really think I understand people between the ages of 18 and 35.

“I’ve seen how many people my age or younger are either underrepresented or disenfranchised. It doesn’t have to be that way, especially in Lawrence.”

Johnson also is taking a new generation approach to campaigning. The bulk of his campaigning is done on the Internet, and Johnson also is the only candidate in the field who has pledged to raise no more than $500 for the campaign.

“When we’re stressing frugality as a nation and that we need to pare back, I think it is almost ludicrous to solicit and spend ten or twenty thousand dollars on a City Commission election,” Johnson said. “Our motto is, if you have that much disposable income, consider donating it to a social service agency.”

But Johnson insists that his lack of fundraising won’t stop him from being a serious contender for one of the three seats up for grabs. He said it just will require a little more creativity on his part.

For example, instead of spending money on campaign yard signs, Johnson is offering to send volunteers to the homes of campaign supporters to make homemade signs.

“If you can come up with the plywood or the pizza box, we’ve got the stencils,” Johnson said. “We will create some political yard art for you.”

At the zoo

That’s the type of idea Johnson may come across in his job. Johnson is the Kansas University employee who serves as the general manager and adviser to the students who run KJHK radio.

The job lets Johnson — who has his music degree from KU and is classically trained on the trombone and bass — work with about 150 students per year.

“I love the environment,” Johnson said. “It is great to sometimes just let it be a zoo and see what they come up with. I like that type of creativity.”

But Johnson doesn’t subscribe to such a laissez-faire approach when it comes to growth and development in the city.

“If you are not trying to manage your growth, you are going to have problems,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he thinks the city has overbuilt in the housing and apartment markets, and said he is concerned that the city sometimes equates construction with economic development.

“I don’t want us to get in a situation where we just want to keep construction jobs going,” Johnson said. “It is going to be tough times for the next couple of years, but we don’t want to sell our residents a bill of goods for temporary gain.”

Johnson said he also worries that all the growth has changed some of the character of the city that he grew up in. As a freelance musician, he lived briefly for a time in Boulder, Colo., and said Lawrence once was a progressive city on the same scale as Boulder. Now, he’s not so sure.

“From a development perspective, we have surged forward in the last 10 years,” Johnson said. “But from a city identity perspective, we haven’t grown that much in the last 10 years.”

The issues

Keeping with his next generation theme, Johnson wants the city to start reaching out more to 18 to 25 year olds in an effort to create new jobs.

“We need to keep the people who will build your start-up companies of tomorrow,” Johnson said. “The people who will ultimately determine how successful we are with job growth are 18 to 25 years old today.”

Johnson said he wants the city to consider spending city funds to help start up companies with marketing and promotional dollars to help them get their ventures off the ground.

He also wants the city to consider creating a special Lawrence minimum wage that would be above the state minimum wage. Unlike the current living wage, all companies would be required to pay the new minimum wage.

“I think that will help create jobs because people won’t have to work two or three jobs,” said Johnson, who said such a program would have to be a multi-year effort in order to give businesses time to adjust.

On other issues, Johnson said:

• He’s “on the fence” about whether he would increase property taxes to avoid some cuts in the city’s budget.

• He would lobby against across-the-board cuts for social service agencies in Lawrence, despite a tight city budget.

“I can’t stress enough that this is the glue that keeps our neediest Lawrencians going on a month-to-month basis,” Johnson said.