Illustrator: Rougine Kazemi
Publishing date: Dec, 05, 2024
Australian singer-songwriter, James Johnston, who kick-started his career at the young age of 17 on Australian Idol and The X-Factor is on the rise. From national TV to releasing his own songs and touring across Australia and South Africa, his journey has been an exciting one. Now, as a rising country artist with small-town roots, he’s ready to make international waves.
_
What inspired you to pursue music?
For me, it was never really an option to pursue music. I started singing when I was four years old, maybe even before that, but music was not part of my family story or anything like that. My sister was getting piano lessons, she had just started and I was there, as a little 3 or 4 year old, and I just started singing along and they were like, “Oh, you can sing”. Pretty much from that time, I went on stage at four. And ever since then, if people knew me, it was ‘James the singer’, it was just always linked, and country music was part of that. The first song I sang was “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks. I don’t ever think it was an option. It wasn’t something I had to think about pursuing. It was just kind of what I did.
How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it before?
I think there’s a celebration of simple values. I want to celebrate country life, a lot of my songs are about my upbringing. My first big single was “Raised Like That”, which celebrates coming from a small town, being a small town country kid. When people listen to my music, I want them to feel seen, either for that 9 to 5 job they’re working or that little small town they grew up in, it’s actually something to be celebrated, something to be proud of. As a kid that grew up in a small town, I always thought something was better outside of it until I went outside and realized I actually had it pretty good, and I want my music to celebrate those ideas.
What was your journey like from ‘Australian Idol’ to now releasing a debut studio album?
Australian Idol happened many years ago. I’m kind of giving my age away but it was almost 15 years ago. I was 17 and I had moved from my little hometown that had 2500 thousand people, this town called Wingham, and I went on Australian Idol, and that was this crazy experience. All of a sudden I was put into the big city, into Sydney, and it was on national TV. But, the way it goes with reality TV shows, what goes up comes back pretty quickly. Six months later I was playing to nobody in a bar, I went from being on National TV, then kind of, not being able to walk down the street. Six months later, you’re kind of forgotten about and it’s onto the next thing. So I think it was a good lesson going through that process because I think I realized that it’s not guaranteed, you’ve got to do your own music, you have to tell your own story. When I was doing the TV show, I was just kind of singing other people’s songs. I didn’t think I was an artist. I was just a singer at that point, I ended up buying a van and I lived on the road for five years. I traveled around Australia just living in a van playing bars wherever I could get a gig, five nights a week, just doing the grind, I played a couple thousand shows. I think I learned a lot from doing that, and then when it kind of came full circle and I finally had a song released, I think having all those shows and all that behind me was really important.
How do you deal with being in the public eye?
I find it really easy, I genuinely do. I think the reason being is, going through Australian Idol, I was always playing like a version of myself, so I was playing a character of sorts. They’d say sing a rock song or then sing like a jazz song, then sing a country song. I didn’t really know who I was, so I would just be this character. Then when I put out my original music, the one thing that I said was really important is that I just don’t want to fake it. I just want to be 100% me, in every interview and through my music, when I’m on stage, so I find it really easy. If someone meets me on the street, I’d like to think that I’m exactly the same person that they’d see on stage, that they see on social media. I don’t find it difficult at all.
You often sing about the joys and the hardships of rural life. What do you hope listeners from the city may take away from your music?
Because my music celebrates country life a lot, and as I said, there are songs in there that talk about the hardship, but a lot of my music celebrates it. If people from the city haven’t grown up with that, I want them to kind of feel what we feel when you do grow up like that or you do live that life through my music. If you haven’t been in that world, if you didn’t grow up on a farm or any of that sort of stuff, it’s often hard to resonate what that feeling is like, but I think if you listen to my music, you go, “Oh, that sounds like a pretty cool life, like I need to go and experience that.” I think at the moment people are loving country music, it’s kind of blown up around the world, and I think because some of those simple values have gotten lost, people really resonate with the lyrics and these stories.
Like what you saw? Here’s more:
Mark Ambor: Road from Rockwood
The October Releases We’ve Set Reminders For
Kaytranada’s ‘Timeless’ Tour 2024 Kicks Off in Vancouver