April 11, 2026 • 11 mins
Kiwi singer-songwriter Greg Johnson is celebrating his 60th birthday with a career-spanning national tour.
His new upcoming album Somenight, Somewhere is out this October, but the tour will cover decades of hits from over the course of his career.
He says he's been reflecting on his career over the years, and he's learned a lot about his own creative abilities.
"There's a consistent thing I've come to understand about myself, and that is that the one constant I've had ever since I can absolutely remember is music."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
This is London the latest single from La based Kiwi
singer songwriter Greg Johnson. It's off his upcoming album Some
Night Somewhere, which is out this October. Now, Greg has
hit a bit of a milestone in life. Some of
us hide away from the big birthdays and getting older,
but some others, like Greg, book a big party in
(00:33):
the form of a six date career spanning tour of
their home country. What a way to celebrate Greg Johnson
sixty is traveling around New Zealand this October, and Greg
Johnson joins me now from La.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Good morning, How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I love the way you're turning sixty in such a
public way. Was this your idea? No?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You know what, it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I've spent most of my life pretending to be just
a little bit younger than I was actually, and then
we all and then yeah, like everyone else, and then
I guess finally I thought, you know, there's a point
where when I turned sixty, I was like, Wow, I've
I'm kind of officially sort of ancient now I am
everywhere I go everyone seems younger, you know, the pilots
(01:18):
get on, I think, gosh, they look young. The cops
come down, they go, what's that boy talking to me about?
And it's like that, now I'm that old conscious So
I thought I'm Rather than just try and pretend you're not,
I figured I'll just say it now. In fact, I
might even say I'm even older. I might say I'm seventeen,
and then you get that you still get the old.
Oh gosh, you look pretty good. I wouldn't have picture
(01:39):
it at more than sixty five.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, what is the sixty Is the new fifty.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Isn't it. Well, I guess we won't see it. Hopefully
it's not the new eighty for me or something.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
But it seems like you're as you're as young as
your mind is.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Really.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
I suppose my dad's eighty eight and he's kicking around
with his Danish girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I mean, they're.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
At the time of their lives at that age, and
so I think there's no it's really up to up
to you, isn't It's how well you feel and what
you can get away with.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Obviously, not everyone's that lucky.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Completely, No, I completely agree with you. There's lots of
different ages, isn't there there's biological, chronological, psychological. I claim
I'm sort of worried about thirty five when it comes
to my psychological age. So there we go.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
How yeah, and there are teenagers who are more like
our old grandmothers than we as well. Oh don't go
out of sweet I'm going to be missing. It's like
good grief. It really does skip a generation sometimes, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That stuff?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Does it make you a little reflective though over your
life and career.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
But I think that was the fifties was when the
angst was kicked in and I thought, my god, I've
made some stupid decisions.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I should have been so much more.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I could have been this, could have been that, And
you wrestle with all of that, and you think of
the moments when you said no and you should have
said yes, and vice versa. But all of the things,
there's a consistent thing that I've come to I suppose
I understand about myself, and that is that the one
constant I've had ever since I can absolutely remember as music.
(03:18):
It's just the one thing is consistent and always, no
matter what, never let me down and saved me more
times than you know, than a cat and a room
full of rocke and chairs or whatever. But that so
that's why I think it's important to just keep doing music.
And I'm well, I'm excited about making this new records
(03:41):
because it's actually I'm kind of figuring out my own
strick a bit better. And it takes a long time
to do that. Long people would agree no matter what
they do, it takes a while to figure it out.
And then you know, yeah, then you die.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I thought I thought that was so positive there, Greg
and then at the end, but actually I like that.
I like that that that's really interesting that you sort
of had that little moment of angst at fifty and
now yet to a point, don't you when you go, actually,
I'm here, I'm living. I'm not going to worry about
what people think so much anymore. I'm just gonna do me,
be me. And you know it's too.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Late, Yeah, it's far too late.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Now there's no more pretending you are what you are.
And the thing is, you know, you've got to realize
I guess depending as long as you're happy, it doesn't
really matter. I mean, I'm the happiest people I know
are gardeners, you know, professional gardeners and people like that.
(04:42):
They just spend their life in a good place, you.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Know, when your god, So when you sort of because
you've you've said that the tour is going to cover
music from right throughout your career. It's going to be
a memorable journey, which it's very much to be, especially
for someone like me who's followed you from very early on.
Do you enjoys revisiting the different areas of your career.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, that is always fun, and that that's very much.
You know, It's it's forty years since my first singles
were out now, and so of course I don't really
remember much about them either, and I can't really tell
you what they're about. So you kind of re you
do re evaluate, and some of them some of them
new years later.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I'll hear a song, go, that's what that song is about?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Right? That's interesting. You can remember all these songs? Can't
you agree that you're going to play for us?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Well, I will have to have rehearse extensively, poured over
the records and go, what bloody card is that?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
But does it also give you a chance? Does it also?
But does it also give you a chance to play
around and you know, find a freshness in bringing them
live again.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Oh totally.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It's it's really, I mean, I'm lucky in that I've got,
you know, really extensive catalog to choose from, and all
without bragging, but I've got like, lit'll be fourteen albums,
So that's one hundred and forty songs, and let's say
even you know, let's be honest, maybe twenty percent of
those are going to be any good, but it still
gives you thirty great song choose from, and so you know,
(06:22):
and you'd throw in the odd album track and the
odd because the thing about my audience is that they
they do know some of them do at least know
a lot of the radio ones that I.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Used to have back in the day that Save Yourselves
and Isabel's.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
But there's also other years of touring I've built up,
you know, at least a dozen or more songs that
were never on any radio station, never will be, but
we've developed in live and people kind of love the
story of them or whatever whatever reason.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
So you know, I mean, there are some advantages of
sticking with it.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, you're playing some beautiful venues on this tour. The
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Old and Paul's. What was the thinking
behind these types of venues.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
We always try and keep it, mix it up a
little bit, and it's never a flight on the venue
prior or very seldom. It's always you know, as an audience,
I know that my people like to go. They don't
mind dressing up, but they don't mind going somewhere different.
They like theaters, but they don't always want to be
(07:23):
in the theater as well.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
So it's like it just keeps it interesting.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
And I think those kind of spaces are also kind
of quite fluid in that if you get a surge
of population, you can expand them a bit. In anethis,
you know, if it's five or six hundred, it still
looks great. So it's it's a lot of it's pragmatic.
But as you say, they're all beautiful, all really beautiful venues,
(07:50):
you know. So yeah, looking forward to that a little bit,
a little bit of a lot of a lot of churches.
The one in Wellington is beautiful. The old Saint Paul's
now that's actually a historic building now and they use
for all kinds of things. We played there a couple
of years ago and it was I mean, it's the
(08:12):
most beautiful wooden building.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
It sounded incredible in there.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
So yeah, it's gonna be good to have you back Greek.
By my calculations, you left the country about probably twenty
four years ago. Was it how long you've been in La?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
That's yeah, that is exactly right. It's hard to believe,
isn't it. That's like where did it? Someone go?
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, that's that's how long it's been. And it's it's
been through a lot of changes everywhere, hasn't it. Everywhere's
everywhere's different than it was. But yeah, it's interesting interesting times.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Certainly is has it been? What did mov in La
do for your career? Has it panned out sort of
the way you thought it would? You know? What's kept
you there?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
No? I don't think it ever does?
Speaker 4 (08:59):
I mean, no, it didn't because of the intention. You know,
of course we think it will go to La, sign
a big deal and then sell some all records and
get rich, get a place up Malibu Drive.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
No, I don't carry on. People have told better stories
than that. But what it did do was.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Break a kind of I guess boredom that I had
reached where I was and so there's only certain times
in your life where you can really set up sticks
and just guard. And I was at that point. I
had no children and no relationship, and so I just thought,
now's the time. We've you know, got to get a shot.
(09:42):
And what the hell, you know. I've got a bit
of radio in the US and sold a few reks,
but it was a very few, and met my wife
and got my had my studio, I've got my daughter,
she's California now. So just lived a life, you know.
It was except I had fine weather the whole time,
(10:02):
which was really actually strangely important for me because I
really getting I get really bummed out by that gray
wind that just I don't know something in my ancient
Irish ancestry that says, Greg, get out of.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
There when you wouldn't want to be here today, that's
for sure. Yeah, No, we're getting through. Hey, so excited
that you're coming back. You do enjoy coming back or beforming,
don't you?
Speaker 4 (10:29):
You do?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Dint a love b which is great?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
I absolutely love it. I mean, that's the thing I've
been to way twenty four years.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I've been back at least twenty four, if not forty
eight times, and every time. It's wonderful and I'm never
there long enough to get to know who to complain
about politics, or whether or not the council is doing well,
or any of that stuff that I really don't actually
care about. I just get back enough to play some music,
see a bunch of cool people, and you know, it's
(10:57):
quite quite a fantasy world in some ways, but you
know it's going to be great fun. We've got a
bit of a lead up to it, but pre sales
ont plus one dot co dot z our wonderful man
Kirk Shanks and his wonderful touring company that brings in
all the decent mid size set of acts from everywhere.
(11:17):
It's not Live Nation somewhere else, so yeah, it's good
to support. We'll have the usual crowd, Wayne Bell and
Mark Hughes.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And literally giving an old band back together again.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Oh love, Yeah, nice exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Greg, It's been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you
so much for your time this morning. Greg Johnson's sixty
tours throughout New Zealand from late October. General ticket sales
start on Thursday, but for early access, you can sign
up for the pre sale at plus one dot co
dot NZ.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
live to News Talk z B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
This is London the latest single from La based Kiwi
singer songwriter Greg Johnson. It's off his upcoming album Some
Night Somewhere, which is out this October. Now, Greg has
hit a bit of a milestone in life. Some of
us hide away from the big birthdays and getting older,
but some others, like Greg, book a big party in
(00:33):
the form of a six date career spanning tour of
their home country. What a way to celebrate Greg Johnson
sixty is traveling around New Zealand this October, and Greg
Johnson joins me now from La.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Good morning, How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I love the way you're turning sixty in such a
public way. Was this your idea? No?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You know what, it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I've spent most of my life pretending to be just
a little bit younger than I was actually, and then
we all and then yeah, like everyone else, and then
I guess finally I thought, you know, there's a point
where when I turned sixty, I was like, Wow, I've
I'm kind of officially sort of ancient now I am
everywhere I go everyone seems younger, you know, the pilots
(01:18):
get on, I think, gosh, they look young. The cops
come down, they go, what's that boy talking to me about?
And it's like that, now I'm that old conscious So
I thought I'm Rather than just try and pretend you're not,
I figured I'll just say it now. In fact, I
might even say I'm even older. I might say I'm seventeen,
and then you get that you still get the old.
Oh gosh, you look pretty good. I wouldn't have picture
(01:39):
it at more than sixty five.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, what is the sixty Is the new fifty.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Isn't it. Well, I guess we won't see it. Hopefully
it's not the new eighty for me or something.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
But it seems like you're as you're as young as
your mind is.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Really.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
I suppose my dad's eighty eight and he's kicking around
with his Danish girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I mean, they're.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
At the time of their lives at that age, and
so I think there's no it's really up to up
to you, isn't It's how well you feel and what
you can get away with.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Obviously, not everyone's that lucky.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Completely, No, I completely agree with you. There's lots of
different ages, isn't there there's biological, chronological, psychological. I claim
I'm sort of worried about thirty five when it comes
to my psychological age. So there we go.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
How yeah, and there are teenagers who are more like
our old grandmothers than we as well. Oh don't go
out of sweet I'm going to be missing. It's like
good grief. It really does skip a generation sometimes, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That stuff?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Does it make you a little reflective though over your
life and career.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
But I think that was the fifties was when the
angst was kicked in and I thought, my god, I've
made some stupid decisions.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I should have been so much more.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I could have been this, could have been that, And
you wrestle with all of that, and you think of
the moments when you said no and you should have
said yes, and vice versa. But all of the things,
there's a consistent thing that I've come to I suppose
I understand about myself, and that is that the one
constant I've had ever since I can absolutely remember as music.
(03:18):
It's just the one thing is consistent and always, no
matter what, never let me down and saved me more
times than you know, than a cat and a room
full of rocke and chairs or whatever. But that so
that's why I think it's important to just keep doing music.
And I'm well, I'm excited about making this new records
(03:41):
because it's actually I'm kind of figuring out my own
strick a bit better. And it takes a long time
to do that. Long people would agree no matter what
they do, it takes a while to figure it out.
And then you know, yeah, then you die.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I thought I thought that was so positive there, Greg
and then at the end, but actually I like that.
I like that that that's really interesting that you sort
of had that little moment of angst at fifty and
now yet to a point, don't you when you go, actually,
I'm here, I'm living. I'm not going to worry about
what people think so much anymore. I'm just gonna do me,
be me. And you know it's too.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Late, Yeah, it's far too late.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Now there's no more pretending you are what you are.
And the thing is, you know, you've got to realize
I guess depending as long as you're happy, it doesn't
really matter. I mean, I'm the happiest people I know
are gardeners, you know, professional gardeners and people like that.
(04:42):
They just spend their life in a good place, you.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Know, when your god, So when you sort of because
you've you've said that the tour is going to cover
music from right throughout your career. It's going to be
a memorable journey, which it's very much to be, especially
for someone like me who's followed you from very early on.
Do you enjoys revisiting the different areas of your career.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, that is always fun, and that that's very much.
You know, It's it's forty years since my first singles
were out now, and so of course I don't really
remember much about them either, and I can't really tell
you what they're about. So you kind of re you
do re evaluate, and some of them some of them
new years later.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I'll hear a song, go, that's what that song is about?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Right? That's interesting. You can remember all these songs? Can't
you agree that you're going to play for us?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Well, I will have to have rehearse extensively, poured over
the records and go, what bloody card is that?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
But does it also give you a chance? Does it also?
But does it also give you a chance to play
around and you know, find a freshness in bringing them
live again.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Oh totally.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It's it's really, I mean, I'm lucky in that I've got,
you know, really extensive catalog to choose from, and all
without bragging, but I've got like, lit'll be fourteen albums,
So that's one hundred and forty songs, and let's say
even you know, let's be honest, maybe twenty percent of
those are going to be any good, but it still
gives you thirty great song choose from, and so you know,
(06:22):
and you'd throw in the odd album track and the
odd because the thing about my audience is that they
they do know some of them do at least know
a lot of the radio ones that I.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Used to have back in the day that Save Yourselves
and Isabel's.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
But there's also other years of touring I've built up,
you know, at least a dozen or more songs that
were never on any radio station, never will be, but
we've developed in live and people kind of love the
story of them or whatever whatever reason.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
So you know, I mean, there are some advantages of
sticking with it.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, you're playing some beautiful venues on this tour. The
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Old and Paul's. What was the thinking
behind these types of venues.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
We always try and keep it, mix it up a
little bit, and it's never a flight on the venue
prior or very seldom. It's always you know, as an audience,
I know that my people like to go. They don't
mind dressing up, but they don't mind going somewhere different.
They like theaters, but they don't always want to be
(07:23):
in the theater as well.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
So it's like it just keeps it interesting.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
And I think those kind of spaces are also kind
of quite fluid in that if you get a surge
of population, you can expand them a bit. In anethis,
you know, if it's five or six hundred, it still
looks great. So it's it's a lot of it's pragmatic.
But as you say, they're all beautiful, all really beautiful venues,
(07:50):
you know. So yeah, looking forward to that a little bit,
a little bit of a lot of a lot of churches.
The one in Wellington is beautiful. The old Saint Paul's
now that's actually a historic building now and they use
for all kinds of things. We played there a couple
of years ago and it was I mean, it's the
(08:12):
most beautiful wooden building.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
It sounded incredible in there.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
So yeah, it's gonna be good to have you back Greek.
By my calculations, you left the country about probably twenty
four years ago. Was it how long you've been in La?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
That's yeah, that is exactly right. It's hard to believe,
isn't it. That's like where did it? Someone go?
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, that's that's how long it's been. And it's it's
been through a lot of changes everywhere, hasn't it. Everywhere's
everywhere's different than it was. But yeah, it's interesting interesting times.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Certainly is has it been? What did mov in La
do for your career? Has it panned out sort of
the way you thought it would? You know? What's kept
you there?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
No? I don't think it ever does?
Speaker 4 (08:59):
I mean, no, it didn't because of the intention. You know,
of course we think it will go to La, sign
a big deal and then sell some all records and
get rich, get a place up Malibu Drive.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
No, I don't carry on. People have told better stories
than that. But what it did do was.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Break a kind of I guess boredom that I had
reached where I was and so there's only certain times
in your life where you can really set up sticks
and just guard. And I was at that point. I
had no children and no relationship, and so I just thought,
now's the time. We've you know, got to get a shot.
(09:42):
And what the hell, you know. I've got a bit
of radio in the US and sold a few reks,
but it was a very few, and met my wife
and got my had my studio, I've got my daughter,
she's California now. So just lived a life, you know.
It was except I had fine weather the whole time,
(10:02):
which was really actually strangely important for me because I
really getting I get really bummed out by that gray
wind that just I don't know something in my ancient
Irish ancestry that says, Greg, get out of.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
There when you wouldn't want to be here today, that's
for sure. Yeah, No, we're getting through. Hey, so excited
that you're coming back. You do enjoy coming back or beforming,
don't you?
Speaker 4 (10:29):
You do?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Dint a love b which is great?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
I absolutely love it. I mean, that's the thing I've
been to way twenty four years.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I've been back at least twenty four, if not forty
eight times, and every time. It's wonderful and I'm never
there long enough to get to know who to complain
about politics, or whether or not the council is doing well,
or any of that stuff that I really don't actually
care about. I just get back enough to play some music,
see a bunch of cool people, and you know, it's
(10:57):
quite quite a fantasy world in some ways, but you
know it's going to be great fun. We've got a
bit of a lead up to it, but pre sales
ont plus one dot co dot z our wonderful man
Kirk Shanks and his wonderful touring company that brings in
all the decent mid size set of acts from everywhere.
(11:17):
It's not Live Nation somewhere else, so yeah, it's good
to support. We'll have the usual crowd, Wayne Bell and
Mark Hughes.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And literally giving an old band back together again.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Oh love, Yeah, nice exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Greg, It's been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you
so much for your time this morning. Greg Johnson's sixty
tours throughout New Zealand from late October. General ticket sales
start on Thursday, but for early access, you can sign
up for the pre sale at plus one dot co
dot NZ.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
live to News Talk z B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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