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February 3, 2025 11 mins

One of New Zealand’s musical greats is winging his way back over for a special celebration. 

Greg Johnson has been making music and touring for nearly 40 years, and this year marks the 30th anniversary of his third album ‘Vine Street Stories’. 

The album is home to many of Johnson’s most enduring hits, including ‘Don’t Wait Another Day’, ‘If I Swagger’, and ‘Pleasure and Overdose’. 

He’s returning to New Zealand in April and May for the 30th anniversary tour, performing up and down the country. 

Johnson told Mike Hosking that he has fond memories of the record, as it was a great time and was his first one to go gold.  

He says they’ll be playing the whole record, start to finish, as the first set on the tour. 

“The second set we’ll play a bunch of stuff, I guess, from the newer albums and other older realms, but that is, that’s the exciting thing.” 

“Some of these songs have never been played live before, even when they were recorded.” 

“It’s a fun challenge,” he said. 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the greats is on his way here to
celebrate thirty years since the release of his third album,
and what an album it was, Greg Johnson Vine Street
Stories of course, which includes my favorite all time if
I Swagger or is it I waver a bit on that.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Greg Johnson is with us morning.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Mate, doctor Michael Hoskins.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
So how are you a happy New Year and all
that sort of stuff. It sort of feels weird talking
to a person in the middle of the fire zone
in Santa Monica and wishing the new year, because it
really hasn't been, hasn't It's been?

Speaker 4 (00:30):
I mean a show of you know, the type of
show that comes out at the bottom of latrine from
start finish for me this year so far, but having seid,
that's all. It's February now, so maybe things are going
to turn around, you know.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well I hope. So did you see the fire Raid
concert last week?

Speaker 4 (00:48):
I did not see that content. In fact, I didn't
see a shred of it. I was in studio the
whole time, so but I heard it was very good.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
It was very good. It was fantastic. Where's you're in,
Santa Monica? Where where is it? It seems to be.
It was the worst thing that happened. But the communities
come together and there is some sort of hope around
rebuilding and moving forward. Is that fair or not?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:10):
I think so it was. I mean it's fascinating. I mean,
i'll give you a quick rundown. I came out of
a studio and saw a giant a cloud of smoke
billowing out of I've got a clear view up to
those mountains and on that Tuesday and thought, oh god,
something's blown up. I thought there'd been a plane crash.
And then later that day, of course, it was all underway.

(01:31):
The thing that sticks to my mind from that first
day is I saw a guy coming up the hill
we went down to the bluffs to see the planes
picking up the water and everything, and a guy in
his late model Porsche. Guy in his fifties, I suppose,
and in the back seat he had two large paintings
and a.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Guitar, and that was it.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
And I thought, Wow, that's that's kind of this is
serious that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
You know, that's also very California, though, isn't it. Porsche,
two paintings and a guitar.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yeah, it was like wow, I mean, it's been pretty awful.
But I have to say, it's kind of like it's
really like if Remi RIrA was just suddenly an ashes
So and everything, and we were like an Allesley. So
you know, the evacuation got to within two blocks of us.
And I have to say, on that evening we had

(02:19):
a voluntary evacuation, I said to my family, I was like,
you know, I would really never have thought that Santa
Monica could catch fire and burn to the ground, but
I'm actually thinking now maybe it could. So I think
we're going to go, and so we left, but thankfully
it didn't.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
How much of that for people?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I mean, I'm assuming a lot of people listening to
this have been to Los Angeles and you drive from
Los Angeles down to the sea, and once you get
down to the sea, you're at Santa Monica and you
turn left to go to Venice, and you can turn
right to go to Malibu. And how much I mean
just to think those Malibu houses where they've got the
motorway between them and the Yeah, I mean, how does

(02:56):
that work?

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Well, I've got to say, I mean I've always thought,
as a New Zealand and a presumably vaguely common sense
kind of person. I've always thought it's really only a
matter of time until they're actually swept away by a
large king tide of some sort as well. But I
think that what that reflects, and the fact that it
jumped that high and everything else is and I think
it's hard to understand if you haven't seen it, but
if anyone's ever been here, when the wind comes around

(03:19):
from the east, it's called the Santaanas. The humidity was
I think five percent. Now when that happens on any
ordinary occasion, a couple of times every year it happens,
I'll rush out and do any wash, any shoes I
want to wash, or you want to do a carpet,
and give that a anything you can, because it'll dry
out within about half an hour. You know, you could

(03:41):
get get the dog out, give them a big what
do you know? But what was happening then was is
that it was extremely dry already. I'd been up in
those mountains hiking on only a week earlier and commented
to the missus, you know, this is very very dry
up here.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
It's incredible, and then that wind just started up.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
I mean, the arguments about who could afford it and
what they could have done are irrelevant, I think because
one hundred mile an hour or eighty you know, one
hundred and twenty k wins and five percent humidity and
everything tender dry. All you can do is watch and
that's basically what they could do for the first until
that wind stopped.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
So how much of what we heard and it did
come from the trump esque lot, how much of its
true bass newsome there were there was no water, they
were trying to save the spell to whatever the hell
the fish was called. How much of that was true?

Speaker 4 (04:30):
Yeah, well, I think that there's there's you know, like
most things that come out these days, there's a tiny
kernel of truth somewhere in there.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
But I don't think it would have made a shred
of difference in all honesty.

Speaker 4 (04:41):
I mean, yeah, there's there's plenty of blame. I mean,
people forget that all politicians are essentially awful idiots who
deserve disdain of all stripes because you're the type of
people that get involved with in the first place. Ninety
nine point nine percent horrible people. So you know that's

(05:01):
in my limited experience, thankfully limited experience of meeting any
of them. So that's my opinion the start. But I
think Honestly, nothing much could have stopped it. I think
the only thing that will stop in the future is
designing houses that because the people had design houses to
prevent being burned down, their houses are still standing now.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Are they cheap?

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Maybe maybe it's not that expensive to put a whole
lot of turf on your roof. And you know, but
I'm you know, I didn't finish my architecture degree solely.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Exactly exactly, Greg, When Vine Street Stories came out your
third album, where in your memory do you think you
were at at the time, on your way you'd made it.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Where were you.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
At just kind of head down writing and making music. Honestly,
I kind of I've probably told you story before, But
I know after Isabelle was sort of on the radio
and was on the chart and it got.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
To number three or four. I at four, I think when,
and it was.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
Setting up there and the chart, I naively assumed that
everything post would go up a little bit next time,
So next so I would be number two.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
You know that's stupid, can you beg But.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
Anyway, Yeah, I just actually moved from my indie label
to EMI. Were co funding this record, so we had
hopes for it. You know, and as it turned out,
it actually got quite a lot of traction. I think
it was my first gold album.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Where does it sit in terms of all your work?
Do you think of it fondly in that sense?

Speaker 3 (06:31):
I do, yeah, I very much do.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Strangely, it doesn't really have well, it has swagger on it,
as you say, it's one of my favorites, and Pleasure
and Overdose is also a favorite. It has don't Wait
Another Day, which is actually my second most popular and
in fact the song I've earned the most money off.
I think I should have written more songs over my
career that were quickly rushed down and buy the sale

(06:55):
or something like that, you know, and that I could
have had more more, but don't wait another day. It
was just close enough to that kind of thing where
a save yourself was probably really only good for you know,
I suppose a selling life rafts or something. So, you know,
I do have good memories of that record though. It
was a great time and we were a good age,
you know, we were a mid twenties and you.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Know, how do you know, how do you when you
say you've made more money out of one another day?
Did the chicks come in for a song as opposed
to a broad based check once a month or year
or whatever, as opposed to an album.

Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yeah, each song exists on its own, I mean album
wise that they were. All those albums were tied up
with EMI Records and Pagan prior to that, and now
Universal has all that catalog and actually they've been very good.
They're re releasing Bones Street Stories as Vinyl as well,
coming up to coincide with a tour. It's nice to have,
you know, have them on board.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Is Vinyl? Are you bigone Vinyl?

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah? You know, I just started getting back into it.
I can. I could kick myself, like probably all of us.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
It was only about ten four, ten years ago when
you could walk into any second hand store and there'd
be a pile of brand new, rare albums sitting there
for fifty cents each, and everyone was like, forget about it, No,
it's gonna want that. You get get the great turntable
for about forty dollars. Now, of course it's it's all
back on and the prices have gone through the roof again.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
I do like Vinyl, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, but it's got to it has a very I'll
tell you what I'm I find interesting. Anyway, when CDs
came out, everyone was obsessed about the sound. Oh CD
got to go CD because of course Vinyl's rubbish. And
then when streaming came out, no one talked about quality anymore,
did they?

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Right now? You're right?

Speaker 4 (08:39):
I think well, because they were listening through tiny little
speakers instead of their previous generations giant, lovely stereos.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
That's probably half of.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
It, exactly. Do you like hippy Swager?

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Oh? I love that song. Yeah, I mean it's to me.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
I think it's probably one of my best songs without
dat as a writer, you know, I just think it's Yeah,
it is honest.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Because I've got several versions when I listened to it
coming to work in the morning. I've got the wedding version.
I didn't know there was a wedding version, but there's
a wedding version of it. That's a nice one. Do
people get married to it a lot?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know?

Speaker 3 (09:15):
People have? Many people have, actually, and it's always surprised me.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Because it's really not a song that bodes well for
a good marriage. My favorite story about that one is
is it was played at the funeral of.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
The famous Scottish wrestler.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Old Robert Bruce.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Robert Bruce had requested that to be played at which
I thought, there's no higher you know, this high than.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
That, really exactly if I got married to it? Do
I have to pay you? Is that how that works? Uh?

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Probably not. It's a private function, but you know, if
you want to take.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
The point, all right, mate? So so do you do
it on this tour? Are you doing the whole album
like you do the whole album plus nothing else or what?

Speaker 3 (10:03):
That's the plan?

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, we're going to come on and play the songs
the album start to finish. Probably the first set we'll
do that, and it's about just.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Over and how long that record?

Speaker 4 (10:11):
Brilliant is another thing we discovered and we decided to
put it on vinyl. That you can only put forty
five minutes on vinyl, so you have to be a
double album.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Oh wow?

Speaker 4 (10:19):
Yeah, But yeah, we'll play the whole album and then
the second set will play a bunch of other stuff
I guess from the newer albums and other older albums.
But that's the exciting thing, is reinventing and some of
these songs have never been played live before. Even when
we're the recorded they were never played live, so it's
it's a fun challenge.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
You know, it's going to be good.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Well, hopefully we'll catch up when you hear mate, go
well in the meantime end of April, I'll run through
all the play. But you're going to Hamilton Tower on
the Wellington Parmerst and Arkland couple of Christ Judge, you're
going south of Christ Jude.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Not this time. I don't know why. I don't.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
I think maybe because there's no Queen Charlotte oysters or
no Queen Charlotte scallops in season or something. There's there'll
be a reason, probably culinary reason for that. But yeah,
Plus one dot Co Doddings is where you go to
get all that stuff. I look forward to coming down.
I wish I was sitting on a beach down there
right now.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Go well mate, Nice to catch up as always, and
we'll see see you hopefully.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Any good yere and much love to everybody see soon.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Isn't that good? Isn't it the nicest going on the world?

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Greg Johnson and Vine Street Stories.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
It'd be from six am weekdays or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio
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