As one of Australia's emerging country stars, James Johnston has a lot to live up to as he rides a wave of success that has seen him recently land at #1 on ARIA's Australian Albums chart (and currently still #1 on the Australian Country Albums chart) as well as recently supporting his mate, Morgan Evans.
Performing country music has always been James' destiny; he recalls the first show he put on as taking place during daycare aged four, an undoubtedly authentic country gig down to his little cowboy hat.Nowadays he never stops writing, and it's his constant perseverance and love for music which resulted in the huge success of his 2021 debut single, ‘Raised Like That' (that now has 16M Spotify streams).
"It was such a whirlwind honestly," James says. "I had already been playing and writing for years – I had written 250 songs that year [2021] alone.
"Lots of people had seen me around already, but when the single came out it was like I had suddenly turned a corner. The reception was amazing, and pretty much straight away I started getting calls from all kinds of people who were interested."
James describes how he consulted friends, family, and anyone with a good ear to select 'Raised Like That' ahead of the other 250 songs he had written as his debut single. "It was hard to narrow things down having so many songs, but I had a couple selected and just started playing them to people.
"'Raised Like That' immediately stood out; when friends started asking me to send them the file, I knew that one had to be the single."
Released last month, the writing of his debut album, which he also titled 'Raised Like That', was a long and deliberate process. "I'm looking to set up a lifelong career here," shares James.
"Country has always been what I've wanted to do, and I'm envisioning performing these songs in 30 years time.
"The album wasn't so much a distinctive project as evaluating all my tracks, and selecting the ones most significant to my life. I like to think that I'm in the first chapter of my career, and I wanted these songs to signify that chapter well and give me a great base for my future work.
"I have a super small team working with me, so everything is very personal and a big labour of love for us."
James also likes to approach his work with an element of spontaneity; track 'Same Songs' was the result of a hyper modern collaboration all spawning from TikTok. "I posted the song's chorus, and just left it up to my fans to decide where it went and who they wanted to feature.
"They pretty unanimously wanted Kaylee Bell, who I actually already knew, and the song came together really beautifully from there."
The close relationship James has fostered with his fans has led him down some interesting avenues, and will seemingly open the door for exciting opportunities in the near future.
"I love having an open dialogue running with my listeners, their opinion matters to me. There's actually a pretty exciting video dropping soon in which my fans are all going to help me try for a collab with an artist that I've never even met.
"I love putting things out there, getting people involved and just seeing what happens, it's always worth a go."
James' go-getter spirit is the driving force behind his upcoming tour of regional tour, where each location holds its own significance to his life; in Rockhampton he returns to headline the Great Western Hotel on the same stage that provided his first big musical opportunity supporting Morgan Evans nearly a decade ago.
With presale tickets selling out in just three hours, hype for the tour is already building. "It's been crazy to see that kind of response, and it's really made all the hard work to set this up worth it.
"It makes me super excited about the future, and I'm looking forward to getting myself out there even more and exploring all of regional Australia."
James Johnston 2023 Tour Dates
Sat 18 Nov - Wollongong Entertainment CentreSun 19 Nov - Tamworth Entertainment Centre
Thu 23 Nov - Great Western Hotel (Rockhampton)
Fri 24 Nov - Townsville Entertainment Centre
Sun 26 Nov - Venue 114 (Sunshine Coast)
