Australian country music star James Johnston is taking a moment to stop and smell the roses as he takes a Zoom call while sitting under the shade of a tree in country Queensland.
He’s not long back from his first run of performances overseas, topped off by an appearance in front of 30,000 people at the Cape Town Country Festival. The visit came off the back of Johnston’s single “COUNTRY IS FOR ME”, a duet with Afrikaans country star Appel, who has since become a close friend.
“South Africa was honestly two of the craziest weeks of my life,” he tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ, “and I don’t say that lightly. I kind of went over there as an unknown artist, and within two weeks after we released the song it actually became the most streamed country song, and nearly the most streamed song generally in South Africa.
“For a country act that’s pretty wild, and for me to have that experience and then to go and play that song live at a festival in front of 30,000 people and have that whole crowd stand up and sing the song back to us was one of those really surreal moments.
Many of Johnston’s songs celebrate country life and “COUNTRY IS FOR ME” is, clearly, not an exception. That it could be written in rural Australia and capture the imagination of country music fans in South Africa says much about the universality of the genre.
“It’s that same sense of belonging, a sense of country pride or whatever you want to call it, is just as alive and means as much to somebody in South Africa driving their land cruiser through the safari park as it does to the farmer driving his land cruiser on the farm in Australia. That was something I really wanted to celebrate through the music. It’s bigger than just your own small community. I think that sentiment can go around the world.”
Earlier in the year Johnston featured on another collaborative single, “Who I Am”, with his own country music hero, Lee Kernaghan. Johnston had met Kernaghan as a youngster and the creative pairing was the stuff dreams are made of.
“There’s videos of me when I was five years old busking on the streets playing Lee Kernaghan songs,” Johnston reveals. “He was my hero. There’s a TikTok I put up of me showing him this poster that had been on my wall since I was eight years old, and on the poster he had signed it and it said, ‘You will rock Australian country music! Your mate, Lee Kernaghan.’
“As a kid, that was just the biggest thing that ever happened to me. So to have a full circle moment, to end up writing a song with Lee and producing that and being able to perform that with him was just one of those pinch yourself moments. Whatever happened from the song, or however successful that song may have been, everything was kind of irrelevant to me. It was really just about fulfilling a childhood dream, to be honest.”
From one full circle moment to another, the young busker who sung his heart out on the streets at the Toyota Tamworth Country Music Festival will now be co-hosting the Golden Guitar Awards along with 2024 New Talent of the Year winner Max Jackson next month. He’ll also be headlining a show at Tamworth Town Hall across from where he used to busk. It’s a huge kick-off for a new year in which Johnston will record and release his second album.
“I used to go over the range and go to the festival every year,” he recalls fondly. “It was the family holiday. We’d spend a week in town where I’d be busking on the streets, and the family would stay in a little shack.
“Tamworth holds so many amazing memories for me. One of the big things that I used to love was the flags down the main street with all the artists’ names as you drove into town. I remember the day that I got my first flag, and that was a really big accomplishment and then I got to win my first Golden Guitar two years ago for New Talent of the Year. So to now be hosting the awards? It feels pretty special.”
The Toyota Tamworth Country Music Festival runs from January 17th-26th, 2025, with the Golden Guitar Awards taking place on January 25th at the Tamworth Regional Entertainment & Events Centre. Full details at tcmf.com.au.
