Riptide singer determined his Kiwi dream will come true
If Australian musician Vance Joy had his way, he’d rent a van and backpack New Zealand.
The Riptide singer, whose song reached No 1 on Triple J’s Hot 100 in 2013 (just ahead of Lorde’s Royals), might only be able to complete half of his ‘‘holiday fantasy’’ when he arrives this September to promote his sophomore album Nation of Two, being released today.
It will be Joy’s (real name James Geogh) first time travelling to New Zealand on his own tour. He last touched down in Auckland in 2014 as part of Laneway Festival. ‘‘It feels good now and it’s exciting too, coming back to New Zealand, but also to play my own show there,’’ the 30-year-old Melburnian said.
‘‘Ever since one of my close friends [rented a van and toured New Zealand], it’s been a fantasy and I’ve always talked it up, but I never do it.’’
Nation of Two follows on from his debut album Dream Your Life Away in 2014.
That album hit No 1 in Australia, No 2 in Canada and was in the Top 20 in the UK and US.
Its major hit, Riptide, played on a ukulele, became a summer anthem that year with its catchy lyrics: ‘‘Lady, running down to the riptide / Taken away to the dark side / I wanna be your left hand man / I love you when you’re singing that song and / I got a lump in my throat ‘cause / You’re gonna sing the words wrong.’’
It was certified gold in New Zealand and Australia, where it was also certified an 8x platinum and remains the longest-standing local single in the Aria Top 100.
Such a success, it was, that Joy and his band were handpicked by the US pop star Taylor Swift to open her 1989 Tour worldwide. ‘‘It was amazing,’’ he said.
‘‘It was so generous of her to have me and my band. We got to play in front of huge audiences. It was cool to get an insight into that level of touring where it’s like, every second day you’re playing a show or a string of three or four shows in the same place in a row at an arena or a stadium, so that was cool,’’ Joy said.
He described the six-month tour as something ike a ‘‘travelling summer camp’’, where he got to see what makes a tour of that calibre tick.
‘‘It was like a little parallel reality for six months,’’ he recalled.
‘‘We only had to play a halfhour set each night, so once we got into the swing of things it became really fun. It was like being on a summer camp where your world kind of began every day with being at a stadium or an arena and your main job was [wondering], ‘where are we going to get lunch today?’ and you play at the arena. It was very fun.’’
Though Joy does admit that Riptide and Shake It Off might be two very different kinds of genres, at the time his excitement got the better of him – and for good reason.
‘‘Before I went on that tour, it was like, ‘oh I feel like my music is pretty acoustic and I don’t think I’m really poppy’ – you hope your songs can appeal to the broadest possible audience, but it wasn’t necessarily the case,’’ he said.
*’’Opening for Taylor Swift was like ‘super pop world’, so in my mind I probably didn’t appreciate if there would be a gap between her audience and people’s response to my music, but it was kind of lucky that I didn’t really worry much about it – it was too good an opportunity to knock on that tour.’’
When the ‘‘super pop world’’ came to an end, Joy and his band sat down to knock out a second album in 2016.
‘‘I feel like it’s a big goal to make a second album and I guess a lot of the artists that I really admire have a whole body of work and I just wanted to do that and have a second album that I felt proud of and I felt like it measured up in quality,’’ he said.
He expects this album to be a little more personal. Little Boy reflects his time growing up in the Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena – 3 kilometres from where he is living now.
‘‘I used to think I was king of the town when I was 8 years old, knowing all the back streets,’’ he said.
Co-writing Nation Of Two with Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Dave Bassett, including the album’s latest release Lay It On Me, had Joy feeling a little vulnerable. Although he said being in that space, ‘‘that’s when something exciting might happen’’.
He did manage to draw the cover art himself.
While he might only be seeing the Auckland Town Hall this time round, Joy’s adamant he’ll achieve his long-time fantasy cruising New Zealand’s scenic routes armed with a ukulele and soaking up the sun.
‘‘There’s that fantasy and the other fantasy [I have is] of going to Italy.
‘‘I’d like to hang out and go to Tuscany and ride around on the cobblestone streets on an old vintage bike.
‘‘They’re going to happen at one point.’’
❚ Listen to Nation Of Two at https://lnk.to/NationOfTwo from today. Tickets for Vance Joy’s show go on sale at 10am today via livenation.co.nz