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Julia Roberts plays Vance Joy’s Riptide during her morning yoga sessions. The tale is a good measure of just how well-known Vance Joy (real name James Keogh) has become in the Americas. But ask the modest, and at times shy, Melbourne-born musician about his success and he’ll play it down. He doesn’t keep in contact with Taylor Swift, he says, (he supported the megastar on her 2015 1989 tour) nor is he fussed by the font size on his Coachella billing (well, not really!). He puts the workings of his huge hit single Riptide down to a time when he caught “lightning in a bottle” and looks forward to the aromas of a good coffee when setting down in Victoria. The picture just doesn’t seem to match the musician behind the one billion Spotify streams worldwide and the two million Dream Your Life Away album sales but there in lay Keogh’s appeal. This year, the reserved star will tour his new album Nation Of Two (releasing February 23) around Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S., South America and Europe. In between all of this, GRAZIA caught up with our prized possession.
We’re Going Home is one of our favourite tracks on Nation Of Two. What it’s like when you do go home to Melbourne? Each time you have experienced a little more success, you have a little more to bring home, what’s that feeling like? And what’s the first thing you do when you get off the plane?
“It’s always exciting to go home, it means it’s the end of a cool little month away, so I feel like you just get used to the smells of the place your from. Like if you’re from Melbourne or you’re from Sydney, certain smells in the air and even the weather or the climate just feel very in tune with your body and you’re like, “Yep I’m home” so I feel like that is something I look forward to. And then hanging out with my family and just the routine of coffees in the local area and just hanging out. On that flight you’re just waiting for it to countdown, it’s like 14 hours away from LA. I’m already planning the day. As soon as I touch down I know what’s happening!”
You’ve said you wrote the single Like Gold after coming off the road at the start of 2016 and it started with a very simple melody. Do most of your tracks begin in that way, humming a melody?
“Yeah I think usually starts with a guitar or an instrument and I just start playing some chords and singing a little melody.”
“Some days you pick up the guitar and there’s nothing there and some days – for some reason – you kind of start to hum a melody that feels like it might be something.”
“I guess you just trust your instinct and think ‘this is kind of of cool, I’m returning to this again and again’. I record that little idea and get excited, theres usually a fair bit of work after it and it’s then about finding the right lyrics to fit in those melodies. You might have the meat and potatoes with the melody, they might be kind of memorable, but you have to fill out the painting. It usually starts out that way, and you never really know when thats going to happen.”
When it comes to relationships (essentially this is what this album is about), do you feel you produce your best pieces of song-writing when you’re in a good place with that relationship or a place of pain?
“I think, if I was really sad and lonely, I don’t think that would necessarily be a good place to write. I think for me when I’m writing about relationships it’s usually based on experiences and memories. It’s almost a reflection, I’m able to look at those memories and have a view of them. I think all that stuff can inspire you, during a relationship you find that you have a pep in your step, say if you’re really excited and you’re feeling this kind of rush that might lead to lots of attempts at songs but I don’t necessarily think they’re good ones, you might be busy getting carried away in a feeling and, like I found, I’ve done that when I’ve been excited about a relationship or a massive crush, I write heaps of songs and I listen back to them and they’re all like, ‘Argh!’. It’s almost like what Lorde said about a megaphone to my heart, I find I write songs in a good place, hanging out with friends or family and after I’ve had a really good soul nourishing time. It’s then I feel like in those moments I might have inspiration or this desire to sing something for some reason.”
When is the best time to listen to this album? Sunday drinks? Monday night cooking? Road-tripping? How do you envisage the listener best enjoying your music on Nation Of Two?
“You want it to be good in a bunch of situations, it might not be 3am and like a kick-on and a massive night, so I feel like that might be out of the running [Laughs] but I love listening to music in my car. I love when you’re driving and you’re feeling pumped up, I would bang my steering wheel or whatever it is like they’re drums or sing really loudly. I hope that there are songs that work for subdued moments – more like ballad songs, more quieter ones – and fun, playful ones that I think would be good as well.”
Bonnie & Clyde: It’s got a bit of the Taylor Swift’s about it in the sense that it’s lyric is very literal – did that day (and that road-trip) actually happen to you?
“I’m glad you mention that song, it was one of the last ones I wrote on the album, it kind of just came in. We were starting to tour in September last year and it was like, I just started writing it at the first stop in Vancouver and then just finished it over the length of the tour. That image of the cinema was taken from a book, I changed a couple details, but there was this image of water. On tour we went to a place called Carmel, down in Monterey just near San Francisco, and there are big orange trees there just by the water and it just reminded me of the coast in Melbourne. In Red Hill they have those Cyprus trees near the water so I felt like that was me inserting myself into this story and the trees that I saw in Monterrey were like the ones I had seen at home, so I put myself into the story.”
You toured North America and Australia with Taylor Swift which gave you a bit of leg-up in terms of exposure and traction. Do you still keep in contact with her?
“No, I don’t keep in contact with Taylor, I really love her new album, I’m a fan. I just admire from the sidelines.”
“I want to go see her, I’ll see her show when she comes through Melbourne or if I’m in America and she’s there.”
I love how you’ve said this album reflects “the idea that a couple’s love for each other gives them their bearings, a point of reference that makes sense of life.” Without getting too personal, has that been your experience in love?
“I think I’ve had that experience in love where it might last forever or might only be a short-lived thing, but that feeling of being in a little universe of two people, I think that it can be awesome but it can also be like, ‘Argh, I need to be like in the world as well, I’m consumed by this two people universe’. I feel like even though I’m grateful for that experience, those experiences are some of the most overwhelming and I look back at some memories of those experiences even if I didn’t know what was up at the time. I’m so glad to of had that full mind and body engagement. I think about that as turbulent (not in a negative way) but exciting, the kind of thing where you don’t get enough sleep and doing things where you kind of just feel like it’s a different approach to life; you don’t really fit in the normal routine of things. You’re hanging out with this other person all the time, and you are kind of just living on fumes, I like that.”
Which city do you anticipate this album will be best received live in?
“Well in Australia, cities are a little bit different in the way that the crowds respond to shows. I’ll be a little bit more subdued, like in places near friends and family, and they’re like, ‘Oh we loved it, you sound great!’. You don’t really get that direct affirmation from the crowd unless you’re like a great interactor with the crowd. I feel like in places like Brisbane and Sydney they’re a bit more like, heart on their sleeve, a bit more vocal. I think with America, it’s a similar kind of thing: In New York, although they’re a little more subdued, it’s like a different kind of vibe. And in Chicago and Montreal in Canada, they’re really pumped. In Boston they’re really loud. Like the level of enjoyment might not be different, it might be the same but it’s just the way it’s expressed is different.”
After RipTide, you proved you weren’t a flash in the pan by following up with Mess Is Mine. This album, you’ve had tremendous success already with Lay It On Me. Do you feel any pressure to produce 1000 Riptides – I interviewed you years ago and you said that was a directive from a studio at one point: “Make me one hundred RipTides!”
“I feel like that was always funny because it’s not possible to write the same song again. Sometimes it’s like, ‘I’m not exactly sure how I just did that’ and it feels like a fluke or catching lighting in a bottle. I felt like I had other songs I wanted to write, I felt like by the time I had Riptide I had other songs I was proud of. The pressure that comes from the idea of me wanting to writing a song I really like. You know when you feel like you’ve got good ingredients cooking and if that doesn’t happen for a while, you can think, ‘Is that going to happen again?’ You can surprise yourself though with writing. A song comes along in it’s own time.”
You’re heading to Coachella again, congratulations! The font size of your name gets bigger each year on the bill! What was that experience like? And as a lot of these tracks are melody driven, do you play with them a little to amp-up the live sound?
“There is always a difference between playing the recordings and the live version, and after playing a song a bunch of times you’re just like ‘Oh let’s do a thing where I stop and maybe I have a bit where I ask the crowd to sing along’. It makes the show more inclusive and there’s a bit of communication. With the new songs, we will try find where those moments are to be special, generally that’s a fun festival and it gets a lot of coverage. It’s nice to be part of that festival because people get so excited by it. I’m just stoked to be returning to Coachella. It’s nice to have a slightly bigger font, even if it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, it’s like, ‘My size has gone from a size 10 to a size 12. YESSSS size 12!” [Laughs]
Playing to that massive crowd, do you have a pre-show ritual before you go on?
“Its pretty basic. I just do my vocal warm ups. My band and I will be cracking jokes and singing songs and covers. Its all pretty relaxed and never feels like I’m going to perform.”
“When I played football, it was always a bit more serious and stressful before a game. With music, the stakes feel less high”
And what do you do after a show?
Depends. When it’s a really good show, you just feel on a high, you kinda just go off stage and high five the band like, ‘Good show’ and have a beer or two. Other times might be like, ‘Oh yeah, bit of a weird one”.
“When you’re on the road for a long time and in the middle of the tour, the mood can slump a little and then its like, ‘Lets go see Star Wars.'”
Which city did you do most of the song-writing for this album? What gets you inspired?
“I did a little trip to Italy when I was studying, for five of six weeks when I was 15-years-old. That kind of thing was really fun. I love summer in Italy and I thought it was awesome and inspiring and that was just a bit of an experience to go out on my own and try and make friends. I also love San Francisco, it’s just a lively place, it’s really hilly, its not made for people to have cars there. It’s kind of just interesting, they have eucalyptus trees, have you been there?”
Nation Of Two is out February 23 through Liberation Music.
