After some small technical difficulties and discussions of which mode of contact would be best due to Johnston’s phone’s decision to pack in, I sat down to have a chat with singer-songwriter Sion Hill (Nate Johnston) last week. A lot has happened since our last chat. The world went into lockdown, Johnston’s shows were postponed and he released a new single ‘Speak Up’. Given the fact that everyone now is living a new way of life due to covid-19, the track has been released at the perfect time as it discusses mustering the courage to tell your surroundings how you really feel. ‘Speak Up’ is an infectious, upbeat and utterly radiant tune. It’s quite the ray of sunshine on a miserable day and for Johnson it speaks about his anxiety through a natural upbeat and melodious medium.
“I think I wrote it about a year ago. I suppose a lot of people are thinking nowadays about technology, social media and everything else. I suffer a lot from anxiety and I don’t know where it’s brought on. I’ve always kind of had it but I think there has always been a stigma with talking about that. People are getting up and speaking about mental health issues in the last few years and I think it’s a great thing. With the walk into light and that, a lot more people are aware of it.Especially guys, who are just not very good at talking about their emotions in general. It’s still taking a while but I think people are better at it now, you know at least calling up a friend. In all my tunes I just try and keep a pretty positive upbeat melody and the music is always upbeat but I still try to say something that has some meaning. I mean most of the songs I hear coming out are just the same old story so I’m trying to say something but also keep it upbeat and hopefully that inspires people.”
Johnston slips into country/ traditional folk territory with this track especially with the perky fiddle melody. However it wasn’t his original vision for the track. In fact it was almost different tune altogether.
“ I actually listened back to the original demo I did for the song which is like five munites long.There’s two verses in it and a completely different chorus and its much slower. Its just electric guitar and voice. It was never really intended to go anywhere. It was just something I wrote for myself and I played it for a producer I work with in Hamburg and a couple of lads from another band that were there at the time. There was a fiddle player and we just started jamming and we sped it up slowly because there was a few people around and we were having some beers and we were kind of in a party mood. So we sped the thing up and it worked really well in this more upbeat faster tempo and then the fiddle player started playing this thing. He was actually German so we had to tell him how to change the notes in a way that would give it that Irish feel.
He was a seriously good violin player but it was more in the classical style so we had to get him to venture into this Irish thing. It wasn’t the intention of the song, it just went in that direction and it was cool. I mean the producer I work with, he is just insane with producing beats and finding new melodies and soundscapes so it was just a collaborative thing really the way it developed. The original song is completely different.
It’s really funny, sometimes going back and listening to the old demo, it was a different name on the computer and I was just listening to some old tracks for inspiration. Sometimes I go back to old songs and listen to them again and see if there is something there, you know, why did I stop working on this track, did I work it into something else or can I re-work it into something else and this was one of these tunes. I was looking through stuff and I heard it. I thought how on earth did that become this. It’s interesting how that happens sometimes. Its really cool when you see the end result and go back to the beginning and see how far it came. Sometimes it doesn’t change at all which is also pretty nice. “
Johnston recently represented Ireland performing his new single ‘Speak Up’ in the Free European Song Contest in front of a TV audience of 4 million viewers, finishing in the Top 10. The Free European Song Contest is a music competition in the Eurovision format that aired on German, Austrian and Swiss TV, organised by the German broadcaster ProSiebenSat Media and Stefan Raabs production company Brainpool TV. It served as an alternative for the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, which was planned to be held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A surreal experience!
“Its really funny that whole thing. I was probably the first unofficially elected Irish representative for the fake Eurovision. But yeah it’s a shame the actual Eurovision was cancelled. I haven’t been a big supporter of it since Dustin the Turkey was our rep. I just thought after that it kind of went a little bit downhill. There was a couple of nice entries the last few years, the whole thing is just such a big spectacle now but it has a really loyal fanbase.
There is so many people that love that and were really missing it this year. There’s this guy, Stefan Raab and when he heard it was cancelled he was like I want to try and do something along the same lines as the Eurovision. He has a production company and he is a huge German talk show host. He’s actually retired for 2 years but his production company only runs Germany, Austria and Switzerland so he was like look that’s kind of the best I can do, so it was only open for live viewing if you were in those countries unfortunately. So that meant back home people couldn’t actually watch it live or tune in to vote.It was more of a German Eurovision style but it was on the same level. I think there were 4 million people watching and Conchita Wurst presented it. It was still a huge production and a massive audience but its not really the Eurovision at the end of the day. They knew that and they made a tongue in cheek version and they made fun of a lot of the countries but in a nice way before everyone went on.
It was also terrifying with the social distancing, that was still going on over there although Germany is pretty much opened up now at this stage but they were still wearing masks going in between backstage and onto the stage.There was perspex glass everywhere and people were dressed up in these ghostbuster outfits with visors, but it was a pretty surreal experience. It was cool to be able to perform after 2 months without playing a gig. Even though it was only 1 song, it’s still nice to get to stand up on a stage and perform.”
It’s a tricky time to release music as bands and artists can’t tour to promote their tracks. However, Johnston has already broken into the Billboard Top 100 songs in Germany and the Shazam Top 200 charts for ‘Speak Up’
“ Yeah its good, I’ve signed with Warner Brother Music but we released this with an independent label. Actually I think it was meant to come out this weekend but we brought it out early…I think a lot of people were shazaming it and it’s got a lot of radio play in Germany at the moment so we will see how it goes. I think it’s really difficult right now to release music. I’ve seen a lot of bands that normally would release an album then do a tour and have postponed the album release so that they can tour it but then some of them have just gone ahead with it. Yeah it’s such a weird time to release music you have so many battles with trying to get things into playlists you just can’t promote the song without playing it live. It’s doing alright though, I think in Germany its doing great. Hopefully it picks up a little bit in Ireland. “
The music video for ‘Speak Up’ was shot in Berlin.However this was not the original plan for the video but Johnston has had to improvise to get the shots he needed including creating fake rain.
“Originally I was meant to film it in Ireland.But that was cancelled obviously so when I went over to Berlin to do this competition. I had to quarantine in Berlin for 2 weeks and then I had to quarantine here for 2 week when I came back to Ireland. So that was 4 weeks for a 3 minute and 21 second performance its ridiculous! but we were just there and originally I filmed myself with a webcam playing the song and lots of different clips. I put it together and it was pretty cool but the label were like we want an actual video so I put all that work in and had to scrap it.
I called up some friends who work with a band in Germany called Giant Rooks and Milky Chance and they go around with them and do these live videos and photography and stuff. They came over to the apartment and I said let’s just walk around and film. I like their style I like their vibe its quite personal and sometimes that’s nice just the personal introspective look at the artist. I went for a walk and they came to the house, played the song a few times, went out, walked around the streets, drove through Berlin for a bit and that was it. Nothing major but sometimes its nice to just have a look at the artist just walking around singing the song.
Actually we used the film directors car. He had an old Mercedes Hatchback from like the late 80’s or early 90’s or something.It was quite a cool car to drive, the gears are really sticky and it actually has some decent acceleration on it as well. It was meant to rain that evening and it didn’t so we went down to this sort of car park old petrol pump place. It’s in the video, you can see me walking around there where I parked up. [We] tried to mimic the rain and the lights. [We] basically just put all these random things into the car and then just got one of those car wash spray things and sprayed water over the car. There was a girl who had to hold this, I don’t even know what she was doing. I think she had to hold a light and she had a massive rain coat on and she just got soaked by this thing for 10 minutes. You do what you gotta do to get the shot but its pretty fun being on these sets sometimes.”
Johnston always looks confident and at home in his videos.I wondered was he always confident in front of the camera or is it just something he has had to get used to.
“ Oh I’m not confident in front of the camera at all. I hate it but you have to do it. At the beginning, one of the first tracks I released we did a video that wasn’t released [ for it ]. It was with some directors that wanted a group of people, a few of them were dancers and I’m rubbish at dancing and they were like just do some dancing while your walking toward the camera. I was like, what! get me a choreographer, I’m not a dancer. It was the first music video I had done, the first video I had done since I was a kid when we just filmed things with little cameras running around the place playing Lord of The Rings, but now I’m more comfortable with it. I kind of know how it works.
I have a good few friends who are filmmakers and photographers so I chat with them a lot about how it works. Obviously it’s pretty interesting to hear about it first hand and to be honest I’ve done it enough times so it’s fine.I just prefer being behind the camera but in the end its difficult to convince the label guys and the management that I shouldn’t be in the video. Although I’d love to be able to film a story and maybe have a cameo or something or just not be in the video at all but they want you to be in the video unless you are like an indie rock band.
It’s a brand in the end and you have to represent the brand, but then, Ed Sheeran, I think his first video, The A Team song, he’s only in like one clip, Hozier’s not in Take Me To Church. There are so many videos like that in the pop realms, because obviously when you go down into indie territory, rock music it’s often just a story. You’re not always going to have the band or the artist in the video.Sometimes it doesn’t matter, it is just an artists thing anyway. In the pop industry it’s rare that you don’t have the artist and it’s rare that they are not singing to the camera as well. I always find that a bit strange because it’s more of a hip hop style to actually sing to the lens. The hardest thing when you are on film or recording your own voice is listening back to it, especially with other people but once you do it and put it out there you get so much encouragement from people and you realise that people really appreciate when you do that because it’s not easy. Most people know it’s not easy. It gives you a confidence boost for the very first time you do it. It’s just the first initial get up and go that’s difficult. It’s like anything, like going for a run. Once you get out there you’re grand but initiating the run is horrific.”
Last time we spoke Johnston told me he had a new album in the works. Thankfully the lockdown has not slowed the progress of the album too much, although he has had to do a lot of remote collaboration with his band to lay down the drums etc.
“Yeah it did but it’s almost finished. I had one more session left to do that was cancelled..the ones I have done… my drummer, he’s got a studio in his house. So I sent him the tracks, he recorded some stuff, I sent some stuff to a violin player to put some things on, I sent some stuff to another guy who plays keys. Most of it was finished, half the songs are actually done.The rest of it, a lot of it has been done remotely and it’s really interesting sending it because when you are in the studio you can influence what happens and tell them what you want but when you just send something over to a drummer and say, yeah play on it and send it back. It’s going to be pretty cool to hear what they try and do to it. It’s coming along. I think it should be finished by the end of July. We have a session set up for mid July. I don’t know when it will come out but it’s nearly done.”
Johnston was due to perform at a number of music festivals and had the Last Minute Tour postponed which opened up his schedule a little. He has made the most of his time and has a few things planned for the coming months
“It’s not the worst thing, I think when I spoke to you last I was in Hungary. Those were the last gigs I played and around that time they were saying things were closing down and my tour was sort of being postponed around then so I knew it was coming. That was early March. I don’t know, you just have to make the most of it. I’ve been just writing songs. I think that’s been better for me right now. Just having time for myself, I think most people have benefited from this if you have a garden or an outdoor area. The weather has been nice so you have time to go out in the garden and get healthy. That’s sort of what I’ve been doing. I think tour life is not the healthiest so I probably saved myself a couple of years in this last few months.
It’s still quite busy though, I mean I went to Germany and I did that and you have to get up in the morning you can’t just be lying around the place. For me I just tried to get fit, start eating healthier, focus on myself and spend a couple of hours a day just writing. There is a lot of crap that comes out of it. After a while you kinda think yeah I need to travel and I need to meet people and go out in public and see things to find inspiration. I find it gimmicky writing from things you see online.I want to get back into the world. I think a lot of people need that. Writers, artists, musicians especially if you are writing lyrics you need to go out in public there is only so much you can do from your bedroom.
I’m doing a couple of these street music festival things. There is a couple around mainland Europe, in the Netherlands, one in Hungary again. I don’t know, they seem to like me over there, they keep asking me to come back. Which is nice I really like it there it’s beautiful.So I’m doing a street festival where they have a couple of small stages and they limit the amount of people that can come in and watch. Apart from that we are rescheduling some dates for September/October but I don’t know we will see what happens. I think things are opening up a little bit but it’s just hard to actually make a plan.I know loads of people have already set out tour dates but I’d be afraid of it being cancelled again and it’s just a nightmare when that happens.”
Sion Hill as an artist is gaining traction and his new single ‘Speak Up’ is a delight to the ears. He is developing his sound allowing the beautiful soulful tones of his debut album ‘Elephant’ flourish and blossom as he adds catchy pop elements and warm folk hues into the mix. Each of his releases have been tight, vibrant earworms. Johnston’s knack for sweet melodies make his tracks dangerously addictive. If his velvety tone, passionate vocals and swaggered personality alone don’t pique your interest then the upbeat sunny glows that surround his tunes, rich musicianship and irresistible hooks will get you for sure.
Watch the video for ‘Speak Up’ below
Author : Danu
