A rock god on his own: Jon Toogood goes acoustic

The guy you know from Shihad has taken a cathartic turn to the quiet side with Last of the Lonely Gods. Before his ongoing album release tour hits Hamilton in early November, Jon Toogood found time to explain the "personal carnage" that album grew from, and the "joyful" shows he's playing now.

By Max Johns

Jon Toogood is best known for fronting the most unstoppable force in New Zealand rock. Shihad's industrial metal beginnings gave way to hugely popular heavy rock, then electronic-infused softer stuff, before they made an angry and political return to the metallic side. In every decade from the 1990s to the 2020s you'll find an album that's arguably their best.  

That would be enough for a lot of people. But in 2012 the first edition of The Adults, featuring Bic Runga, Shayne Carter and other legends, was a kiwi supergroup that got together only because Toogood could make it happen. Fast-forward to 2018 and the same name stuck to a very different collaboration between kiwi hip hop figures and singers of Aghani al-banat (literally "women's music") from Sudan. Again, Toogood was the central figure. That's a whole other story, though (and it's such a good one that it earned him a Masters degree in Fine Arts).

New songs came thick and fast, all dealing with two years of personal carnage. The music was gentle and intimate because that’s what I was writing about. Extremely personal things."

Now for his next act: A debut. Thirty-something years after he arrived on the scene, we have a Jon Toogood solo album. Last of the Lonely Gods is unplugged, personal and emotional. It's "comforting, healing, consoling, musical, organic music for the soul," he says.

​"At least that’s what it is for me, anyway."

The words "for me" resonate. Toogood wrote the ten songs on Last of the Lonely Gods without being sure he'd ever release them, let alone tour them about New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

"I was making music that I needed to hear but couldn’t find anywhere," he says.

"It’s music born out of personal circumstances. During the Covid lockdowns, I lost my Mum and I couldn’t be there as I was in Oz and she passed away in Wellington. Following that I got separated from my wife and kids while on tour in Aotearoa, due to the Omicron lockdown here. That went on for three months, during which I was staying with my sister Zoe and my brother in-law Campbell. A week into the lockdown Campbell was diagnosed with terminal cancer and it was incredibly difficult watching someone I loved fade away in front of me.

"My wife and I decided to move back to Aotearoa so as not to risk being separated again. I then caught Covid and suffered a complication that turned my pre-existing tinnitus up extremely loud, which was very distressing and led to a series of full blown panic attacks."

Last of the Lonely Gods was a treatment for all of those things, starting with the tinnitus. 

"I saw ENT specialists and visited the Auckland University Tinnitus clinic but I wasn't getting any relief. Then someone suggested trying CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), which ended up working for me. My therapist suggested that I play my guitar as a form of mindfulness and I just lost myself in that process as I found it very beneficial," Toogood says.

Suggesting that Jon Toogood play guitar is, I would venture, always going to be good advice. But it was particularly timely on this occasion.

"The first song I wrote was 'Love Is Forever', which dealt with my Mum’s death but also the realisation that my six-year-old daughter had my Mum’s legs and eyes, and I found that incredibly comforting. After that, new songs just came thick and fast all dealing with what we’d been through after two years of personal carnage. The music was gentle and intimate because that’s what I was writing about. Extremely personal things."

Luckily for the rest of us he took the recordings to his record label and discovered that, yes, other people will definitely want to hear this stuff. This is an album with tunes so attractive that my kids hummed along on our first listen. It's also an absolute grower which, like all high quality music of a quieter variety, takes time to fully reveal itself.

No doubt there'll be new dimensions to discover when Toogood brings the album release tour to Hamilton on November 7. He's already on the road for a genuinely national tour from Kerikeri to Invercargill. Aussie and the United Kingdom will get four dates each as well.

Asked how it's going so far, Toogood focuses on human connection.

"It’s been amazing. I’ve met so many people with similar stories of loss and separation. If you live long enough you’re gonna lose people you love, so I suppose it’s a pretty universal thing. The shows reflect that and I find them really profound and beautiful experiences. Joyful."

Now that he has music out under his own name and a few gigs under his belt, is the life of a solo musician different to that of a band member?

"It is, in that this music is so personal and specific to my own experience. In Shihad we write together and make a big sound that lends itself to bigger, grander themes lyrically. Playing live is different too in the fact that it’s just me onstage with a guitar. There's just as much passion for sure, but I don’t have the luxury of three other amazing musicians with me. I have to really be present and give it everything I have. Which I love!

"I'm really loving playing all the new stuff to be honest, but if I had to choose favourites it’d be 'Gravity' and 'Lost in my Hometown'."

Hamilton's show is at Last Place a couple of Thursdays from now. Plenty of time to put Last of the Lonely Gods on repeat and hear what healing sounds like, then come along and see it too.