It begins as it so often does with Shihad related things with Home Again - whether it is the title of Jon Toogood’s new book or the name of his band's most iconic song. Just before Toogood came out we were treated to a couple of bars of the songs by host Shehan Karunatilaka.
The mood of the whole event was an extremely relaxed one, a lot of general talk about rock and/or roll, discussion of some of the more impactful anecdotes featured in the Home Again book and the careful circling of a certain joke that cleared the Viper Room of record executives in the early 2000s.
Jon Toogood is an extremely engaged and switched on speaker, most likely from being on stage for the better part of his life. He gives every topic due thought and consideration but doesn’t feel the need to dwell on anything for too long.
While it wasn’t a deliberate goal of the event, the talk will definitely have given any aspiring musicians a lot to think about afterwards. Jon talked about ways to use an old walkman speaker as a makeshift guitar pickup when dropped inside an acoustic guitar, the best way to try and assure equity in a rock band (turns out you should discuss these things early and openly rather than just give the frontman all the money) and most importantly in my opinion - you don’t have to be miserable to make music or art.
This is something that Jon brings up in his book and a couple of times in this talk. He did a lot of his writing while in an unhappy relationship/marriage or while facing other unfortunate circumstances that led him to think he needed to be unhappy to properly make good art, only to find he made albums that were just as good when he achieved clarity in his life and was a lot happier. This is a great message for people to take away as there is the cliche of the tortured genius, which has been glamourised to an extent so it was good to see some push back from a creative who has experienced it.
The Q and A was also interesting with questions ranging from the simple: is rock dead? (no) to the somewhat philosophical - will AI programs replace actual writing? (Also no, it’s just listening to 1s and 0s in Jon's words). A particularly fun moment was when Jon was asked his best single sentence of advice which turned out to be: “Don’t be afraid to suck at first” this advice was gleefully thrown back at him during another question where he said he didn’t like co-writing music because he feels like he isn’t good at it. There was some bitter with the sweet though as Jon confirmed that there is no Shihad reunion on the immediate horizon, he’s having too much fun coaching his kids' cricket teams.
Of course an event with a singer wouldn’t be complete without some music, punctuating the event we were treated to three songs from Jon’s oeuvre, those being: Run, Lost in my hometown and, naturally, Home Again to end the night.
In addition to Toogood’s own admirable storytelling on the night enough can’t be said about good his co-speaker Shehan Karunatilaka. He was always happy to chime in with his own anecdotes and asked interesting questions, but also could sit back and let Jon talk
The whole event was very fun and relaxed, certainly the most so of any of the events I attended across the weekend. I was definitely left with the impression that, had there not been a time limit on proceedings both speakers would have happily carried on all night. This impression was reinforced after the event when Jon was doing signings and we were told while we were waiting in line "Please not ask too many questions because he will stop to answer all of them" and he had another event in an hour.
Tom, Tūranga
More Jon Toogood
- Words and music by Jon Toogood in the library collection
- Read Moata's post on I wish I wrote that: love letters to other writers which featured Jon Toogood.
More WORD Christchurch
- Our WORD Christchurch 2026 page: Picks of the festivals, reportage and more!
- Visit the WORD Christchurch website
- Follow WORDchch on Instagram
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