Greenleaf Will Have New Material On Their Oz Tour, But Arvid Jonsson Will Have To Sing It While On Crutches

Swedish stoner-rock legends Greenleaf are set to tour Australia for the very first time in their almost two-decade-long career (in their defence, it must be stated that the band were not active in a live sense for several years of that time). Affable frontman Arvid Jonsson promises a fiery, balls-out, stoner-rock show for all the Aussie fans that have never seen the band before, although on this particular tour there is a slight, unfortunate catch.

"I like to think we put on a really good show," he says humbly. "We're a very energetic live band, I would think, in the sense that you have a crazy bear on the right side and a crazy German on the other side, so it's a good show to watch.

"Also, I recently broke my foot, so I'm going to do this tour on crutches!" he laughs, although he is not joking, "It's gonna be Dave Grohl-style. So I will appear as a kind of robotic frontman on this tour. I've already tried the crutches on stage and it's gonna be fine. In fact, it's easier to sing when you're not running around.

"Hopefully it will be fun to see a Scandinavian Viking on crutches!"

There is nothing sinister behind the injury. It really just comes down to the fact that Jonsson lives in Sweden, which is currently shrouded in winter, and is also kinda clumsy. "It's kind of ironic when you live in a slippery country like this that you still fall in the stairs," he laughs again. "I just fell down some stairs and landed on my left foot. I tend to sprain my feet quite a bit, so I thought it was just a bad sprain. But then when I woke up the next day after being at work the whole day, the foot was blue!... I wish I had a better story, like a polar bear eating my foot or something." His biggest regret for the Aussie tour is that he loves stage diving, but will have to curb that instinct on this trip.

It's been a full two years since the band released their last album Rise Above The Meadow and, as if to offset the not-so-wonderful news about his foot and the limits it will impose on his onstage movement, Jonsson has some far better tidings for ravenous Aussie Greenleaf fans. "We're going to play some brand new songs on this tour," he reveals. "We've been making a new album. It's not finished yet, but we'll be done in May.

"It will be one or two brand new songs, at least, from the new record," he estimates of how many new songs will wind up in their Australian setlists.  

Jonsson promises Australian fans that, while it took the band almost 20 years to tour our nation for the first time, they plan on being far more regular visitors now that they have broken the ice.

"We won't wait that long again," he states. "We will probably try to fit [touring our shores] in whenever possible from now on. It's an expensive journey as well, so when it's financeable and when the booking agent feels that they can work it out, it will happen. Especially if this tour goes well, we will come back, 100%."

By pure coincidence, no less than three members of the band - Jonsson included - are becoming fathers at around the same time. But while this may restrict the band's activities to a certain extent, Jonsson is still very confident that there is plenty of juice left in their tank, especially in a creative sense.

"Now, with the kids, we're going to take it a little bit more slowly, but we're still going to continue to do music and tour whenever we can," he states confidently. "I think we're going to go into that mid-range where we get to play, but we'll be home a bit more than before. Musically, I think we're as creative as ever; it's just a steady stream of songs and we work very well together. So as long as we feel like that, we will not be releasing less albums, we will try to make one every other year."