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For over a decade Sophie Hamley has been interviewing Australian country music artists for her website, Sunburnt Country Music. Now new interviews will be made available in this podcast. Listen to Golden Guitar winners such as Amber Lawrence and Luke O'Shea, and many others, talk about their songs and songwriting, about performance and creativity and so much more.
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- 458 - Brad Christmas from Copperline on new album Sleepwalking
Short version:
Bradley Christmas, frontman and songwriter of alt-country four-piece Copperline, talks about the band’s third album, Sleepwalking, which is partly a commentary on the role and importance of art for the artist and for the audience.
Long version:
This is not the first time Bradley Christmas, frontman and songwriter of alt-country four-piece Copperline, has appeared on Sunburnt Country Music, which is why the first few minutes of this interview sound more like us having a conversation than me interviewing him. There’s a familiarity there, and when that’s the case it makes more sense to embrace it than pretend it doesn’t exist. Which means that we went quite quickly into a discussion about the role of art and AI and related subject matter – prompted, it must be pointed out, by the songs on Sleepwalking, Copperline’s third album which is out now.
While each song on the album can be enjoyed for itself, there’s a bigger arc there, framed by the first and last songs. The title song is about the perils of sleepwalking through life; the last track is about walking outside late at night as a form of problem solving, something that Brad does himself. In between the songs address the nature of creativity and of armchair critics, the need to be present and the importance of appreciating love in various forms.
The album works as proof of its own argument: that art is vital, that is cannot be replaced by anything mechanical, that life is better when we have other people’s creativity to enjoy as well as our own to express. Brad understands this not only as a musician but as an author, as he is the award-nominated writer of Saltwater Boy and has another book under way.
The broader discussion about AI and the pace at which it seems to be overtaking creative practice can sometimes seem to propose the inevitability of it all. Indeed, for a little while I was putting this sort of text I’m writing now through various tools, in the name of making it more SEO friendly, so that it could reach more people and so on and so forth. (Of course, it’s in the interest of the people making those tools to tell us that we can’t reach anyone without them. But it was also hard to escape.) I also thought it might speed up the process, because I wanted to publish these interviews sooner, and writing the text could slow things down. Instead, it made me slower.
Eventually I decided to just write what I wanted to write, and you’ll either read it or you won’t. You will choose to watch or listen to this interview or you won’t. I am not going to try automated tricks to make that happen. Choose to be here, engaging with Brad and Copperline and their work, or not, but be assured that the world is richer for having that work in it, and nothing can replace it.
Listen to Sleepwalking by Copperline on Apple Music
Listen to Sleepwalking by Copperline on Spotify
Listen to Sleepwalking by Copperline on YouTube
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Sun, 11 Oct 2026 - 35min - 457 - Sarah from The Stumblers on making music and embracing joy
Short version:
This is an interview with Sarah Sands from Perth six-piece The Stumblers. Watch/listen especially if you want to feel inspired to live a full creative life and find opportunities for joy. The band’s latest single is ‘Rhyolite’.
Long version:
The Stumblers are a six-piece band from Perth, WA, with members Sarah Sands (vocals, banjo, guitar, dobro), Dan Durack (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Becky Lodge (fiddle, accordion, vocals), Kirsty Ploeg (keyboard, vocals), Fiona Kanters (bass, fiddle) and Steven Rea (drums, vocals). It was Sands who joined me for a chat about the band, which formed not in primary school but because of a primary school – the one their children went to. The school wanted some parents to form a band, and Sands discovered that amongst the other parents there were some classically trained musicians. So they grouped together and had so much fun that The Stumblers was born.
Sands grew up in a musical household: her father was in a band that played regularly around Perth, and he was a country music fan. Sands says she came to listen to country more in her twenties, drawn by the storytelling, and it’s been a natural progression for her as a songwriter to write in the country genre.
Sands says that after becoming a mother she thought that she might have retired from being a musician, having been in bands and played with Durack in a duo for several years. But now it’s come back into her life and, as she says, ‘You find the time’, even if it’s writing a song in the middle of the night – or as she says, she once wrote a whole song while riding her motorbike to work, singing to herself then recording it on her phone once she could.
‘If the creativity is there and the energy is there, you’ll squeeze it in somewhere,’ she says. ‘It’s like a muscle … you get back into the rhythm of doing it and open your mind up to doing it and looking for stories everywhere.’
This was an inspiring chat to have – Sands also creates opportunities for The Stumblers and other acts to play in and around Perth, so she’s something of an impresario (or, rather, a dynamo). We did also talk about The Stumblers’ latest single, ‘Rhyolite’! And the band is working towards releasing an album.
Listen to The Stumblers on Apple Music
Listen to The Stumblers on Spotify
Listen to The Stumblers on YouTube
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Thu, 08 Oct 2026 - 34min - 456 - Kylie Jane on ‘Seasons Changing’ in life and music
Kylie Jane has been working as a professional musician for several years – indeed, she had a short stint doing something else (as she reveals in this new interview) but it was clear she was meant to be a singer, and ever since then she’s had a busy roster of gigs and functions.
She started singing as a child – her father’s cousin had a karaoke business, so there were several opportunities for her to practise! By the age of thirteen she was performing in open mic nights and not long afterwards started playing guitar.
In 2017 Kylie released a pop album called Black Swan after she had appeared on The Voice – although, as she tells me, she wrote the album before the show, and had to hold onto it for a certain period of time around the show.
Kylie is now firmly in the country music camp, releasing singles over the past few years, the latest of which is ‘Seasons Changing’. It was created with Jake Davey, who is an artist in his own right as well as a producer and in-demand co-writer, and someone Kylie has known for a while. She was at Jake’s studio to work on another song and, as Kylie talks about, the song arose spontaneously from a conversation they were having about all the things that had changed in their lives in recent times.
In addition to her work as a performing artist, Kylie runs tiny home accommodation in the Hunter Valley, and she competes in showjumping, with plans to add campdrafting or something similar to her list of skills. It’s clear she has a life full of things she loves, and one that she has created with hard work and determination while maintaining the joy she has always felt for music.
Listen to ‘Seasons Changing’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Seasons Changing’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Seasons Changing’ on YouTube
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Tue, 06 Oct 2026 - 28min - 455 - Tom Mac on what it takes to be ‘Brave’
The first time Tom Mac was a guest on the Sunburnt Country Music podcast, we had a long chat – so long that it grew gradually darker in his car (he’d pulled over in order to do the interview) to the point where he was barely visible! This time around he was indoors, with a light, and we had another long chat, because he has stories to tell.
The reason for the interview was his latest single, ‘Brave’, which he wrote about falling in love with his partner, Erin, who has two children. It’s a song about loving someone when you know you can’t be their number one, because the children necessarily come first. Mac had been fairly nomadic to that point – the first interview was, in fact, about his song ‘Nomadic’ – so committing to this new life required some decisions, including being brave. He wrote two songs about it, and released the first, ‘Never Gonna Be’, in 2024, and he waited to release ‘Brave’, as he talks about in the interview, saying it ‘went that little bit further’ into the story.
Mac also talks about the single before this one, ‘Larrakia Sunset’, which was written during the time he spent in Darwin during the pandemic, and which he recently performed in the NT capital. And he goes into his songwriting process – usually a solo writer, he is opening up to collaborations and contemplating what that means when the subject matter is more personal.
Towards the end Mac talks about his background in acting, and even though that hasn’t been his main professional pursuit, he’s had some interesting experiences … and reveals a near-miss role on a reality TV show!
Listen to ‘Brave’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Brave’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Brave’ on YouTube
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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 - 36min - 454 - Tameka steps to the front of the stage with debut single ‘Like This Before’
If you’ve been to see an Australian country music artist play at any time in the past few years, the chances are good that you’ve seen Tameka playing in the band. A highly accomplished and in-demand guitarist, she has performed alongside Ashleigh Dallas, Adam Harvey, Andrew Swift, Catherine Britt, Loren Ryan and Tori Darke, amongst others.
Tameka has now released her own music, the country-pop single ‘Like This Before’, which she worked on with Mickey Pye, who she met when she was a teenager, and who taught her guitar for a while as he runs a music school in the Central West of New South Wales, where Tameka also lives. The song was written in 2019, as Tameka tells me. It was mixed by Nashville engineer Jonathan Roye and mastered by Adam Ayan, who’s also based in Nashville.
When Tameka and I chatted recently I found out that she has been writing songs for years – although given how often she’s on the road, it’s understandable that she’s only releasing the song now! As she also says in the interview, she needed to feel ready to have the focus on her. She has long wanted to be an artist and release her own music, and says she somewhat fell into being a guitarist, but the time is clearly right for her to step to the front of the stage.
I also asked Tameka about her development as a guitarist, and given that when we chatted she had an array of instruments behind her, I asked her about them – and it turns out one of them was the first guitar she ever owned. So for those who are interested in guitars, there’s a little bit of guitar chat!
Listen to ‘Like This Before’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Like This Before’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Like This Before’ on YouTube
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Sun, 04 Oct 2026 - 27min - 453 - Trent Richardson on moving new single ‘Promise You Now’
When Central Queensland contemporary country artist Trent Richardson appeared in Australian Idol two and a half years ago, not only had he never performed for an audience before – he thought he was a long way from being a father, which is something he very much wanted.
His life changed fairly quickly: he reached the final six of Idol, which gained him fans and propelled his burgeoning career in country music, and he has since become a father to Archie. It is for Archie that he has written his latest single, ‘Promise You Now’, as from birth his son had the odds against him, spending months in Neonatal Intensive Care. As Richardson says in this interview, ‘There was a period there when we thought he just wasn’t going to make it.’
Archie was diagnosed with septo-optic dysplagia which affects his sight and movement, amongst other things. He will need lifelong medical care yet, as Richardson says, ‘he zips around’, and he has made great progress.
‘We just love him,’ says Richardson. ‘I think that’s the biggest thing. I just adore the little fella.’
It’s clear from talking to Richardson that there’s no one more important to him than Archie, and it’s also clear in the song, which is a father’s promise to a son to always take care of him. ‘Archie chose me to be his dad,’ says Richardson.
The first time I interviewed Richardson he struck me as someone who is focused and determined yet also philosophical about both downs and ups. That is no doubt contributing to why his son is doing so well and also why he’s able to manage fatherhood and work and also creating music. As he says in the interview, writing the song helped him navigate all of it. There’s more ahead for him, on all fronts, and no doubt he will approach it with gusto.
Listen to ‘Promise You Now’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Promise You Now’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Promise You Now’ on YouTube
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Mon, 28 Sep 2026 - 26min - 452 - The Wolfe Brothers on new single ‘Wannabe’ and upcoming album
Since they first emerged on the Australian country music scene seven albums and fifteen Golden Guitars ago, Tasmanian country-rock outfit The Wolfe Brothers have won fans and admiration with their hard-work ethic backed up by impressive live performances, professionalism and songs that take in good times and bad, sentimentality and straightforwardness.
The Wolfe Brothers are Nick and Tom Wolfe, and in this new interview I talk to Tom about the band’s varied activities this year, which have included being inducted into the Country Music Hands of Fame during the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and performances with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and writing their latest single, ‘Wannabe’ in Nashville with Australian Phil Barton and American Dana Heaton-Perdue. The Wolfes are inherently entertaining – you only have to see them live to know that – and this song therefore fits very nicely in their canon.
The duo are looking ahead to the release of their eighth album and after several years of travelling back and forth across the land, performing, they’ve learned how to balance their hectic work lives with some peace and quiet back home. Which doesn’t mean they still don’t give 110 per cent to their music – as Tom talks about, they absolutely love what they do and appreciate every minute of it.
You can see The Wolfe Brothers live at Groundwater Country Music Festival on 17 October, and they continue their own Australian Made Tour in November. All dates on their website.
Listen to ‘Wannabe’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Wannabe’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Wannabe’ on YouTube
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Sun, 27 Sep 2026 - 20min - 451 - Lucy Beveridge on being A Million Different Things
There are pathways for Australian country music artists of all ages to develop their talents and skills, and that includes those who are young enough to still be in school. The CMAA Junior Academy of Country Music is for artists under 18 years of age – and NSW Central Coast singer-songwriter Lucy Beveridge has been a student there four times, in both songwriting and instrumental strands. She’s also taken part in the Talent Development Project, an NSW initiative for school students in the arts.
So when I interviewed Lucy about her debut single, ‘A Million Different Things’, I was conscious of the fact that I was talking to a young artist who also has more experience and education than most, and who has therefore worked diligently and professionally at her craft at an age when there’s also school to think about, plus the usual hullabaloo of being a teenager.
Beveridge’s maturity as an artist is evident in the song, which is not the work of someone who is still trying to figure out which music she wants to make and which sort of artist she wants to be, even as it’s a song that acknowledges that she’s ‘a million different things’.
The clip for the song was filmed in national park in Watagan, in the NSW Hunter Valley, by Lucy’s mother and brother, who run the successful photography and videography business Roaming Creatives. You can see it here.
It was a pleasure to talk to Lucy and find out more about how she’s developed as a songwriter, singer and musician – she’s a truly impressive individual and it’s exciting to anticipate what she may release next.
Listen to ‘A Million Different Things’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘A Million Different Things’ on Spotify
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Wed, 23 Sep 2026 - 23min - 450 - Saralyn on the Goldline that pulls her through
NB: Saralyn’s sound was softer on the recording than it sounded when we spoke, so there are subtitles on this full-length interview. If you'd rather watch this with subtitles, you can find the full interview onYouTube.
From the time she started releasing songs in 2023, it was clear Saralyn was an artist with a distinctive sound and point of view, and that she had a lineage in country music and cared about offering songs that don’t shy away from emotion, such as ‘White Butterfly’ and ‘I Hope That You’ll Remember’. She also likes a driving beat, as on songs such as ‘Cowgirl Blues, which is one of five tracks on her debut EP, Goldline.
The title track is an origin story, of sorts, and a moving one at that. We talk about that in this new interview, in which Saralyn delves into her artistry and the stories that matter to her. There are songs about the love that sustains her and the dreams that drive her. As ever when we have chatted, Saralyn is clearly passionate about music, which has been in her life almost from birth. Even though being an independent artist is hard work – especially given she is the mother of two young children – she loves all the parts of it.
Saralyn’s music will appeal to people who love a contemporary country sound that is created along traditional lines, with storytelling that connects to the hearts of listeners and strong vocals that reinforce that connection because we can hear her own heart in each song.
She has several shows coming up, both of her original material and her Lainey Wilson cover show, Trailblazer – catch the last show of the current Trailblazer tour this Saturday at The Beer Shed in Sydney.
Saralyn on tour:
3 October – Port Macquarie, NSW
17 October – Muswellbrook, NSW
23 October – Central Coast, NSW
7 November – Sydney, NSW | Day Cruise with Viper Creek Band
- SOLD OUT
13 November – Hunter Valley, NSW
15 November – East Maitland, NSW
28 November – Paterson, NSW
21 January 2027 – Tamworth, NSW
Listen to Goldline on Apple Music
Listen to Goldline on Spotify
Listen to Goldline on YouTube
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Tue, 22 Sep 2026 - 37min - 449 - Sue Ray on her lifetime of music and her new single ‘Before the Rain’
[Mild language warning]
In this new interview, Toowoomba-raised country-blues artist Sue Ray tells me that, ‘like a bad country song’, she moved back to the Queensland city to have her children. But it’s also where she formed as an artist, as a member of the Toowoomba Country Music Club along with Duncan Toombs and Lyn Bowtell, and as the child of a rock ’n’ roll father (about whom she shares a wild story – no, I’m not going to tell you what it is!).
Before we talked about Ray’s own music, we covered live music and why it’s so wonderful – that’s because these interviews are conversations, so I don’t stick strictly to the questions I’ve prepared and if an artist mentions something that is interesting to pursue, I’ll do that.
Ray started playing guitar relatively late but she was writing well before that; ‘songs come to me constantly,’ she says, and she has over 11 000 voice memos on her phone to draw from for her songs, which have appeared on two studio albums and one live album. Her latest single, ‘Before the Rain’, is the title track from her forthcoming album.
Ray is an artist I’ve been aware of for quite a while, impressed by her voice and her songwriting, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to interview her, and as you can tell by the length of it (almost 40 minutes), there was a lot to chat about and all of it was so interesting! She talks with insight about the ups and downs of artistry – including tall poppy syndrome – and how she has learned to make full use of her voice and talents, as well as about her time living in Nashville.
Listen to Sue Ray on Apple Music
Listen to Sue Ray on Spotify
Listen to Sue Ray on YouTube
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Fri, 11 Sep 2026 - 43min - 448 - Jen Mize on her sensational new album TILT with The Rough N’ Tumble
There is many a songwriter in this fair land who will have either written a song with Jen Mize or been mentored by her in their songwriting. Mize has been a regular mentor and teacher at Song Muster and the DAG Sheep Station, amongst other places, and the number of times her name comes up is a clear indicator of how wonderful a collaborator she must be.
Collaboration is also at the heart of The Rough N’ Tumble, the seven-piece band with whom she released an eponymous album in 2023. Jen Mize & The Rough N’ Tumble are back with new album Tilt, which will indeed make you tilt and sway, and swoon, and in this new interview we talk about not only this album but Mize’s collaboration with band member Jeremy Edwards, a solo artist in his own right with whom she produced the album.
At the time we were speaking Mize was due to perform at the Gympie Muster, which has now passed (due to a few other commitments I wasn’t able to publish this interview before that took place) and she had already mentored at this year’s Song Muster. She has a fully committed creative life, which is no doubt why she came up with a phrase I loved, during the conversation: ‘creative gym’. I’ll let you find out in which context it was mentioned!
Mize is always wonderful to talk to, in part because she’s so passionate about music and the people she meets through it. Plus it’s always great to hear how collaborations happen and great music is made. I hope you enjoy our chat.
Listen to Tilt by Jen Mize & The Rough N’ Tumble on Apple Music
Listen to Tilt by Jen Mize & The Rough N’ Tumble on Spotify
Listen to Tilt by Jen Mize & The Rough N’ Tumble on YouTube
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Wed, 09 Sep 2026 - 42min - 447 - Chris Cobb on growing up with music and releasing his rich first album
Early in my interview with Chris Cobb, who has just released his debut album, More Questions than Answers, he speaks about his childhood in Bulolo in Papua New Guinea.
‘Music was very much a part of me,’ he says, then he went on to talk about how there was a local bluegrass scene, and a band in which most players had instruments with two strings only.
‘I got lost in it,’ he tells me, and being surrounded by so much music led him to want to play guitar from a young age – although not the child-sized guitar his father brought home for him!
Cobb has lived in music since then, although it hasn’t always been his focus – he worked in the corporate sector for a while, before moving to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast with his wife and children, then deciding to pursue music more fully. This included appearing on The Voice last year and now releasing his debut album, More Questions Than Answers.
The album is a mixture of covers and originals, with Australian country music legend James Blundell appearing on ‘Love Letter to Morobe’ and rising star Felicity Kircher on opening track ‘Linger’. The covers are beautifully done, and once you know the reasons why each has been included – as Cobb reveals in this interview – you will further appreciate the richness of his music and story.
More Questions Than Answers is an album for those who love the art of singing, and those who want to be taken on a journey. There’s a variety of styles on the album, and all of them radiating from Cobb’s authentic appreciation and understanding of the music that has come before him and that he is immersed in now.
Listen to More Questions Than Answers on Apple Music
Listen to More Questions Than Answers on Spotify
Listen to More Questions Than Answers on YouTube
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Mon, 07 Sep 2026 - 28min - 446 - Wade Forster on impressive new album The Aftermath and tour plans
‘Saturday night’s the gooseneck party – this is the Sunday after.’ That’s how award-winning country music artist Wade Forster described his new album, The Aftermath, to me in this interview. The album comes fairly hot on the heels of his last, Gooseneck Party, hence his explanation, and he wrote them close together too, recording The Aftermath earlier this year, straight after his 2026 Golden Guitar wins for Male Artist of the Year and New Talent of the Year.
Gooseneck Party certainly wasn’t entirely a party album, but of the two The Aftermath is the heartbreaker. There is no wallowing on it, though – it’s a clear-eyed look at mistakes made and an even clearer view of what’s ahead.
‘When you’re hungover, you don’t need to tell everyone “I’ve been an idiot”,’ says Forster in this chat. ‘They already know.’ This is, he says, how the self-pity that might have been in some of these songs was taken away and they became about feeling other things.
It’s a remarkable collection of songs and, as when I last spoke to Forster, I loved hearing about his songwriting process. He’s mainly a solo songwriter; only two of the tracks on The Aftermath are co-writes (‘Heaven ’57’ with Piper Butcher and ‘October’ with Ellis Undercover), and storytelling is at his core. The effectiveness of his music is not only in the lyrics, though – it’s in the way they’re delivered, and the way he uses his voice to do that.
Then there is his live performance, which is quite something – Forster is very much alert to the fact that people spend their hard-earned money to come to a show, and he wants to make it worth their while. This is no doubt part of why he’s already developed a large following overseas – he was about to take off to the USA when we spoke, and he has shows there this month – and also why he picks up more fans all the time in Australia.
The Aftermath is out now through Community Music and if you’d like to see Forster live, the dates are:
WADE FORSTER
THE AFTERMATH TOUR 2026
With The Wet Whistles and Piper Butcher
For tickets and further information head to livenation.com.au
Astor Theatre, Perth
Thursday 22 October
Metro Theatre, Sydney
Thursday 29 October – NEW DATE
Friday 30 October – SOLD OUT
Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
Friday 13 November
Hindley St. Music Hall, Adelaide
Friday 20 November
Forum, Melbourne
Saturday 21 November
Listen to The Aftermath on Apple Music
Listen to The Aftermath on Spotify
Listen to The Aftermath on YouTube
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Sun, 06 Sep 2026 - 27min - 445 - Brooke McClymont & Adam Eckersley return with dynamite third album, Souls on Show
From the start of the enterprise that became Sunburnt Country Music, I was a fan of The McClymonts, the band Brooke McClymont formed with her sisters, Sam and Molly. Their country-pop songs were always clever and fun and musically unforgettable, due to their way with a melody and their harmonies. I saw them play live as often as I could. Thus, when Brooke released an album with her husband, Adam Eckersley, I rushed to listen to it and discovered a work that had the excellence that they had both produced separately – Eckersley with his eponymous band – yet had a unique sound and sensibility.
The songs on that first self-titled album would not have belonged with The McClymonts or The Adam Eckersley Band – they were definitively Brooke and Adam’s alone. It was an exciting development for a music fan, and it continued with their second album, Up, Down & Sideways, which produced chart-topping, award-winning hits such as ‘Star of the Show’ (written with their daughter, Tiggy) and ‘Memory Lane’.
One of the hardest things for any artist to do – let alone two together – is not only be consistent but create something different that is as good or better than what has come before. This involves risk, especially when there is a well-established fan base. And while Brooke and Adam have big, bold personalities, they are serious about their music so the risk is real.
In the case of their third album, the newly release Souls on Show, the risk has manifested as a rich album about life and marriage and committing to make the best of both. As with previous albums, they take relatable subjects and apply their talents to them and the resulting songs are so good because they take the risk. They push themselves to make the music better each time. It’s a compliment to their audience, because what also seems true of them both is that they love that connection with their audience. If we show up, they will too, in spades.
In this new interview they talk about their creative process and how The Wang, where they host groups of people and perform songs old and new for them, has contributed to it, and their regard for each other as artists and people is so clear. All of this contributes to the quality of the music they produce.
Live, Brooke and Adam are never not great, whether it’s with their band or as a duo (including at The Wang, where you can see them up close and free flowing in the best way). I’ve seen their band show enough times to know that it can leave a person high for days, on the quality of the music and the fact that Brooke and Adam always seem to be having the most fun every single time. They are touring in support of Souls on Show and you can find the details here: https://www.brookeandadam.com/ontour.
I used to think I was perhaps too biased about The McClymonts, but then decided that I was biased because they were so good. So perhaps I’m biased about Brooke and Adam too – but it’s because they’re so good. In this world, with so much information coming at us, with so many options for our time and attention, they make it easy for us to choose their music by accepting nothing less than excellence in themselves. For those of us who live and breathe music, there’s nothing better.
Souls on Show is out now through Universal Music Australia.
Listen to Souls on Show on Apple Music
Listen to Souls on Show on Spotify
Listen to Souls on Show on YouTube
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Thu, 27 Aug 2026 - 27min - 444 - Andrew Swift on his new bluegrass direction and upcoming album
Victorian Andrew Swift has released four ARIA chart-topping albums and won three Golden Guitars, in amongst touring regularly – although later it’s been a lighter tour schedule than usual, as he’s now the proud dad of Valentine.
Swift has built his fan base with both releases and touring, and the temptation for any artist in that position must be to continue in the same vein with the songs he writes and records. Yet for his latest single, ‘Brick by Brick’, Swift has changed musical direction – although still within country music – to bluegrass. Not just this song, either: his forthcoming album has been produced entirely without electric instruments by his longtime band member (and highly regarded producer) Damian Cafarella.
In this new interview Swift tells me that ‘Brick by Brick’ was written nearly two years ago in a co-write at his dining table with his fiancée, Simone Sordello, alongside Gretta Ziller, Melanie Dyer and Jackson James. The lyrics grew out of a shared frustration among the co-writers with someone who'd repeatedly tested their goodwill.
‘This song is by no means a diss track,’ Swift says. ‘It’s just how we were feeling in that moment.’
The song was put on the back burner as Swift finished his most recent album, Lucky Stars. Yet ‘I’ve been wanting to do a bluegrass project,’ as he says, tracing the idea back to revisiting his 2015 debut, Call for the Cavalry, on a flight and hearing its Americana roots calling him back.
Currently seven songs into the new record, Swift is balancing studio time around fatherhood, working sessions in around Valentine's daycare days. His live shows will lean towards a solo or duo storyteller format in the near term, with plans to rework older favourites like ‘Runaway Train’ and ‘Head Full of Honey’ into the new sound for select performances, including a bluegrass hoedown in Tamworth.
You’ll find Swift performing at Groundwater Country Music Festival on Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, held on 17 and 18 October. See below for the full list of tour dates.
Listen to ‘Brick by Brick’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Brick by Brick’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Brick by Brick’ on YouTube
SEE ANDREW SWIFT LIVE
Saturday 5th September - Noojee Hotel, Noojee VIC
Friday 11th September - Odessa’s, Creswick VIC
Saturday 12th September - Bells Beach Brewing Company, Torquay VIC
Friday 18th September - Golden Vine Hotel, Bendigo VIC
Saturday 19th September - Young Street Tavern, Frankston VIC
Friday 2nd October - Sooki Lounge, Belgrave VIC
Saturday October 3rd - The Bend Classic, Tailem Bend SA
Saturday October 10th - The Oaks, Albion Park Rail NSW
Sunday October 11th - Camden Hotel, Camden NSW
Saturday 17th October - Groundwater Country Music Festival, Broadbeach QLD
Sunday 18th October - Groundwater Country Music Festival, Broadbeach QLD
Tuesday 19th January - Bluegrass Hoedown, Tamworth Country Music Festival NSW
Wednesday 20th January - The Longyard Hotel, Tamworth NSW
Thursday 25th March - Friday 9th April - Singapore to Sydney Country Music Cruise
**Tickets on sale now and available via www.andrewswift.com.au**
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Tue, 25 Aug 2026 - 33min - 443 - From busking on Peel Street to New Zealand Gold Guitars – Zac Weeks’s big year
When I was researching this interview with Devonport, Tasmania-based country-rock artist Zac Weeks, the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards – and his success at them – kept coming up, the point where I then went looking for information about where he was from in New Zealand. There was none, and therefore I decided that I’d start the interview by asking about this.
It turns out that Weeks is very much from Tasmania but on a suggestion from some New Zealand country music artists he met at the CMAA Academy of Country Music, he entered into the Gold Guitar Awards and emerged as a runner-up in the open singer-songwriter category, which is very good going for a first-time entrant.
It was at Academy that Weeks’s latest single, ‘Long Neck Long Gone’, came together. The title had sat in his Notes app for four years; it was a line borrowed from a friend as they were finishing a ginger beer on a night out in Devonport. At Academy Weeks was paired with in-demand songwriter Matt Scullion, and the song took shape within minutes.
‘What about this: “long neck, long gone, she left me alone”,’ Weeks recalls Scullion offering, before the two wrote the rest of the track together.
While Weeks has previously recorded with producer Matt Fell, who is also based in Tasmania, he recorded the latest single with Jacky McCormack, who is on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
At the time we spoke Weeks was currently touring Tasmania – and he does play quite a lot around the Apple Isle – before heading to the Gympie Music Muster, which starts on Thursday 27 August. He’s already had an action-packed year, and no doubt Gympie will provide even more motivation for him to continue performing and writing – so stand by for future releases!
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Sun, 23 Aug 2026 - 36min - 442 - Madeline Leman on the long journey to her latest album Ripen on the Vine
Victorian artist Madeline Leman’s latest country-folk album, Ripen on the Vine, was recorded in 2023, and while Leman has released some singles since then, the album needed a little more time to emerge – for a very important reason. As she tells me early in this interview, her young son was unwell for several months, so the album’s release was necessarily delayed.
Upon release it went to number 4 in the ARIA Country chart and number 5 on the Australia Indie chart, and Leman has also played shows in support of it, no doubt swelling the numbers of fans for her intelligent, often whimsical music that combines beautifully crafted lyrics with rich musicality.
Leman grew up in a musical family – her parents met while playing in a band together, and were folk artists. They dubbed her the ‘human radio’ because she would sing so often from such a young age. Piano was her first instrument, and Missy Higgins a big early influence, so Leman began writing songs on piano.
She then taught herself guitar and, while at university, listened to a lot of country music. At that time in Melbourne the alt-country/Americana scene was at its height, but it was a folk artist with whom she made the most lasting connection. Sharing a house with folk artist Leah Senior, Leman played her a song she’d written; this led Senior to Leman to play in a folk duo with her.
Leman also talks about recording certain songs on the album and the choices that were made musically and lyrically, and we talk about clothes – if you watch the interview rather than listening to it, you’ll see that her clothing choices are as astute as her musical ones!
It was a great pleasure to meet Leman, who is a passionate, articulate artist and one whose music is enriching on so many levels. And listen to the end to hear her talk about the line-dancing class she teaches …
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Wed, 19 Aug 2026 - 43min - 441 - Georgia Scarlett and Joel Spence – two solo artists with one very good idea
Georgia Scarlett and Joel Spence are two Queensland country artists who have been releasing solo music independently for several years, and who have now found a creative partnership that has produced two singles which have taken them in a musical direction that is distinct from their own music while preserving their musical identities.
The first single is ‘The Wise Folks Say’, which was the reason for our recent interview. The second, released after this interview was recorded, is ‘Honey Let’s Go’.
Their story begins at the Song Muster in Gympie, which has now generated several outstanding songs and songwriting partnerships that bring established and emerging songwriters together. Scarlett and Spence were placed in the same writing group and produced ‘The Wise Folks Say’ in a single session.
‘This spark just connected instantly once we started talking our experiences, our journeys through life, some of the wisdom that’s been passed down to us,’ says Scarlett. ‘Every verse is a different life lesson. It has that old-fashioned country wisdom that I really love.’
The duo brought the song to producer Kelsey Berrington. The result is a song in which the duo’s voices are given the space to meld and separate as needed, revealing the way they balance and complement each other.
Spence grew up in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, on a cattle and grain property. He has been writing and recording since his teens, and also has an academic interest in the power of music, conducting research into how community-led songwriting and performance can foster healing, cultural justice, and empowerment for First Nations Peoples in remote communities.
Scarlett is originally from Bundaberg and grew up learning piano but found that she was better suited to clarinet, and has since added guitar and harmonica to her repertoire. She released her debut solo album, Rhythm of Life, last year.
Scarlett and Spence’s collaboration on ‘The Wise Folks Say’ worked so well that they have now released a second single together, ‘Honey Let’s Go’.
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Mon, 17 Aug 2026 - 30min - 440 - Jessie Robins on her debut single, ‘I Should’ve Known Better’
Jessie Robins grew up in Katherine in the Northern Territory as one of a set of triplets and the daughter of a helicopter mustering pilot, and – as she tells me in this new interview – she has been singing since she was a small child. Creativity also runs in the family as her sisters are also working in creative fields.
Robins now lives in Brisbane, where she performs regularly across the city and occasionally on Stradbroke Island, and she has released her debut country pop single, 'I Should Have Known Better'. The song was written with Shannon McArthur, a producer and songwriter living in Austin, Texas who is Robins’s longtime collaborator. They made a connection made through YouTube long before Zoom made remote creative partnerships commonplace.
Robins has been writing songs since childhood, and tells me that she still has notebooks from those years and occasionally finds a melody or a lyric she could use now. ‘I Should’ve Known Better’ came about through Robins watching a friend navigate a relationship from beginning to end, and the song sat with her for a couple of years before the timing felt right to release it.
‘Now that those circumstances have passed,’ she says, ‘I felt like it was the right time to move forward.’
The song's title implies regret, but the sound does not. Robins was deliberate about this – she wanted something people could put on in the car and feel okay about, not sad.
‘It’s okay to test things and trial things and then come out the other side with learnings,’ she says.
The genre of country music isn’t Robins’s natural habitat – she didn’t grow up listening to it. But over her years of performing and studying at JMC Academy in Brisbane, people kept telling her she sounded country. Eventually, she stopped resisting, and the result is this nuanced debut track.
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Thu, 13 Aug 2026 - 25min - 439 - Nashdale on their new music that was ten years in the making
Nashdale are a Central Coast country duo – Kerryn Daniel on lead vocals and Brent Murphy on guitars and vocals – who have been playing together for over a decade and releasing original music since 2024. Their third single, ‘Boots Back On’, is out now, and an EP is in the works for the Tamworth Country Music Festival next year.
While it seems like the pair came up with the perfect moniker for a country duo, Nashdale is a real place: a small locality outside Orange in the Central West of New South Wales, where Daniel grew up and her grandparents had an orchard.
Daniel and Murphy have been performing together for a decade, a collaboration which started when Murphy heard Daniel sing with a friend’s band and, as he tells me in this new interview, launched a plot to steal her! Obviously he had the right instincts, considering how long they’ve been working together, and in the interview it was clear how much respect they have for each other and also how their dynamic would work on stage and in creating music.
After several years playing shows on the NSW Central Coast, the enforced inactivity of the pandemic gave them the opportunity to start recording originals together. Murphy has a home studio, and it was there that they started demoing songs with no particular plan. As they told me, they now have around thirty in various stages of development.
Their third single, ‘Boots Back On’ came about when Daniel played Murphy that she loved the groove of, and Murphy reached into his stack of old lyric drafts for something that might fit the energy. The song is about acknowledging that something isn’t working and putting your boots back on and getting on with things.
There are other releases in the works, including an EP timed to come out around the 2027 Tamworth Country Music Festival. And if you’re a ‘Coastie’, make sure to check out Nashdale live!
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Wed, 05 Aug 2026 - 44min - 438 - Hayden Phillis on new single ‘Stick Poke Tattoos’ and his rich creative life
Art can emerge at any age, and that’s just as true of younger artists as those who find their creative voices later on. Sydney singer-songwriter Hayden Phillis is not yet twenty years old and has spent his teen years developing his skills as a musician, singer and songwriter, attending the CMAA Academy of Country Music three times – twice as a singer-songwriter, once in the instrumentalist strand, which he describes as one of his favourite experiences, forcing him to rapidly develop piano skills and adaptability in a band setting.
His debut album, Too Young, may have been released only last year but Phillis already has a new single, ‘Stick Poke Tattoos’, which was inspired by a friend’s relationship and written using Phillis’s somewhat wry powers of observation. He’s a songwriter who is interested in human experiences, and exploring them through his songs. He writes on buses, at gigs, in the notes app on his phone – collecting fragments, testing them against what he already has, and discarding what doesn’t fit.
‘I had the attitude of writing what I see and what I think,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t trying to put myself in a box that everyone will like.’
Both the first album and his forthcoming second, which is to be called What Time Doesn’t Know, were recorded at Rabbit Hole Recording Studio on the Central Coast with producer Dingo (Brandon Dodd), a collaboration Phillis talks about in this new interview.
He also mentions his upcoming long trip to Nashville, his plans for the 2027 Tamworth Country Music Festival – and his hobby making video games, which is another creative outlet and form of storytelling.
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Mon, 27 Jul 2026 - 31min - 437 - Olive Mae on singing country songs and choosing freedom
The first time I interviewed country-folk artist Olive Mae she was in a caravan she shared with her husband and children, and they were travelling around Australia, embracing freedom – a concept that is at the core of Olive’s latest single, ‘Country Songs’.
Now settled in the south-west of Western Australia, about ten minutes’ drive from the popular Margaret River area, Olive is playing fewer shows on the road but certainly not playing less overall, as we talk about in this new interview.
‘Country Songs’ is, Olive says, her first attempt at writing a country song; she previously believed she was writing folk songs – although, as she says in the interview, when one of them ended up being nominated in a country music awards category, she reassessed!
The song is partly about how music might have been the path she wanted to take from a young age but instead she followed the advice of others to pursue more conventional paths.
‘Sometimes you’ve got to do the wrong thing just to realise what’s wrong,’ she says. ‘That’s just as important as finding what’s right.’
Ultimately, though, art won out, which is partly how she found herself in that caravan, touring the land.
‘I wanted to be free,’ she says, ‘to choose the path that you want to take and not take on anyone else’s thoughts on how you should be living.’
Of course, being free is not as simple as the phrase makes it sound – it requires courage to focus on what you know is right for you and ignore others who are trying to steer you away for their own reasons.
As ever, it was a great deal of fun chatting to Olive, who will be at this year’s Gympie Music Muster in August, attending the CMAA Academy’s Campfire songwriting programme. She’s also booked her first Tamworth headline show for the 2027 festival, at the Listening Room at the Community Centre on Thursday 21 January.
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Sat, 25 Jul 2026 - 32min - 436 - Ella Powell hates her clothes and loves the songs she’s making
Central Coast NSW country-pop artist Ella Powell has been evolving her sound and storytelling over her last few singles, and her latest, ‘Hate My Clothes’, has the most intriguing title yet.
As Powell tells me in this new interview, the song began as a feeling rather than a concept. She had a verse and a chorus and took those to co-writer and producer Ben Horsley, who has worked on her last two singles.
The title of the song was Horsley’s suggestion, and it is not a song about Powell needing a new wardrobe but, rather, about finding an identity – something that most humans go through in their teens and early twenties, and which can be more pressing for artists in an era when brand is so important and artists are trying to, well, make art.
Powell started performing at eight and released her first proper single, ‘Paper Town’, in her mid-teens – it’s a song she tends to keep in her set, despite releasing several singles since, because it brought many fans to her for the first time. She is now in her early twenties and, for the first time, says she knows exactly who she is as an artist and exactly what she wants to make.
A year or two of releases are already mapped out, writing sessions are ongoing with Horsley, and production on new material has begun. At the core of Powell’s songwriting is a drive to tell stories. As she tells me, she writes several songs simultaneously to reduce attachment to any one, and is comfortable abandoning material that isn’t working, which is a discipline she has developed over years of writing. Her ideas come from overhearing conversations, scrolling book titles online, and using random word generators as prompts – I hadn’t heard of anyone using that last one, and am now intrigued!
It’s always exciting to see what Powell comes up with next, and also lovely to talk to her, so I hope you enjoy this conversation.
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Wed, 22 Jul 2026 - 19min - 435 - Cookie from Rusty Pickups on their new album and unique band dynamic
The last time I interviewed Michael Cook – known as Cookie – from the Darling Downs (Queensland) alt-country and bluegrass band Rusty Pickups, there was a donkey outside the studio at Possum Creek, where the band recorded. Naturally, when we spoke again recently about the band’s new album, I Don’t Think About You at All (… some days), I checked in on this unofficial extra band member and also on the band’s recent successes, which included a New Zealand tour.
Rusty Pickups were originally a four-piece, then became a five-piece – and are now back to being a four-piece, as founding member Waylon Katz is heading off around Australia on a months-long odyssey which will count him out of any band activity for a very long while.
‘Rusty Pickups is a table we’re all lucky enough to have a seat at,’ says Cookie. ‘Right now his chair’s pushed in, but it’s there for him to pull out again when he wants to come back.’
In this interview Cookie talks further about the ‘table’ that is Rusty Pickups and how it has kept providing for them all, which was the main aim. He has set goals and they’ve kept reaching them, not through crossing their fingers and hoping but by putting in the work and taking chances and opportunities.
It was Katz who wrote the album’s title track, drawing on conversations he’s had in his work as a therapist. Some other songs are written by Cookie, and they are what he calls clear-eyed rather than self-pitying: honest assessments of hard things, including addiction, the passage of time and the unexpected depth of feeling for a very small dog he rescued, named Princess Bubblegum.
The story about that dog is an example of why it’s always great to let interviews flow where they want to go – great stories often result. And it’s also why this interview is on the long side, but Cookie is always interesting to chat to, so a longer conversation is usually on the cards.
Listen to I Don’t Think About You at All on Apple Music
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Sun, 19 Jul 2026 - 42min - 434 - Melanie Dyer on ‘If Only She Knew’ and dreams coming true
At the start of this interview I say I’m a Melanie Dyer fan, and that’s because she writes songs that can encompass a whole life, as in her recent single, ‘Golden Girl’, or cut right to the heart of something in a devastating way, as in ‘What You Didn’t Say’, from her 2022 album Between You & Me, or just be out-and-out entertaining because of her ear for melody.
As she talks about in this new interview, she discovered the magic of what could be created by combining music with chords at a young age. She would lock herself in her room to write a song then emerge at the ad break to perform it for her parents. She was the youngest person accepted into the Talent Development Project at twelve, training in songcraft, stagecraft, performance and networking alongside musicians from across multiple genres.
‘I’ve spent my whole life doing this,’ she says. ‘I’ve never known a life without it.’
Dyer’s latest single, ‘If She Only Knew’, is a love letter to that girl growing up on a farm in regional New South Wales, learning chords on her mother’s guitar and dreaming of a life in music. The song was written in Nashville. with Karen Kosowski and Emma-Lee, which whom Dyer wrote her hit ‘Memphis T-Shirt’. There were some tears during the writing session for this song which is, says Dyer, ‘equally heartbreaking and cathartic and inspiring and hopeful’.
‘If you really feel like you're destined to do something, don’t give up on yourself. That’s what this song is saying.’
Dyer’s early dreams have taken her all the way to Music City, where she’s lived for over a year, playing live regularly and writing a lot. Given how often Dyer is asked to co-write with other artists, it’s perfect that she’s now in a place where songwriting is woven into the fabric of daily life. And it’s still a source of wonder to her.
‘I hear melodies in my head,’ she says. ‘They just come out. And that’s still this crazy, magic thing to me – inventing and crafting something from scratch and weaving your emotion into it.’
Young Melanie’s dreams have indeed come true, and listening to Now Melanie talk about that, and much more about her craft and her songs, is hugely inspiring.
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Wed, 15 Jul 2026 - 32min - 433 - Brooke Seabrook on being a wordsmith and new single ‘Took My Town Away’
Brooke Seabrook is a balladeer from Queensland who recently won the Barry Thornton Young Award, which supports Australian bush and heritage artists. Her latest single is ‘Took My Town Away’, produced by Lindsay Waddington.
Seabrook describes herself not as a songwriter but as a wordsmith – and the distinction matters, as she talks about in this interview. For Seabrook came to music through bush poetry, and it runs in her blood. Her grandmother Albertina, born in 1902, was a storyteller and poet, and Seabrook had early influences in the form of AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Henry Lawson.
As she recounts, Slim Dusty was a constant in the family home, as were Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Charlie Pride and Tom T. Hall. John Williamson has also had a big impact, and it was a song she wrote for Williamson called ‘Who’ll Sing Australia Now?’ that led to the Thornton Young Award, which will take Seabrook to the CMAA Academy of Country Music next January.
Seabrook has increased her creative output in recent times, partly because one of her two sons died a few years ago, and writing became a way of managing her grief.
‘As long as we’re still singing and talking about it,’ she says, ‘we’re not forgetting these people.’
The new single, ‘Took My Town Away’, was written about changes to Seabrook’s home suburb of Goodna, which, like so many places, has changed greatly in recent times. The track features backing vocals by Golden Guitar winner William Alexander, who also records with Waddington.
Seabrook has also recorded at Rabbit Hole Recording Studio on the Central Coast of New South Wales with producers Dingo and Kasey Chambers, and mentions that she actually has a whole album ready to go, but that she has no current plans to release it. It is, she says, waiting for its moment.
Meanwhile, Seabrook performs live regularly and will be supporting Luke O’Shea in Ipswich on 1 August, then performing at the Gympie Music Muster.
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Fri, 10 Jul 2026 - 34min - 432 - Kesha Nevé is … Better This Way
Although Snowy Mountains-raised Kesha Nevé was the winner of this year’s Australian Idol, I did not know what to expect when I interviewed her because … I didn’t see any of this year’s season! I caught up on the musical side of things by watching clips and research revealed that she had grown up in Jindabyne, a town in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales that is known as the gateway to the nearby ski fields of Thredbo and Perisher in particular. Also that she started singing and performing at a very young age, that she’d spent time around the rodeo scene and worked on a farm in New Zealand for a year.
What research did not reveal – what can never be known until an interview starts – is what an artist is like to talk to, so I discovered in the moment that she’s an absolute delight. Smart and funny and self-aware, close to her family and committed to pursuing her dreams.
We sometimes talk about ‘following’ a dream but that implies a dream can become real if only a person follows long enough. Nevé has worked to make her dreams manifest in life, not just in terms of the time she’s put into developing as an artist but developing as a person, which can only benefit her artistry.
So this is a chat about music and about sport – as her life has been rich in both – about family and Idol and the tour she has coming up. It’s also about her debut country-pop single, ‘Better This Way’, which was written with Ruby Rogers, Lara Frew and Phoebe Sinclair in Nevé’s first ever professional songwriting session. The session began with two hours of conversation and Nevé telling the story of a relationship she’d only recently come out of, before a song emerged that charts the moment the rose-coloured glasses were finally gone, the relationship was done, and she knew she was ‘better this way’.
Nevé is going on tour with fellow Idol contestant Kalani Artis. For dates and tickets, go to https://www.keshaneve.com.au/tour-dates/
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Tue, 07 Jul 2026 - 35min - 431 - Ally Paterson on her Gold Rush single, ‘Dig’, and life on the land
The latest single from Ally Paterson, a singer-songwriter from the Ballarat area in Victoria, went on, is called ‘Dig’ and it was born at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat’s living museum of the Gold Rush era. As Paterson tells me in this interview, the rhythmic banging of an old battering ram sent her imagination straight to the men who had worked the claims: Irish migrants, Chinese labourers, people who had crossed the world on the bare promise of a lucky strike.
‘I was inspired by the hardy, wiry gold miner man who’d come from way across the world and was just digging without any guarantee of success,’ she says.
Digging for gold also turned out to be an apt metaphor for this interview. Not because I had to dig necessarily but because gold kept turning up. The longer we spoke, the more I discovered very interesting things about Paterson, such as that she spent several years singing jazz in late-night venues in Melbourne before she and her husband – who have four children – decided to move to the land. Neither of them had any experience with that work, and it has become a lifestyle they love and a connection to the land that inspires Paterson’s writing.
Paterson’s earlier experience as a jazz singer explained something I heard in her singing voice: real power and nuance and such a great tone. She’s a really wonderful singer, and ‘Dig’ has great impact because of that and the story she tells in the song.
The song was produced by Matt Fell at Wilder in Tasmania, as was ‘Working Like Dogs’, her first single. More releases are planned, as Paterson is as committed to music as she is to the other parts of the rich life she has created.
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Sun, 05 Jul 2026 - 29min - 430 - Jean Elliot on her epic EP Butcher, Lover, Runner
There’s never a guarantee of what will emerge during an interview – that’s partly why it’s so interesting to be able to talk to all sorts of artists. And even if I’ve interviewed an artist before, there’s always something new to discover.
In the case of Jean Elliot, a multi-genre artist from the Hawkesbury region of New South Wales, north of Sydney – which inspired ‘Devil’s Wilderness Theme’ on her EP, Butcher, Lover, Runner – we discovered that we had a strong interest in common: ancient history. Elliot is studying it at university, and I studied it for years. So you’ll hear us digress a little on that subject in this interview … Except I don’t believe it actually is a digression, given the epic, high-stakes nature of storytelling in ancient texts and the way that has influenced Elliot as a songwriter and artist generally.
Butcher, Lover, Runner opens with a country-influenced track, ‘Hole in Her Head’, and Elliot then takes us into a song cycle that includes moments of rapture, such as third track ‘Beneath Your Sun’, and bittersweet reflection, as on the closing track, ‘Highwayman’, crossing genres as she goes.
‘I never really think about genre when I'm writing,’ she says. ‘The idea pops into my head fully formed and we just try our best to translate it into something tangible.’
The landscape Elliot grew up in and around, and still lives in, has shaped the stories she wants to tell and how she tells them. It’s a place I’m familiar with – many Sydneysiders are, as we travel through it to the Central Coast or Newcastle – and a breathtaking part of the world. It’s little wonder that it inspires Elliot, and also that she respects it.
‘I’m contributing to a canon of thousands and thousands of years of storytelling about this place,’ she says. ‘I have to do so in an honest and loving way.’
Elliot has been studying philosophy and archaeology, along with ancient history, which all points to a fundamental interest in the intersection of storytelling and the questions about life and how to live it than many of us consider. She has honoured that lineage with her EP, and it was so interesting to learn about what contributed to its making and where she’s going next with her music. There’s also a great story about the building that appears on the cover of the EP – you’ll have to listen/watch to find out what it is!
https://jeanelliotmusic.bandcamp.com/
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Sat, 04 Jul 2026 - 30min - 429 - Vixens of Fall on ‘Midnight Cowgirls’ and the power of three
Sibling harmonies are a form of magic – there’s a synergy that happens within families who sing together that makes for unforgettable sounds that are impossible to replicate. Brisbane sister trio Vixens of Fall have been creating that sort of magic for a decade, embracing it in the title of their 2023 debut album, Magick in the Chaos, and in their lives.
The latest single for sisters Nina, Wren and Lulu is ‘Midnight Cowgirls’, and might be said to have come about through a form of magic known as manifestation. All three Vixens love to wear the clothing label Tree of Life and have done for years. Then they were contacted by the owner of the company, asking if they’d like to be the faces of a new line called Midnight Cowgirls.
The Vixens already had a songwriting session booked with regular collaborator Sally Barris and decided to write a song to go with the clothing line, and their latest single, ‘Midnight Cowgirls’, was born.
The song was produced by Rod McCormack, who also produced their first album – and their second, Fox Hollow, which will be released in November and which will feature ‘Midnight Cowgirls’. He’s like family, the sisters tell me in this new interview, which was conducted not long before Nina was due to give birth to her second child.
The Vixens are a tight unit, as is evident in this interview and when they perform. One of the wonderful things about them is how clearly they love not only making music together but simply being around each other. There is so much strength in that sort of bond – and unlimited potential. Or magic. Whatever you’d like to call it, no doubt you will enjoy meeting Vixens of Fall.
Listen to Vixens of Fall on Apple Music
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Mon, 29 Jun 2026 - 45min - 428 - Paper Daisies on their debut single and their friendship forged in music
Paper Daisies are a duo from the Gold Coast who have released one single, ‘Heartbreakin’ Cowboy’, and as soon as I heard it I thought, These two are not just starting out. The vocals are glorious and there was this energy running through the song that made it sound like the artists, Britt Grey and Rhea Robertson, were completely immersed in the music.
So I was interested to talk to them both, and … WELL. Even though I’d done my research and discovered that Robertson has her own pop releases that have garnered millions of streams, there was plenty that did not turn up, including a wonderful story about how they met – and you can watch/listen to the interview to find out what that is – along with the fact that Grey has a well-established acting career that includes the yet-to-be-released Zombie Plane, featuring Vanilla Ice and Sophie Monk (and the late Chuck Norris).
Then there is their friendship, which is gloriously supportive and evident in this interview.
‘The experience of singing together and being immersed in our harmonies,’ says Robertson in this interview, ‘I wish everybody got to experience what it feels like to create music with your best friend.’
They not only love doing things together – they both have fully creative lives, and it was inspiring to talk to them about their various ventures and also wonderful to meet such talented people who embrace opportunities and, for lack of a better phrase, look for the light in life.
Their single, ‘Heartbreakin’ Cowboy’, was inspired by the experiences of a mutual friend: it was written with multi-instrumentalist Bradley Green and produced by Scott French at Love Street Studios. It’s the first single off their planned EP, and the next single will be released on 9 July.
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Sat, 27 Jun 2026 - 25min - 427 - William Alexander on his new album, Along the Boundary Line
From the Central West of New South Wales, William Alexander won his first Golden Guitar earlier this year in the category of Bush Ballad of the Year, for the song ‘Wild Roan Brumby’, which he wrote with his good friend Pete Denahy. For those of us who have observed Alexander’s career, and listened to his releases starting in 2023, there was no surprise in the award itself – only in the fact that it had taken so long. For three years may not seem like much, but when the talent is as evident as it is in this artist, it feels like more than enough for recognition to mature.
In the songs on his latest album, Along the Boundary Line, Alexander has a way of writing about life and work on the land that suggests someone who not only observes and feels and thinks but can articulate the result of all of that. He’s alert to the world, in other words, and curious about it too. Not that he’s always recorded his own songs: he began by releasing cover versions.
‘I just always felt like I hadn’t earned the right to be the songwriter yet,’ he tells me in this new interview. ‘I was too busy discovering old songs and absorbing that.’
In Along the Boundary Line Alexander creates songs in a traditional style that cover aspects of modern life, marrying a way of life that is much older with contemporary concerns. It’s almost a juxtaposition, until you realise he’s likely documenting his own experiences. As an example: ‘All I Stand to Lose’, which was a single, is about the push and pull of having the urge to go roaming yet cherishing what’s at home, and is the acme of bittersweetness. Yet Alexander doesn’t linger there, instead moving onto the jaunty ‘Horse and Hobble Days’, and both songs are alive with detail.
Alexander is also a wonderful singer, both recorded and live, a balladeer who is also a crooner. When I ask him about his voice in our recent chat, he says, ‘I think what you're mentioning is probably just the way I was told to speak as a kid.’ He had, he says, a grandfather who insisted on no mumbling, and it’s ‘coming through in the way I sing’.
Along the Boundary Line was recorded largely with just Alexander and producer Lindsay Waddington in the room first, building each song before adding esteemed players including Brendan Radford, Jen Mize and Michel Rose. The result is a collection of songs that immediately allow the listener in and invite them back. Although there’s a distinct lack of yodelling – something that featured on his first album, The Singing Stockman – which I ask him about.
They haunt you, these new songs, in the way that they put you in the landscape with its space and silence and also its sounds and the life that’s humming all around you yet not always evident to the eye. That’s achieved through the production, sure, but it all starts with the artist’s intention – with the stories he has to tell and the way he wants to tell them.
The album is an outstanding work. It was a pleasure to talk to Alexander about those songs, and much more.
Buy Along the Boundary Line on Bandcamp
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Wed, 24 Jun 2026 - 30min - 426 - Dingo on the changing seasons of his musical life
Towards the end of my first ever interview with Brandon Dodd, who records under the name Dingo (he’s released music under both, including the 2020 album What a Way to Die and Dingo and the Rising River in 2024), I realised that I’d seen him play a solo set right before the pandemic closed the nation, and world, down. Because the pandemic changed the shape of time – or so it seemed – and somewhat made life into a washing machine, I completely forgot about that set until he mentioned playing support for Patty Griffin. For it was at a Griffin show at Angel Place in Sydney that I saw him play, and thought he was terrific, and also wondered how long we might still be able to go to live shows. The answer, of course, came quickly after, and for two years there would be very little live music.
Dingo was not idle during that time, nor has he been since, whether making his own music or helping others make theirs. Recently his name has been coming up more and more frequently as a producer, of the exceptional emerging artist Faith Williams and the beloved star Beccy Cole, amongst others; he works out of Rabbit Hole Recording Studio on the Central Coast of New South Wales, which he runs with his partner, Kasey Chambers.
Chambers features in a great story Dingo tells in this interview, about learning to sing harmonies, when I asked him about how he’d developed his singing voice. He has plenty of very interesting things to say as we talk about his new single, ‘Autumn’, which is taken from his upcoming album Nightwire. I actually didn’t get to ask many of the questions I’d prepared because the conversation went in other directions, and when I’m interviewing I’d much rather follow the conversation than stick to a schedule.
To the single, though, as it’s a lovely one: ‘Autumn’ is a love song built around the imagery of the season – leaves falling, and change as something to lean into rather than resist – and at its centre is the idea that you can fall in love again and again with the same person if you stay open to growth.
The song (and forthcoming album) was produced not by Dingo but by the in-demand Jordan Power. ‘The best thing you can do is put the other hats down and just be the best artist that you can be,’ says Dingo when I ask why he handed over the role to someone else.
Of the forthcoming album, Nightwire, Dingo says it’s ‘me being in love with songs – being in love with music, being just so wrapped up in it again and loving it for what it is.’ Indeed, this whole conversation demonstrated to me that he’s a man who truly loves being immersed in music, and who remains intrigued by it and by what’s possible with it. Suffice to say the release of that album can’t come soon enough.
Dingo is currently on tour with the great Adam Harvey, then he’ll join the Ian Moss and Troy Cassar-Daley double header (dates below). In the midst of that he’ll be at the Deniliquin Ute Muster (details also below).
26th June – Bligh Park Hotel – South Windsor, NSW #
27th June – The Oaks Hotel – Albion Park Rail, NSW #
28th June – The Royal Hotel – Queanbeyan, NSW #
Friday 28th August – Gympie Music Muster – Gympie, QLD
15th October - Events Centre Kings Theatre, Caloundra QLD *
16th October - Twin Towns - Tweed Heads, NSW *
17th October - Saraton Theatre – Grafton, NSW *
30th October - Commercial Club – Albury, NSW *
31st October - Civic Theatre - Wagga Wagga, NSW *
6th November - Anita’s Theatre – Thirroul, NSW *
7th November - Blue Mountains Theatre & Community Centre – Springwood, NSW *
12th November - The Art House – Wyong, NSW *
13th November – Glasshouse - Port Macquarie, NSW *
# With Adam Harvey / * With Ian Moss & Troy Cassar-Daley
**Tickets on sale now and available via https://www.dingomusicofficial.com/#tour
Dingo will also be performing at this year’s Deni Ute Muster, held on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd October 2026. Tickets are on sale now and available via deniutemuster.com.au.
Listen to Dingo on Apple Music
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Tue, 23 Jun 2026 - 38min - 425 - Amber Lawrence is the boss of her own wild frontier
Suburban Cowgirl, the latest album from beloved country music star Amber Lawrence, topped the Australian album and country album charts open release, and has held its spot. This will be no surprise to anyone who heard the singles leading up to it, including ‘That’s Cowgirl to Me’, which contains the line ‘I am the boss of my own wild frontier’ – which is a true statement when it comes to Lawrence, who has charted her course in country music with hard work, a wonderful songwriting talent and a live show that never fails to leave the audience uplifted. She has constantly chosen to go further into her own wild frontier and leads by example, as a generous performer and artist who lifts up those around her, including emerging artists.
If it sounds like I’m a fan – I am. Not because it’s a default position but because I’ve seen Lawrence play live many times, I’ve interviewed her several times, and I love her albums. I also see her at shows around Sydney, so we know each other, well enough that I worked with her on the children’s book that she has released in tandem with the book (this work was in an unpaid advisory capacity, and came about because I work in book publishing and I’m a published author).
The book is divine and as inspiring as her music and shows. It could not have been that without everything that has come before in Lawrence’s life and career, nor without the album that is its reason for existing. Suburban Cowgirl is chock full of anthems and singalong choruses. It has tributes to the joys to be found in everyday life (‘This Suburban Lifetime’ and ‘Smallest Years’) and the gratitude we can practise for that, to love of friends and family and home, and of her fans (‘We Ride At Dawn’, ‘Sing Me Home’). It also features a lovely duet with traditional country artist William Alexander (‘I’ve Got a Hankering’).
I talk to Lawrence about all of this in our new interview. It is always wonderful to talk to her. She is one of the greats.
Listen to Suburban Cowgirl on Apple Music
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Sat, 20 Jun 2026 - 24min - 424 - Mem Davis on why ‘It’s All Just Love’
Mem Davis is a singer, songwriter and – as I found out during this interview – a book editor from the south coast of New South Wales, although she’s currently not there, because she and partner Neil have been travelling Australia in a caravan since September last year, performing as the Mem Davis Duo along the way, with their elderly Boston terrier in tow.
The musical life was not one Davis thought she would be leading. As she tells me, she spent years believing she couldn’t sing, having been told so by people close to her. It wasn’t until she was in her twenties that she booked a singing lesson and discovered that, as she says, ‘[e]verything I believed about myself was essentially thrown out the window’.
She has been writing and performing ever since, though the happier songs, she notes, only arrived in her late thirties.
‘I realised music didn’t have to be therapy,’ she says.
Davis’s latest single, ‘It’s All Just Love’, was produced by Liam Kennedy-Clark, a multi-instrumentalist and, as half of Wicker Suite, a Golden Guitar winner. The song uses bees as a central metaphor for community and the balance between individual responsibility and collective support.
Davis attended the CMAA Academy of Country Music and writes regularly at the DAG songwriting retreat, where she has made connections she credits as among the most valuable of her career, a co-write with Luke O'Shea being a particular highlight. A second single, recorded with Kennedy-Clark, is due later in the year, with an album the eventual goal.
At the time of recording the interview, Davis and Neil were based in Tamworth, preparing to head to the Northern Rivers. There are shows coming up, including one for the winter solstice in Uralla. Details at memdavis.com.
Listen to ‘It’s All Just Love’ on Apple Music
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Tue, 16 Jun 2026 - 26min - 423 - Amy Solylo on being your own biggest red flag
Some artists arrive with a statement – or a splash, as you prefer – and it’s immediately clear that it’s worth paying attention to them because whatever comes next is likely to be interesting. As is the case with Sydney country-pop artist Amy Solylo.
Solylo has released one single, ‘He Wants Me (Dead)’ – and also an acoustic version of the song – and its combination of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and whimsy offers something different and intriguing. The same combination is there when Solylo performs live, as she’s been doing a fair bit lately at Sydney country music institution Jolene’s, and it’s also clear that she is a born entertainer.
As Solylo tells me in this new interview, the single is about being ‘your own biggest red flag’ and came about after she was blocked across all platforms by an ex. Solylo found one remaining avenue of communication – WhatsApp – and used it. The response she received was firm and clear … so she went home and wrote the song.
Solylo came to songwriting through a childhood love of reading, and to music through early singing lessons and a hot pink guitar. It turned out that while she’s right-handed at everything else, she can only play guitar left-handed and, as leftie guitarists know, it’s not as easy to find instruments! (Although I can attest that she now has a lovely red guitar, as I’ve seen her playing it live.)
It was a great pleasure to chat to Solylo and I look forward to hearing what she releases next – after she’s embarked on her next trip to Nashville, and all the adventure that promises.
Listen to ‘He Wants Me (Dead)’ on Apple Music
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Mon, 15 Jun 2026 - 26min - 422 - Jake Whittaker on new EP In My Blood
Jake Whittaker is a Queensland country rock artist who has been releasing music since 2023, appeared on Australian Idol last year, and has now released his debut EP, In My Blood – five tracks of upbeat, good-time country that in this new interview he describes as a deliberate antidote to sad music.
‘People work really hard Monday to Friday and they don't want to go out Friday night and listen to sad, dreary music,’ he says. ‘That’s why I write and release stuff that suits that.’
The EP was produced by Jared Adlam, one of the most in-demand producers in Australian country music and, in Whittaker’s case, also a close friend since they were seventeen. The songs were road-tested in live shows before being locked in, with any track that didn't land in front of a crowd not making the cut.
'If it’s a good chorus and verse, you'll remember it straight away,’ he says. ‘If you remember it, it’s worth remembering – and it’ll make a good song.’
The lead single, ‘Hooked on Her’, was actually the first song written for the project, back in 2023, and sat waiting for the right moment for two years. ‘In My Blood’ was co-written with country star James Johnston on the back verandah at Adam Eckersley's place and completed in about an hour and a half. 'Boots On' emerged from a Sydney writing trip with Sarah Buckley of The Buckleys. ‘Guy with a Boat’ – a song about a man trying to convince himself and his partner that purchasing a boat was entirely necessary – was written with Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley at their property in a shed, over a couple of beers.
Last year Whittaker appeared on Australian Idol, which brought its own particular challenges. While Whittaker is an experienced live performer, comfortable on stage, the Idol format required a different set of instincts. And there’s quite a story about how his audition song ended up being ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ …
Since Idol Whittaker has been focused on building momentum with live shows and new recordings. In this interview we talk about his support slot with The Wolfe Brothers (those shows are now past – unfortunately I wasn’t able to work fast enough to post this interview before they took place), plus Horsham Regfest, Townsville Country Fest and the Gympie Muster.
Listen to In My Blood on Apple Music
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Sun, 14 Jun 2026 - 22min - 421 - Kaylee Bell on new songs and big plans
Kaylee Bell is from Aotearoa New Zealand and spent several years living in Australia, which means we can probably claim her … or at least share her! And she is certainly one of Australia’s favourite country music artists as her recent second win as CountryTown's Female Artist of the Year award proved. Her latest album, Cowboy Up, was released last year. Her new single is 'Me For Me', and even though Cowboy Up was released not that long ago, in this new interview Bell says she had more to say, because she’s lived a lot since she wrote that album.
‘You've got to live to write,’ she says. ‘Songs might come in the couple of hours you’re in the room, but they’re born and living with you for a long time before they finally come out.’
'Me For Me' was written with Tom Jordan and Phoebe Jasper, who records under the name Navvy, and in the interview Bell talks about how the song came about, as a relaxed writing session with friends who were home over the summer, in which songs started flowing without pressure or agenda.
‘I feel like we've started almost a whole new record by accident,’ she says.
The song itself is about knowing your worth, waiting for the right person, and loving that person for who they are in return. There were other songs that emerged from those summer sessions and they are likely to follow ‘Me For Me’.
This is a wide-ranging conversation that takes in Bell’s recent Christmas single, the demands of being in the music industry, and how she’s used visualisation in her career (and what it has to do with sport).
‘The music industry humbles you in a way no other industry possibly could,’ she tells me. ‘One day you're on the mountaintop, next day you’re still working out what's going on.’
We recorded this interview before Bell headed to Nashville to perform at CMA Fest, which has now happened, but I’ve left in that part of the interview as interviews are watched and listened to often years after the fact, so there will always be something that is out of date!
‘Me For Me’ is out now.
Listen to ‘Me For Me’ on Apple Music
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Sun, 14 Jun 2026 - 21min - 420 - Darren Gillis is having a ‘Hell of a Time’
There’s a very healthy country-music scene in Western Australia, and not just in and around Perth. I’ve interviewed artists from as far north as Broome and as far south as Margaret River and several spots in between.
Darren Gillis is a country rock artist from Western Australia's Wheat Belt, and I hadn’t interviewed him before we had this chat about his new single, ‘Hell of a Time’. The interview was recorded a few weeks before the single’s release, and I had a cold at the time (hence my voice sounding quite scratchy), but the conversation was invigorating enough to help me forget all about that, because Gillis is so clearly passionate about music and the important role it’s played in his life and his wellbeing, as he talks about.
Gillis has honed his skills as a performer and storyteller by doing a lot of live performance. In 2024 he Gillis took a gap year from work, loaded his guitar into a caravan and set off, first through his local area, then north to Shark Bay and east to Tamworth in New South Wales for his first ever festival, and eventually as far as Noosa Heads in Queensland. Four and a half months on the road, swapping live music for accommodation and playing pub gigs to fund the next leg of the journey.
‘I said yes to everything,’ he says.
The caravan park crowds turned out to be his most important audiences – people pulling their chairs in close, actually listening, giving him real feedback on his original songs. This gave him confidence to keep writing songs, as he’d been doing since 2020, when a relationship breakdown left him isolated in a small town and he turned to music to work through it.
Some of those songs have since been released. 'Cuss the Black Dog', which drew on both his personal experience and the losses of colleagues in his frontline work, became a finalist in the Western Australian Music Song of the Year award, and prompted lengthy, candid conversations with audience members, including veterans, domestic violence survivors, a sixteen-year-old who drew him a portrait after the show.
His latest single, 'Hell of a Time', is a song about choosing to let go of whatever the week has thrown at you and be present with the people around you. It will be one of ten tracks on his debut album Rise and Fall, due in August. Gillis has several shows coming up include the Mandurah Country Music Festival in October alongside Kaylee Bell, the Wolfe Brothers and Max Jackson, plus the Boddington Rodeo in November.
‘Hell of a Time’ is out now.
Listen to ‘Hell of a Time’ on Apple Music
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Sat, 13 Jun 2026 - 23min - 419 - Darren Coggan on always believing in love – and music
Many Australian music fans will know of Wagga Wagga-born Darren Coggan from his hugely popular shows featuring the music of John Denver or Cat Stevens (and he has a great story at that – you’ll have to listen to the interview to find out what it is!). These – along with his work in musical theatre, and as an actor – have kept him busy and touring the country for several years.
However, Coggan had his start in country music. He’s a winner of Toyota Star Maker, and a contemporary of Beccy Cole, Adam Harvey and Felicity Urquhart, even touring with those three as the ‘Young Stars of Country’ several years ago, and again for a reunion show in 2019.
In recent times Coggan has recorded music with his daughter, Olivia, and he’s now returned to original music with the moving single ‘Always Believe in Love’. As he tells me in this recent interview, the song came to him in a dream. Its message wouldn’t land, though, if Coggan didn’t walk the talk, so to speak. This is a man who loves what he does, is passionate about it, takes nothing for granted and is grateful for every opportunity. He has fully committed himself to music, and to bringing joy to audiences, and that’s what he’s doing this year too with an extensive Australian tour (dates below).
It was a great pleasure – and hugely interesting – to talk to Coggan about his life and career thus far. I hope you enjoy listening to or watching this chat, and finding out more about this in-demand Australian entertainer, whom you can also catch on TV (if you’re in New South Wales) on Sydney Weekender.
NB: There was the occasional wi-fi glitch in this interview, so the audio is off in some places.
SEE DARREN COGGAN ON TOUR
Friday June 12 – West Gippsland Performing Arts Centre – Gippsland, VIC
Saturday June 13 - The Wedge – Sale, VIC
Friday June 26 – The Jetty Theatre - Coffs Harbour, NSW
Saturday June 27 – The Players Theatre - Port Macquarie, NSW
Thursday July 2 - The Powerhouse – Liverpool, NSW
Wednesday July 22 - Ingham Theatre – Ingham, QLD
Thursday July 23 - Proserpine Entertainment Centre – Proserpine, QLD
Saturday July 25 - HOTA - Surfers Paradise, QLD
Sunday July 26 - Majestic Theatre – Pomona, QLD
Friday August 14 - Warners Bay Theatre – Warners Bay, NSW
Saturday August 15 - Jetty Theatre - Coffs Harbour, NSW
Sunday August 16 - Coronation Hall - Coutts Crossing, NSW
Saturday October 3 - Redcliffe Entertainment Centre – Redcliffe, QLD
Friday October 9 - The J Theatre – Noosa, QLD
Saturday October 10 - The Events Centre – Caloundra, QLD
Friday October 16 – The Estate – Camden, NSW
**Tickets on sale now and available via https://www.darrencoggan.com/
Listen to Darren Coggan on Apple Music
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Tue, 09 Jun 2026 - 40min - 418 - Cassie Leopold on Darlinghurst’s new chapter and single ‘Pour Me Another One’
Sometimes we choose to change our circumstances and sometimes they get changed on us, and how we respond to those changes reveals who we are and also shows us the way forward. For Cassie Leopold founding member of Darlinghurst, there’s been a lot of change in recent times: the band went from being a four-piece to a two-piece, with Leopold and Pagan Newman, and now it’s Leopold on her own.
While all that was going on, Leopold face a major health challenge which meant she had to focus on other things. She’s emerged from that, and from the fluctuations in the band, with a new direction for Darlinghurst and being, as she says in this new interview, the leader for the first time. She still has a band, but she’s the one who determines which songs they play and record.
Leopold has been a musical performer from a very young age and performance is in her very marrow, as she says: ‘The only place I ever felt okay was on stage – for this 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or the three minutes of one song, it's my time.’
She was a member of the Young Talent Team – a contemporary of Dannii Minogue’s – and learning what she describes as the triple threat of singing, dancing and acting. She sang backing vocals on an Olivia Newton John album after stepping in at the last moment for a sick colleague. She was signed in a girl group at seventeen.
For most of her career, Leopold’s skill was stepping in, filling a brief, and delivering what was needed. ‘I was very good at doing that,’ she says. Taking the reins is a different skill entirely, and one she has arrived at in her own time. Now the responsibility is hers, and so is the freedom to decide what happens next, and it was so interesting to talk to her about all of it.
The latest single from Darlinghurst is ‘Pour Me Another One’, and we talk about that as well as what’s ahead in this exciting new musical adventure she is on.
Listen to ‘Pour Me Another One’ on Apple Music
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Sun, 07 Jun 2026 - 34min - 417 - Allan Cameron on being worn in and ‘Worn Out’
Allan Cameron is a solo artist, songwriter and guitarist who was a founding member of SaltbushSix, Keith Urban’s first backing band. He has been releasing music independently for several years, and his latest single is ‘Worn Out (Australian Made)’, an anthem that is fundamentally about resilience – and worn in rather than worn out, as Cameron says in this new interview.
The song grew from a period of genuine questioning. After grappling with the demands of being an independent artist in the streaming era, Cameron found himself asking whether he wanted to keep going.
‘I asked myself, can I keep doing this?,’ he says. ‘Do I want to keep doing this? And the short answer – the long answer – was yes.’
The process of getting to that yes became the song. Its central turn of phrase, ‘I’m not worn out, I’m worn in’, highlights the power of a single word to change meaning.
The song went through many drafts, filling pages of Cameron’s lyric book, before arriving at its final form, which is also a celebration of Australian identity. Part of reason for that comes from Cameron’s own recent discoveries about his ancestry, learning that his grandmother was of indigenous heritage, adding that thread to a lineage that also includes Scottish and English roots. The first drafts of the song engaged more directly with this personal history before Cameron broadened its scopt to speak to Australians generally. ‘This land is the same, we’re all here to dream, we are Australian made’ is where he landed.
Beyond the new single, Cameron has been releasing music that includes last year’s instrumental, ‘Waxing and Waning’; recorded in open G tuning, it found its way onto playlists around the world. ‘Grandfather’s Guitar’ paid tribute to the instrument that first sparked Cameron’s musical life – and his collection of guitars, which now runs to just over forty instruments. This section of the chat is mainly for guitar aficionados, but I do like to throw in the technical questions when I can!
Cameron plays regular cover gigs around Brisbane and Queensland, and has another single planned for later in the year.
‘Worn Out (Australian Made)’ is out now.
Listen to Allan Cameron on Apple Music
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Mon, 01 Jun 2026 - 29min - 416 - Trent Richardson on giving things a crack in life and music
Trent Richardson hails from Central Queensland, where he grew up on a property running camel rides, racing camels, ostriches, goats and sheep. He picked up a guitar three years ago, taught himself to play, and is now releasing his seventh single. In between, he made the semi-finals of Australian Idol in 2024 after an audition that was, extraordinarily, his first ever public performance, as he talks about in this new interview.
Richardson had always suspected he could sing. A few people had told him so over the years, but an equal number had told him he couldn’t, and he’d believed the latter. It wasn’t until he reached his mid-twenties that he decided to find out for himself … and the way he found out was by auditioning for national television. He'd never written a song. He'd never played a gig.
‘I threw myself in the deep end,’ he says.
The judges told him he was the weakest vocalist in the competition. He made the semi-finals anyway, performing everything from Matchbox Twenty to Michael Bublé to Rihanna along the way, and came out the other side with a clearer sense of who he was as an artist than any conventional path might have given him.
His latest single, 'Run to You', was actually the second song he ever wrote, begun three years ago with co-writer Dan Pam, set aside during the Idol journey, and only recently finished and recorded with producer Stuart Stuart, who has worked with luminaries such as Amber Lawrence. It’s a song about the grass not being greener, written from the perspective of someone who walked away from a relationship and later regretted it. It sits alongside a catalogue of upbeat, life-affirming country-pop songs that reflect Richardson’s genuine and hard-won appreciation for being here at all.
‘Life’s too short,’ he says. ‘It’s a blessing to be here.’
His positivity is not so much infectious as influential and it seemed to me that he is someone who, once committed to something, gives his all. And it’s in giving his all that he not only develops his passion but comes to be very good at whatever he is pursuing.
Since Idol, Richardson has been building independently: chasing gigs, learning stagecraft, booking shows and working out what an hour-and-a-half set looks like when you started out singing for sixty seconds on television. He is a new father to young son Archie, and is performing at Biloela Winterfest in July. A seventh single is due on 10 June.
‘Run to You’ is out now.
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Tue, 26 May 2026 - 27min - 415 - Shanleigh Rose on tackling scary subjects in song
Shanleigh Rose is an award-winning singer and songwriter from the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland who has been releasing music for five years. Her latest single, ‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’, is the most personal song she has put out – and, as she tells me in this new interview, the one she almost didn’t.
The chorus was written when she was sixteen, in a music room at school, after discovering the songwriting of Melody Moko and Fanny Lumsden. She wrote it, filed it away, and didn't quite know what it was about. A few years later, after a break-up, she understood.
‘What I feel for this person is actually more like an addiction than love,’ she says.
That realisation gave her the metaphor at the centre of the song, with the tobacco of the title standing in for the kind of relationship you know is poisoning you but can’t walk away from. ‘You’re poison, but it’s all I’ll ever want’, she sings in this powerful tune that has already won the lyrics-only section of the Tamworth Songwriters Association Awards before the melody was even finalised. It was the response from other songwriters at the awards night convinced that convinced Shanleigh to release the song.
‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’ was produced by Michael Muchow who, in a lovely piece of symmetry, is Melody Moko’s producer (and husband), with vocal production by Nyssa Ray, who pushed Rose through four hours of takes to find her most emotionally open performance.
‘You can be sadder,’ Ray told her. ‘You can have more emotion.’
Rose has also recently released ‘Down to Your Grave’, a collaboration with Cate Jamieson and Bethany Walsh, written and recorded as a university assignment that the three decided the world needed to hear. More collaborations and more original releases are planned, alongside a growing focus on stagecraft and the live experience.
Shanleigh plays regularly across Southeast Queensland. Keep an eye on her socials for details.
‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’ is out now.
NB: At around the 22-minute mark, I had a coughing fit and had to pause the recording, so after that point my voice sounds different. Thanks to Shanleigh for patiently waiting out the coughing! I’ve had a cold and persevered with interviews as I don’t want to cancel on the artists – and thankfully they do most of the talking – but it does mean my voice sounds raspy and sometimes shaky.
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Sun, 24 May 2026 - 30min - 414 - Jayne Denham: raised to a higher key
Jayne Denham’s two most recent albums, Wanted and Moonshine, both reached number one on the ARIA country chart. She is one of Australia's most dynamic live performers and most beloved country rock artists. Her new single is ‘Hillbilly Halo’, and it is the beginning of something considerably larger.
As Denham tells me in this new interview, her management arranged a meeting with Nashville producer Marti Frederiksen – known for his work with Aerosmith, Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Sheryl Crow and Def Leppard – with the understanding that they would write and record one song together, and then decide whether to continue. The song was ‘Hillbilly Halo’, co-written with Australian songwriter and Nashville resident Kylie Sackley. Denham loved the result, assumed it might be the only song they made together, and planned to release it as a single regardless. Then Frederiksen said he wanted to do more. Denham ended up spending two months in Nashville across three trips, recording a full album.
Frederiksen’s brief from the start was clear: write and produce for a big live crowd, stadium-ready, anthemic. ‘Hillbilly Halo’ delivers exactly that: it’s a country-rock party song about the good girl who loves to bend the rules just enough, built around major chords that give the chorus its lift. But the more significant development for Denham may be what happened in the recording booth … Frederiksen pushed her vocals into territory she hadn’t previously reached, raising keys and urging her through takes until she hit a note she didn’t know she had.
‘The desperation in my voice actually matched the lyric,’ she says.
It’s now one of her favourite vocal performances she’s ever committed to record. As for the other songs she recorded in Nashville: singles will be released every four weeks, with the album due in January. Then, Denham says, it will be time for a big show.
As Denham tells me: ‘Marti said, “Your songs need to be anthemic for a big crowd – let’s write and produce so that when it’s live, it totally nails and kicks it out of the park.’
‘Hillbilly Halo’ is out now. And a note about this interview: I had a heavy cold, so my voice sounds scratchy.
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Wed, 20 May 2026 - 24min - 413 - Beth Lucas on new single ‘What I Deserved’
Beth Lucas is an award-winning country music artist from Queensland who has been releasing music for several years. She has a new single, 'What I Deserved', and it is one of the most personally courageous songs she has written.
Lucas grew up on the Sunshine Coast and has been based in the Brisbane area for around two decades, and part of its appeal has long been the possibilities it offers her as a musical artist. Her path to country music was not direct. She came from the emo and alternative scenes, playing in bands, and it was only after having a daughter and stepping back from music that she returned with a new perspective and a clearer sense of what she wanted to write, as she tells me in this new interview.
‘Old bandmates were basically like, your songs are pretty much country, so just make them more country,’ she says.
That was six years ago, and she describes the time since as the most successful period of her musical life.
‘What I Deserved’ is a song about first love and its aftermath – specifically, about a mistake Lucas made at sixteen, the weight she has carried since, and the long process of forgiving herself for it. She is careful to take responsibility for her own part in the story; ‘I know that I got what I deserved’ is not a line of self-pity but of reckoning – and then, ultimately, of release.
The song won the 2026 Geoff Mack Commemorative Award before it was even released, and has become one of the songs in her live set that audiences connect with most.
Lucas has twice attended the CMAA Academy of Country Music – the second time on a Keith Urban Scholarship – and has a string of competition placings to her name, including winning the country music section of the Brisbane-based Ekka Talent Search. She is also one third of Three Birds & the Truth, which she formed with Amber Kenny and Jo Caseley following the 2023 Academy. An EP is in the works for the end of the year, with a new single in production in the meantime.
‘What I Deserved’ is out now.
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Tue, 05 May 2026 - 32min - 412 - Rachael Fahim on her blockbuster debut album, Who You Are
At the start of this interview with country-pop artist Rachael Fahim, I say that she released her first album, Iconic, in 2019. Later in the chat she mentioned that Iconic was technically an EP, which makes Who You Are – released today, 1 May – her debut. The reason why I called Iconic an album is because it has seven songs, and they’re substantial songs. So to me it’s always felt like an album.
Substance is also apparent on Who You Are. Fahim has the ability to create songs that are eminently danceable but which also make you stop and think. There’s a lyric that evokes a feeling, or it’s the nuances in her vocal, and always the sense that she’s not hiding herself in any of these songs, not trying to be the upbeat artist who’s always about a good time if a good time has not been had. That means we know we’re getting a sense of who she is and what she wants to tell us in these songs, which makes us connect to them more.
The album is the result of several years of writing, as we talk about. It’s also being released about a year after Fahim decided to leave full-time employment and commit herself fully to music. In that time she has played dozens of dates supporting Pete Murray on a national tour, and there have been plenty of other shows in that time. In other words: creating the time and space for more music in her life has worked.
Having seen Fahim live, it’s no surprise that these opportunities are coming her way. Now hearing the new album, she’s offering even more reasons for audiences to seek her out. The songs on Who You Are are entertaining and memorable, and while I still maintain that Iconic should be called an album, as a debut album this is a powerful statement.
Who You Are is out now through Universal Music Australia.
Rachael Fahim is touring the album, with dates in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle, Gosford and Wollongong. Details at: https://www.rachaelfahim.com/#tour
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Fri, 01 May 2026 - 19min - 411 - Nikisha Priest on the Ace Up Her Sleeve
Nikisha Priest is a country rock artist from the Lake Macquarie area of New South Wales who, at twenty years old, is already drawing on a remarkably deep well of musical training. Her new single is 'Ace of Spades' – and no, it's not a cover.
Priest began singing lessons at six, privately with a family friend who within a year concluded she couldn't teach her anymore and referred her to the Conservatorium of Music in Gosford. She studied there from seven to fourteen, classically trained in voice. Through high school she attended a Big Picture Academy, a project-based learning programme that allowed her to structure her studies around music. At twenty, she has already attended the CMAA Academy of Country Music, appeared on Australian Idol – where she sang Pink's ‘Trouble’ a capella outside her mother's hair salon, without notice, for her audition – and released her most fully realised single to date.
'Ace of Spades' was sparked by a car park moment. Priest was thinking about the Motörhead song, wondering how other artists had approached the same title, when she noticed a playing card sticker on the car next to her. She took it as a sign, went home and wrote the song. Research into the card’s symbolism gave her the song's backbone – the Ace of Spades as a death card on one side, new beginnings on the other – a theme of transformation, leaving behind what no longer fits, and stepping into something new.
‘The song kind of just wrote itself,’ she says in this new interview, which was recorded while Priest was at a SHE Songwriting Retreat, run by Lyn Bowtell.
The single was produced by Simon Johnson at Hillbilly Hut, with whom Priest has worked since a school-age work experience placement, and the video was shot in a single day at Full Throttle Ranch in Buttai near Newcastle by videographer Jeremy Minett of Eyes and Ears Creative.
When she’s not making music Priest is looking after her five pets – and I asked her about these, partly because I know so many people have cats and dogs and love a good animal story! And it turns out that Priest’s pets are thematically named – although you’ll have to watch or listen to the interview to find out what the theme is …
‘Ace of Spades’ is out now.
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Tue, 28 Apr 2026 - 35min - 410 - Ella Hooper has eyes on the past, present and future
Ella Hooper is one of Australia's most beloved musical artists and one of its finest live performers. Best known as the frontwoman of Killing Heidi, the band she fronted with her brother Jesse from the age of sixteen, she has since released two acclaimed solo albums. Her 2023 country-leaning record Small Town Temple marked a significant creative turn, and she has followed it with two singles: last year's ‘Growing Up is Hard to Do’ and her latest, ‘I Got Eyes (On You)’.
Hooper has other quivers in her bow, appearing on television shows such as RockWiz and also MCing events – it was in the latter capacity that I most recently saw her in person. In fact, we’d had at least a couple of chats in person but I hadn’t interviewed her. Well, that is now rectified with this conversation.
Small Town Temple is a glorious album – personal and deep, also joyful and rich and entertaining. Given we didn’t have a chat about it at the time of release, I wanted to ask some questions, as well as talking to Hooper about her latest singles. This is also a conversation about creativity and discovery, about Hooper moving away from the mould that was set for her in her teens, with the success of Killing Heidi, and how she has navigated the surreal circumstance of growing up in the public eye.
If you haven’t encountered Hooper before, you need to know this: she is warm and funny and passionate, and having a conversation with her is one of the most interesting things a person could do. My impression of her is always that her heart and mind are wide open – she wants to have all the chats, hear all the music, read all the books. She makes no judgements and she is always curious. Given that growing-up experience I just mentioned, and how it might have instead caused her to be guarded and cautious, that’s an extraordinary thing in itself. Then we factor in the music she makes and what she’s like as a live performer and it all adds up to her being an exceptional artist who is not only worth listening to but being inspired by, because anyone who embraces life the way she does tends to have that effect.
So I hope you enjoy this interview with Ella Hooper as much as I did, and I really do urge you to see her play live if you can, because she is so very good at it. She has solo shows coming up:
Friday 1 May – Manning Entertainment Centre, Taree NSW
Saturday 2 May – Avoca Beach Theatre, Avoca NSW
Sunday 3 May – Dangar Island, near Brooklyn NSW - NB: midday show
Saturday 9 May – Portland Arts Centre, Portland Vic. – NB: SOLD OUT
Listen to Ella Hooper on Apple Music
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Mon, 27 Apr 2026 - 34min - 409 - Justine Eltakchi on her magical, moving debut album, Big Dream Baby
The music of Sydney-based singer-songwriter Justine Eltakchi came to my attention because she released a country music single, ‘If I Could’, with Timothy James Bowen. She isn’t a country artist per se – in that it’s not one of the genres she has mostly written in, for artists such as Casey Donovan and Abby Christo. But truly Eltakchi could create songs in pretty much every genre and be great at it, because it becomes clear from the first time you listen to her debut album, Big Dream Baby, that she is an artist with not only exceptional songwriting skills but a voice to match. And, beyond that, the willingness to show us her heart and bring us her stories as a way of fostering connection.
There’s a bravery in that, in an artist showing us – rather than telling us – that her ambitions are as big as her talent. Because it is a big ambition – a big dream, of course – to want to connect with others, on any level. There’s no guarantee they’ll accept what you’re offering, or accept it in the spirit in which it’s offered. They may not understand. They may reject you. That risk creates a vulnerability for the artist, and it’s also there in Eltakchi’s songs – in both lyrics and vocal delivery. What’s most there, though, is a love of life in the details and the big themes.
The title song has already been released as a single, as has ‘Daughters and Sons’, which Eltakchi recorded with Donovan, ‘Petals’ and ‘Six Weeks of Summer’. There’s a lot more to explore on this album, and you will want to listen to it over and over, for its musical and lyrical richness. In speaking to Eltakchi about it, it became clear that the richness has developed over many years, from a robust musical upbringing, and from not only that open heart but open mindedness. There are many genres on this album because she has chosen the style of music that is best for the song, and given herself the freedom to do that – or, probably more likely, taken it, because being eclectic is not often the path travelled when artists have pressure to sound a certain way.
I loved talking to Eltakchi about her background and her work as a songwriter for others and creator of songs for herself. I’m sure you’ll enjoy meeting her too. And if you’re in Sydney she’s launching Big Dream Baby at Lazybones Lounge in Marrickville on 30 April, with special guests appearing in her set.
Big Dream Baby is available now. You can find it on Bandcamp.
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Thu, 23 Apr 2026 - 32min - 408 - Melanie Dyer on new single ‘Golden Girl’ and life in Nashville
Melanie Dyer is one of Australia’s most-streamed country music artists, and she’s also been nominated for three Golden Guitars and three APRA AMCOS Most Performed Country Work awards. Currently resident in Nashville, Tennessee, Melanie has released a new single, the heartfelt ‘Golden Girl’.
Dyer has long been an in-demand co-writer – you can find a playlist of songs she’s co-written on Spotify, and the list of artists who have recorded one of her songs includes Amber Lawrence, James Johnston and Hayley Jensen. She has the skill of writing melodies that are memorable but not obvious, and lyrics that are accessible and which can also go places you don’t expect. This is also true of songs she writes to record and release herself.
The latest of these is ‘Golden Girl’, which was inspired by her parents’ love story in their – and her – home town of Inverell in New South Wales. Her mother worked at the Golden Fleece truck stop – hence the title of the song; the music video – which was filmed by Dyer’s partner, Jackson James – features that truck stop and an old Holden car with a story, which Dyer reveals in this new interview.
'Golden Girl' was produced by Grady Saxman. ‘It’s really written by my parents and their love story,’ says Dyer. ‘Bringing that to life in Nashville was a really cool way to have that hybrid of where I'm at in my life between Australia and Nashville.’
The song was recorded as part of a full album tracked in a single day in Nashville, with all musicians live in the room simultaneously – a first for Dyer, and an experience she describes with barely contained disbelief. The album is due to roll out soon, with Dyer carefully selecting singles to give each song its own moment.
Dyer and James moved to Nashville about a year ago and have flourished since, with Dyer recently performing at SXSW in Austin, Texas, and playing and writing regularly in Nashville. There’s a solid community of Australians living there too – plus Dyer had been visiting for a decade before she moved. It’s stood her in good stead as she settles in. While she’s there for the long haul, we’re lucky to still have her songs being released here – she’s a valuable part of Australia’s country music community too, regardless of where she lives.
‘Golden Girl’ is out now.
Listen to ‘Golden Girl’ on Apple Music
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Mon, 20 Apr 2026 - 30min - 407 - Kingswood keep the ‘Faith’ as they gather pace towards new album and tour
A fair while ago I separately interviewed first Alex Laska then, months later, Fergus Linacre, the two founding members of Kingswood. At the time I hadn’t seen the band live, but I certainly like what I heard of their recorded music (which includes a Christmas album – I recommend it!).
At the Tamworth Country Music Festival in January 2024 I saw them play on the back of a truck in the car park of the Tamworth Hotel. Suffice to say my hair was metaphorically blown back by that gig, and I was hooked on Kingswood live. Since then I’ve seen them play in a variety of venues, and each time it has been one of the best shows ever.
The reasons why they’re a great live band were evident in the documentary Claptrap, which was released last year. Some of these will be the same reasons why they’re great recorded too, and they are to do with the longtime creative relationship between Linacre and Laska. But the treat for fans is that Kingswood live and Kingswood recorded are different entities, each of them exceptional. Which means that being a fan of Kingswood is a full-spectrum experience. And I do not pretend to be impartial about this band – I can’t be, and I declare my fan status early on in this interview with Linacre as he was sitting backstage at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, in between shows with American band Counting Members, with Kingswood band members coming and going behind him (as you’ll see if you watch the video version of the interview).
We talk about the band’s latest single, ‘Faith’; their upcoming album, Midnight Mavericks, which is due for release on 22 May; how Linacre and Laska write songs, and also about Peggy, their tour bus, which is well known to fans. At the end we chat about a project that is Linacre’s alone.
If you’re new to Kingswood, this interview will give you an insight into why the band is so strong in all aspects, and also what to expect if you see them live or hear them recorded. If you’re a fan, hopefully you learn something new that will make you even more excited for the new album and tour.
Listen to Kingswood on Apple Music
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Listen to Kingswood on YouTube
KINGSWOOD – TOUR DATES
Friday May 15 - Rosemount Hotel, Perth, WA
Ticketing: https://rosemounthotel.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/fe6b25ca-0747-4d4d-9479-c4bd09dbe874
Saturday May 16 - The Gov, Adelaide, SA
Ticketing: https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/785edc31-2119-437d-9e8d-b8696d56d224
Friday May 22 - The Corner Hotel, Melbourne, VIC
Ticketing: https://tickets.cornerhotel.com/outlet/event/2475f2e5-d9a8-41be-a496-4c1af3915095
Saturday May 23 - Savannah Sounds Festival, Port Douglas, QLD
Ticketing: https://www.savannahsounds.com.au/tickets/savannah-sounds--port-douglas-2026/
Thursday May 28 - Lefty's Music Hall, Brisbane, QLD
Ticketing: https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/2c5efb83-1058-45d6-843c-235e4ef02dcd
Friday May 29 - The Factory Theatre, Sydney, NSW
Ticketing: https://moshtix.com.au/v2/event/kingswood-midnight-mavericks-album-tour-2026/192299
Saturday May 30 - Full Throttle Ranch, Hunter Valley, NSW
Ticketing: https://www.stickytickets.com.au/H0Y94A
Friday June 19 - Tanks Art Centre, Cairns QLD
Ticketing: https://www.ticketlink.com.au/ticketlinkEvents/popular-music/kingswood
Saturday June 20 - Cooktown Discovery Festival, Cooktown QLD
Ticketing: https://cooktownexpo.com.au/
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Sun, 19 Apr 2026 - 26min - 406 - Whiskey Jack and Kiera Jas on their single ‘Remain Strange’
Whiskey Jack is a singer-songwriter from Perth in Western Australia and Kiera Jas is an artist from Margaret River, south of Perth. Separately they have very successful solo careers, with Jack’s single ‘Wild Card’ named WAM Country Song of the Year in 2025 and Kiera the winner of the 2023 Nannup festival award. Together this alt-folk duo have released the single ‘Old Expressions’ last year and they now have a new single, ‘Remain Strange’.
The duo met when, as Jack tells me in this interview, they kept being put on the same bill for shows. They’ve since gone on to create their own shows, including the wonderfully named Soak in the Folk. There’s a vibrant live scene in Perth and Fremantle, so we chat about that, as well as about their development as musicians – Kiera started on the ukulele, Jack on guitar – and their songwriting influences. Jack says he’s a ‘word nerd’ and songwriting is what he likes most in the music journey, and there’s a neat play on words in ‘Remain Strange’ which he confirms comes from him.
This was such an enjoyable conversation to have, partly because it’s always interesting to hear how collaborations evolve, and it’s clear that this is one that in some ways seemed destined but which the pair are maintaining through diligence, curiosity and determination to try new things. They’re quite different artists musically, and also in personality – Kiera is more embracing of live performance, for example – but that’s the friction which helps make great art.
A note: there’s some background noise during the interview. I don’t tend to ask artists to make sure they have nothing else going on in their households because we’re not in a studio and these are the sounds of life, which are welcome.
Listen to ‘Remain Strange’ on Apple Music
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Sat, 18 Apr 2026 - 30min - 405 - Mackenzie May on her standout debut EP, All the Little Things
Mackenzie May is an artist from Central Queensland who, at just twenty years old, is already having a landmark year. In January she was a Toyota Star Maker Grand Finalist at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, she performed at CMC Rocks with a full band, and she has just released her debut EP, All the Little Things — a seven-track collection that represents her most substantial statement yet.
May grew up absorbing her grandparents' record collection – Slim Dusty, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings – and started playing guitar at eleven or twelve. Her first live performance came at thirteen, when her cousin invited her to sing at an open mic night. She sang 'Tennessee Whiskey', loved it, and hasn't really stopped since. By fourteen she was playing pub gigs, her parents in tow.
All the Little Things brings together three previously released singles – 'Little Things', 'Old School Love' and 'I'll Take It All' – with four new tracks, including a song about the financial realities of a music career and a deeply personal closing track written for her family following the death of her nan.
‘I wanted something that would just represent me as a person the most,’ she says.
The EP was produced by Jared Adlam, with whom May has recorded every song she has released, and who she books up to a year in advance given his busy schedule. 'Be Careful You Fall in Love With', written with Sarah Buckley – a collaborator she met at the Academy of Country Music – was the song she performed at the Star Maker Grand Final.
May attended the Academy of Country Music in 2023, an experience she credits with preparing her for the realities of a professional music career, from performing with a band to songwriting. Fellow graduates Mackenzie Lee and Keely Ellen have also gone on to high-profile moments this year, pointing to what was clearly a strong cohort.
All the Little Things is an impressive debut EP, showing May’s astuteness as a songwriter and her willingness to go for more: to reach deeper into herself and also be ambitious about her storytelling. It was a pleasure to chat to her in this new interview.
All the Little Things is out now.
Listen on Apple Music
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Fri, 17 Apr 2026 - 29min - 404 - Mack & Cook on new single ‘A Sign of the Times’
Mack & Cook are Lizzie Mack and Murray Cook, two of the best credentialled musical artists in the land. As a duo they released their first single, 'Time Goes By', last year and their latest single is 'A Sign of the Times'.
The two have a long history together, most recently as the driving force behind the Soul Movers, now performing as Murray and the Movers. Mack & Cook came about partly as a practical solution – a way to play smaller stages and perform songs from their fifteen-year, four-album catalogue that were never quite right for a big festival line-up.
‘Fifty or so songs have never really been played live because they're not bouncy and big and in your face enough for a big festival stage,’ says Mack. It also gives them room to be, as she puts it, a little more personal and a little more political.
'A Sign of the Times' is the latter sort of song. Written after a conversation early in the new year, the song grew from Mack & Cook's ongoing commitment to reconciliation and their frustration at the lack of progress since moments like the Apology and the Sorry Day bridge walks. The song is addressed, in part, to members of the Stolen Generation still alive today, an acknowledgement of what has been lost and an expression of hope for what could still be achieved. Lyrically it went through many revisions – Mack describes agonising over what to keep and what to cut – while the music came together quickly, continuing a recent pattern for the duo.
Both singles have circled the theme of time, something the two say was not entirely conscious but not entirely surprising either, given where they are in their lives and careers. The richness that comes with that experience is evident in their live shows, which are booked through to the end of the year.
And a note: this interview was recorded in March, and some show are mentioned which are now in the past. That’s because I can’t always publish interviews quickly! But there are also future shows mentioned.
‘A Sign of the Times’ is out now.
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Tue, 14 Apr 2026 - 41min - 403 - New releases round-up 12 April 2026
As it’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to bring you some news, some of these releases are from March.
Melbourne duo The Smith & Western Jury have released their foot-stomper 'Rolling the Dice'. The song was inspired by a trip we took to Joshua Tree in California, where a trailhead sign warned: ‘Don’t die today’.
Wagga Wagga artist Nathan Lamont is at the vanguard of country-pop in Australia and he’s released another infectious song in the form of ‘Into It’. Nathan is a great singer and his songs are guaranteed earworms.
Pete Denahy is one of Australia’s favourite country music artists. He got his start in Slim Dusty’s band and his solo releases are a combination of high-standard bluegrass as befits this legendary fiddle player, and songs that deploy observational humour in an unforgettable way. His latest release, ‘I Didn't Notice Her Hair’, is in the second category. It’s under two minutes long and that’s all it needs to both deliver the story and have you howling.
I recently interviewed young artist Mackenzie May about her EP, All the Little Things, which contains seven songs, all very well done. It is out now and the interview will be posted soon.
Melbourne alt-country four-piece Elly McK & the Unbelievers are one of my favourite live bands. Their latest single, 'I Am the River', was written with the wonderful Lyn Bowtell. The band has live shows coming up and I do recommend you catch those.
Jade Gibson is an artist who releases country rock and country pop. She just performed at CMC Rocks and around the same time released the gutsy single ‘Smoke Me Out’, which is really compelling and memorable.
Gig wise: if you’re in Sydney, famed country music bar Jolene’s in the city is having its fourth birthday party on Saturday 17 April with a line-up that includes Missy Lancaster and Charlie Finn. Details on their website and socials. There are tours coming up by Dylan Wright, Max Jackson, Brad Cox and Henry Wagons. Catherine Britt has shows coming up both as herself and as half of The Pleasures with Lachlan Bryan.
As a reminder: live music is live magic, and we all need some of that in our lives.
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Sun, 12 Apr 2026 - 9min - 402 - Sara Storer, Shane Nicholson & Shane Howard on their special show, For the Sake of the Song
Sara Storer has won 22 Golden Guitar Awards, amongst many other accolades. Last year she released her eighth studio album, the outstanding Worth Your Love. Shane Nicholson has won ARIA Awards and 18 Golden Guitars, and in addition to making his own wonderful albums, he produces others. Shane Howard is one of Australia’s most esteemed musical artists. He founded the band Goanna in 1977, became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2016 for his service to the performing arts, and is generally what might be referred to as a dead-set legend. A show featuring just one of these artists would be a treat, and I can attest to that from personal experience. However, the three of them are uniting for a show called For the Sake of the Song, which is my pick for musical event of the year because the riches it promises are untold.
I’ve interviewed Shane N and Sara separately, several times, but this was my first time interviewing Shane H. It was an interesting challenge to prepare for this interview, because how often does one have the chance to talk to THREE extraordinary individuals at once? It was also an immense privilege.
As Shane N reveals in this interview, the idea for the show was his, and Sara and Shane H were his first choices as collaborators. Despite Shane N being one of the best-connected musicians in the land, the band who will back all three artists in this show has members who have primarily worked with Shane H.
The openness to change and collaboration, the sense of curiosity that is fundamental to all three artists, has always been there in their individual work and it is what drives this show. They want to find out what happens when they’re all in the same place at the same time. So do I. How could anyone not want to find that out? These three are geniuses and also fun and, as I know from seeing Shane N and Sara in their own shows, excellent live.
I hope you enjoy watching or listening to this wonderful trio talking about their show, and I certainly hope you give yourself the treat of going to see it. The dates are below, and more may be added in time.
SHOW DATES:
Tuesday 12th May - The Street Theatre - Canberra, ACT
Wednesday 13th May - The Concourse Lounge - Chatswood, NSW
Thursday 14th May - Memo Music Hall - St Kilda, VIC
Friday 15th May - Theatre Royal - Castlemaine, VIC
Saturday 16th May - Queenscliff Town Hall - Queenscliff, VIC
Sunday 17th May - Archies Creek Hall – Archies Creek, VIC
Tickets on sale now and available via:
https://www.laing-entertainment.com.au/current-tours-events
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Sat, 11 Apr 2026 - 33min - 401 - Bud Rokesky on his outstanding second album, Dusk
Bud Rokesky is a singer-songwriter from Brisbane who released his first album, Outsider, in 2023, and if you’re a fan of that album you’ve probably never stopped listening to it, because there’s such richness in it. Then he embarked on a project in 2024 to release two singles a month, and released an album’s worth of material. Now he has a new album, Dusk, with all-new songs – none of them from the 2024 project – and he has given us another LP to fall in love with.
In between those releases he’s been touring, both his own shows and playing supports for other artists. Rokesky on stage is light in his banter and commanding in his performance. And what really stops everyone in their tracks, on the recordings and in the performances, is his voice and this sense that it comes from the deepest well, but that the well isn’t a place of darkness so much as understanding of the vagaries of being human.
This is not music that you can put on in the background and expect to not be drawn into. That’s because Bud Rokesky is here to break your heart and hold a mirror up to your foibles, and challenge you to go with him as he charts the human experience. That’s an artist who rewards close listening, repeated listening, attention, and a willingness to go with him on the road to …
Well, where is that road going to? From my perspective it’s a road to meaning, in a spiritual sense. Rokesky is an artist who inspires that sort of response. If you listen to this album – really listen – you’ll find him on that road and you’ll discover that he’s made it easy for you to go with him. That voice and all it embodies will carry you along. You can find this in just one song, too. If you listen.
So he’s not background music. He’s foreground and will always be. An artist striving for excellence and finding it. If you want music that you don’t have to pay attention to, there’s plenty of that. Bud Rokesky is not making it. He’s making music for people who really love music, who are seekers in many senses of that word; people who love language and the subtleties of the singing voice and who want to be moved by art. It’s a calling; a vocation. We’re lucky that he’s sharing it with us, and I was lucky to have the chance to talk to him about it in this new interview.
Dusk is out now through Warner Music Australia
Listen to Dusk on Apple Music
Listen to Dusk on Spotify
Bud Rokesky on YouTube
BUD ROKESKY AUSTRALIAN TOUR
Tickets are on sale now HERE
Friday 1 May - Bootleggers, Sydney NSW *
Saturday 2 May - Meatstock Fest, Sydney NSW
Sunday 3 May - Full Throttle Ranch, Buttai Valley NSW
Friday 8 May - Shotkickers, Melbourne VIC ^
Saturday 9 May - Shiraz Republic, Cornella VIC
Sunday 10 May - Royal Mail Hotel, Birregurra VIC
Friday 22 May - Junk Bar, Brisbane QLD #
* with supports from Lady Lyon & CJ Stranger
^ with supports from Rupert Bullard & Bad Traffic
# with supports from Hayley Marsten & Jarith Hughes
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Tue, 07 Apr 2026 - 19min - 400 - The triumphant return of Beccy Cole with her album Through the Haze
Sunburnt Country Music began in earnest – under another title – in late 2011, but its roots were in 2003, when I was in a country music covers band and we played the Tamworth Country Music Festival. One of the songs in our set list – possibly the only Australian song, come to think of it – was ‘Lazy Bones’ by Beccy Cole. It first appeared on her second album, Wild at Heart, released in 2001. It would go on to become a staple of her live set with its extended coda containing a tale – based on truth – that would change each time. ‘Lazy Bones’ live was the essence of Cole’s brilliance as an artist: her facility with language, her tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and attention to detail that, combined, could generate songs both comedic and sincere that would become beloved.
‘Lazy Bones’ was my introduction to Australian country music, and I would go on to inhale Cole’s albums, then those of artists who were associated with her. From there, a whole world opened up and eventually it led to me covering Australian country music, which is what you’re seeing and reading here. In other words: no Beccy Cole, no Sunburnt Country Music.
‘Lazy Bones’ has been retired from the live set but Cole’s brilliance is, thankfully, still very much present, and evident on her latest album, Through the Haze. Born of hard times, which she talks about in our interview – conducted in person at ABC headquarters in Sydney, on the day of the album’s release – it features eleven songs written by Cole alone, and one with Lyn Bowtell, along with a 20th anniversary edition of ‘Poster Girl’, a signature song.
Through the Haze is Cole returning to herself, as we also talk about, and offering hard-won wisdom along with the wit that is so much a part of her songwriting as well as her live performance. She has always been unflinching with herself and with us; she offers her heart and her experiences and makes it clear that we can take them or leave them, but she’d really rather we take them because, through the haze of everything that’s happened to her, we’re the reason she keeps going.
Old fans of Cole’s will love this album. I hope she finds many new fans too. She deserves to, because she’s an icon who doesn’t stand there demanding we polish her marbled feet. She keeps showing up, making music, getting better all the time, thereby encouraging us to do the same.
Through the Haze is out now through ABC Music. Beccy Cole has announced some album launch shows, with more to follow, and I really do recommend you see her live, where she is in her absolute element:
May 7 - Lazybones Lounge, Sydney NSW
May 8 - Full Throttle Ranch, Buttai,
Newcastle NSW
May 9 - The Baroque Room, Katoomba NSW
Listen to Through the Haze on Apple Music
Listen to Through the Haze on Spotify
Listen to Through the Haze on YouTube
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Sun, 05 Apr 2026 - 24min - 399 - Savanah Solomon finds her ‘Someday Somewhere’
Savanah Solomon is a singer-songwriter from Western Australia who has released the singles 'Magnolia' and 'I Don't Know You Anymore', as well as the 2023 EP Where the River Meets the Sea. Her latest single is 'Someday Somewhere', and it is a warm, hopeful song with more than a few great lines in it.
The song was written a couple of years ago, during a period of involuntary limbo. Solomon had just found out she'd secured a fly-in fly-out job, but the start date was months away. With no income, no momentum and a lot of waiting, she turned to pen and paper. What emerged was something close to a personal mantra – a song about sensitivity as a strength, about humour as a survival tool, and about trusting that good things come to those who keep showing up.
One line in particular lands with the elegance of something that sounds obvious only after someone else has said it: Worry is a waste of the imagination.
'Someday Somewhere' was produced by Josh Dyson at Villa Studios in Western Australia; Dyson also plays bass in Solomon's live band and contributes much of the instrumentation on her recordings. The video, directed by Emma Smart, was filmed near Solomon's home and features Solomon riding her father's red lawnmower down golden roadside fields, dressed in a blue op-shop jacket that she'd bought two years earlier with no specific plan, just a feeling it would come in handy. It is, as intended, an exercise in pure joy.
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/xizjqiA020o?si=2mkWASRCYi5BocA-
Since releasing 'Magnolia' last year, Solomon has expanded her reach considerably, supporting Kingswood in Albany, playing Melbourne's Newport Folk Festival (to which she's returning in June), and completing a run of shows in Esperance and Nannup.
An album is on the horizon – a blues and folk-leaning collection focused on storytelling – though Solomon is letting it develop at its own pace. More singles are in progress in the meantime.
‘Someday Somewhere’ is out now.
Listen to Savanah Solomon on Apple Music
Listen to Savanah Solomon on Spotify
Listen to Savanah Solomon on YouTube
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Sat, 04 Apr 2026 - 30min - 398 - Rising star Camille Trail writes us a ‘Postcard’
Camille Trail released her debut album River of Sins in 2021 and the EP Magic Trick in 2024. She is known for her thoughtful, articulate and often unflinching lyrics, delivered in a warm, distinctive voice. Her new single 'Postcard' marks a deliberate shift in direction while still being distinctively her.
After a big 2024 that included a UK tour and appearances at Folk Alliance in the United States, Trail spent last year recharging and writing. Personal changes fed into creative ones, and she found herself drawn toward something different – brighter, more energetic, more fun.
‘I love writing my vulnerable, sad songs,’ she says in this new interview, ‘but most of my songs are sad and vulnerable, and it was exhausting. Every night I just wanted to have fun, dance on stage.’
Her latest single, 'Postcard', was written and recorded with producer Garrett Kato across three days in the studio, emerging on the final day when Trail arrived with a verse idea she'd developed the night before. It's not a country tune – but I’m never that strict about such things, especially when I’ve covered an artist before for their country music and I’m interested in whatever they do next.
Instead of being country, ‘Postcard’ is an upbeat, indie-pop flavoured track with the characteristic Camille Trail sleight of hand: there’s a melody that makes you want to move, then you notice that the lyrics are doing something more searching. ‘I'm scared to be alone’ sits in the middle of what sounds, on first listen, like a carefree summer song.
‘I'm such a sucker for juxtaposition,’ says Trail. ‘That's the whole metaphor of life.’
Trail grew up on a farm in Queensland and still keeps cattle – an arrangement that has, on more than one occasion, served as emergency music funding (as she says: ‘I’ll sell a cow’). That grounding in the physical world informs how she writes: melodies come first, words follow in something close to stream of consciousness, often arriving most freely in the car.
Two further songs recorded with Kato are due for release later this year, both in the same fresh, forward-facing direction as 'Postcard'.
‘Postcard’ is out now.
Listen to Camille Trail on Apple Music
Listen to Camille Trail on Spotify
Listen to Camille Trail on YouTube
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Tue, 31 Mar 2026 - 24min - 397 - Dylan Wright on a Golden start to the year and ‘Those Nights’
Dylan Wright has two musical identities that most fans will know about – as a solo artist and as one half of Golden Guitar-winning duo Sons of Atticus – and, as it turns out, a third. But more on that in a moment ... Wright’s new solo single is 'Those Nights', and he has announced an extensive Songs & Stories tour running through New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT from the start of May.
The Golden Guitar, won at this year's Tamworth Country Music Festival for the track ‘Born to Roam’ with Sons of Atticus bandmate Matt Joyce, was for Bluegrass Recording of the Year. It came after seven years of the duo writing and performing together across the breadth of country's traditions.
‘We write music however we feel,’ Wright says. ‘Whatever's coming.’
And a new bluegrass recording is already in the works, as Wright tells me in this new interview. He also talks about his third musical identity: as a member of breathe., an electronic project with over 100 million streams and 850,000 monthly listeners, which recently sold out its first live shows in Turkey and toured Europe. Wright has been part of that project for a decade. ‘It's my darker, moodier self,’ he says.
Wright’s latest solo single, 'Those Nights', was written in December 2023 and initially shelved when he won Australian Idol in 2024, one of around fifty songs he’s written that have been waiting for the right moment. It's a warm, nostalgic late-summer single and Wright’s vocal, as ever, lures us in and keeps us there. His talent and adaptability as singer means that there’s always something new to find in his songs, and ‘Those Nights’ offers another aspect to musicality.
‘Those Nights’ kicks off the release of between twenty and thirty songs that the prolific northern New South Wales artist has planned for release across all of his projects this year. Everything, he says, is mapped out twelve to eighteen months in advance.
In amongst those releases is the Songs & Stories tour, which will see Wright performing entirely alone – just him and a guitar – for the first time. He’ll be playing songs spanning his whole career, from busking days to the present, with the stories behind them. Venues include the Brass Monkey in Cronulla, where he first played at sixteen, the Stag and Hunter in Newcastle, Brunswick Picture House in Brunswick Heads, and Odessa at Levers in Victoria.
As ever, it was a pleasure to talk to Wright – he’s always thoughtful and interesting, an artist with a sense of the bigger picture who is also interested in the details.
‘Those Nights’ is out now through Sony Music Australia.
Listen to Dylan Wright on Apple Music
Listen to Dylan Wright on Spotify
Listen to Dylan Wright on YouTube
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Mon, 30 Mar 2026 - 26min - 396 - Tom Busby goes solo for his Rockhampton Hangover
Tom Busby is well known to Australian music fans as one half of beloved duo Busby Maru. That duo remains very much a going concern, but Busby has now released his first solo album – the warm and deeply personal Rockhampton Hangover.
Busby grew up in the Queensland town of Rockhampton, and after two decades of relentless touring and recording with Busby Marou, he and bandmate Jeremy Marou made a deliberate decision to stop saying yes to everything. Part of Busby's break involved returning home to help run the family business after his father's death. It was, he reflects, exactly the kind of enforced stillness his subconscious had been waiting for.
‘It's really gutsy,’ he says of the album during our interview. ‘It's raw. It's vulnerable. I'm not trying to impress anyone.’
The record was produced by Ben Kweller in Texas, a collaboration that began over Zoom and deepened into genuine friendship before a note was recorded. When Kweller asked to produce the album, Busby initially declined – he was supposed to be spending more time at home. But his wife's response was to suggest pulling the kids out of school, loading everyone into the car and driving Route 66 to a ranch in Texas for two months. They did exactly that.
Two of the album's songs – including 'Stalemate', which features Busby’s children's voices – were recorded on an iPhone in his living room and appear on the album exactly as Kweller received them, with the band wrapped around the original vocal demos.
The album moves from 'Cyclone', an opener about the disorientation of going solo, through songs about Busby’s father ('Waiting for Tomorrow') and his wife ('Crazy'), to the closing celebration of 'Nothing Will Ever Be the Same'. It is, as Busby describes it, less a polished statement than a journal entry – one that happens to rhyme. Busby Marou fans may notice a shift in register, but the warmth that has always defined Tom Busby’s work is present throughout.
Since returning from Texas, Busby, his wife and their four children have committed to a new way of living: full-time in a caravan, touring the country doing The Great Aussie Lap, a series of intimate solo shows. Busby Marou festival dates will be woven in alongside.
Rockhampton Hangover is out now.
Listen to Rockhampton Hangover on Apple Music
Listen to Rockhampton Hangover on Spotify
Listen to Rockhampton Hangover on YouTube
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Wed, 25 Mar 2026 - 30min - 395 - Lindsay Waddington pays tribute to a great in latest single ‘Something of a Privilege’
Lindsay Waddington has a career spanning more than three decades as a singer, songwriter, producer and renowned instrumentalist. He has released thirteen solo albums, won a Golden Guitar, and built a YouTube channel with almost nineteen million views. His latest release, 'Something of a Privilege', is a tribute to Australian music legend John Williamson.
The song began as a birthday present. When Williamson turned 80, Waddington – who has become close to Williamson over the past seven or eight years, and they’ve recorded together at Waddington’s studio in Queensland – sat down and wrote him a song.
‘What do you give a bloke who's achieved everything? I’ll write him a song,’ he says in this new interview.
Waddington sent the song to Williamson, then spent four anxious hours waiting for a response. When Williamson finally called, he was moved – and told Waddington the song was too good to save for his funeral! With the family's blessing, Waddington decided to release it, directing all proceeds to Williamson's Variety Bash car and the children it supports.
Brendan Radford, with whom Waddington won the 2020 Golden Guitar for Instrumental of the Year, features on the track – a pairing that has become a natural creative partnership. The two spend at least a day a week in the studio together, and Radford's contribution, Waddington says, simply made the song better.
The release sits alongside a remarkably busy creative operation. Waddington's studio has become a hub for Australian country music, with artists including John Williamson, Brian Cadd, Russell Morris and emerging talent William Alexander all recording there. Waddington’s YouTube channel – built largely around studio sessions and instrumental performances – has attracted a global following, with viewers from Ukraine, the Philippines and Japan.
As Waddington notes, ‘There's no language barrier with instrumentals – if you can come up with tones and sounds they like to hear, that could be it.’
His eldest daughter, Madison, handles the videography and editing; the whole enterprise has become a family operation.
A further collaboration is already in the works: a song called 'Talking to a Drover', on which Williamson has contributed harmonies after hearing a work-in-progress version during a studio visit. An instrumental release is also planned for later in 2026. For an artist who admits he can sometimes deprioritise his own music in favour of others', there is clearly no shortage of things worth making.
‘Something of a Privilege’ is out now.
Listen to Lindsay Waddington on Apple Music
Listen to Lindsay Waddington on Spotify
Lindsay Waddington on YouTube
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Mon, 23 Mar 2026 - 29min - 394 - If you haven’t heard of Two Tone Pony … you have now!
Two Tone Pony are a five-piece country rock band from the Central Coast of New South Wales. They released the album Born on the Road in 2024 and their brand new single is 'You Haven't Heard of Me Yet'.
When I interviewed Two Tone Pony founding member David Kirkpatrick, he said that the song had its origins in, of all places, a ski lodge in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains when someone, noticing the conversation had turned to music, looked him up and down and asked, ‘Tell me, what do you do again?’
When it come to music, it’s more like what hasn’t Kirkpatrick done. The son of country music legends Slim Dusty and Joy McKean, he grew up travelling Australia, surrounded by music, and it’s never left him.
Rather than bristle at that ski-lodge question, though, he filed it away.
‘As a songwriter you're always looking for a hook,’ he says in this chat. ‘Something you can hang a song on.’
'You Haven't Heard of Me Yet' is Two Tone Pony’s first single since their first album, Born on the Road, which was released in 2024. Kirkpatrick says that it was a first album still finding its sound. As it happens, there’s been a significant change in the band since, with founding member Ian Rhodes stepping down and new member Brandon Smith joining them. Smith brings fiddle, mandolin, lap steel and banjo to the line-up, providing what Kirkpatrick calls ‘the missing link’ for the country-rock sound he had always been after.
The video for ‘You Haven’t Heard of Me Yet’ was filmed at the Hardy's Bay Club on the Central Coast of New South Wales – the band's home venue – and directed by Jeremy Minette of Eyes and Ears Creative, who has made all of their clips. It follows Kirkpatrick walking into the bar looking, as he puts it, like ‘a Beverly Hillbilly’ with a battered 1962 guitar case that belonged to Joy McKean and has travelled around Australia.
The single was produced by Rod McCormack, who helmed Born on the Road, and two more singles are already recorded, with live shows and at least one festival appearance planned for the second half of 2026.
‘You Haven't Heard of Me Yet’ is out now.
Listen to ‘You Haven't Heard of Me Yet’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘You Haven't Heard of Me Yet’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘You Haven't Heard of Me Yet’ on YouTube
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Mon, 16 Mar 2026 - 31min - 393 - Sunburnt Country Music news - 15 March 2026
**NB on the audio quality: I record this news on video then strip out the audio track. It's not always optimal quality but I'd rather bring you this than nothing at all**
Mentioned in this instalment:
William Alexander - ‘Heart of a Drover’
Beccy Cole - new album Through the Haze
Melanie Dyer - ‘Golden Girl’
Tori Forsyth - ‘I’m Not God’
Matt Joe Gow - two dates at Kew Courthouse on 21 March (evening show sold out)
Felicity Urquhart & Josh Cunningham — new album Everything Around You
Amy Sheppard & The Wolfe Brothers - ‘Fool Outta Me’
Briana Dinsdale - ‘Never Love Again’
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Sun, 15 Mar 2026 - 7min - 392 - Clancy Pye on the best things about ‘My Hometown’
Clancy Pye is an artist from the Central West of New South Wales who has released several memorable singles, including 'Hey Mama' and 'Days Like This'. Her latest is 'My Hometown'.
Pye grew up in Oberon, a town of around 3000 people, half an hour from Bathurst in New South Wales. Oberon has no traffic lights, one main street and, as she notes in the song, a part-time cop, a detail that says so much and which we discuss in this new interview.
‘Most things got sorted out in the community themselves,’ Pye explains about the part-time cop. ‘People looked after one another.’
That capacity to compress a whole social world into a single precise image is central to what makes 'My Hometown' work and to what makes Pye a songwriter capable of evoking place, people and emotions so well, as she has done consistently over the course of her releases.
‘My Hometown’ emerged during the pandemic years, when Pye wrote around 150 songs. Its catalyst was personal: her parents had just sold the family farm, the only home she'd ever known, and she found herself making more trips back to Oberon, feeling a particular pull of gratitude and loss.
The chorus came quickly. The verses took twelve months and somewhere between fifteen and twenty drafts. ‘I really wanted to go a little bit underneath the surface of what makes little towns like Oberon tick,’ she says. She wanted to write something specific enough to feel true, but open enough that listeners from any small town could find themselves in it, and she has succeeded beautifully at that.
The production was handled by Sean Rudd in Sydney, with Pye's brother Mickey – a guitarist and the founder of a music academy in Bathurst with over 300 current students – contributing a signature guitar riff that runs throughout the track. Drummer Pete Drummond of Dragon also plays on the track.
'My Hometown' is the fifth single from Pye's forthcoming debut album, which is due for release later this year, including a CD edition.
Alongside her own music, Pye has spent the past two years performing with Tania Kernaghan and Jason Owen as part of their Let Your Love Flow tour, travelling through New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. She also works as a physiotherapist – a background that, she admits, gives her a particular perspective on the physical demands of life as a touring musician, and we talk about that too. It’s always a great pleasure to interview Clancy Pye, and this time was no exception.
‘My Hometown’ is out now.
Listen to ‘My Hometown’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘My Hometown’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘My Hometown’ on YouTube
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Sun, 15 Mar 2026 - 44min - 391 - Jake Davey on life, fatherhood, work and ‘Workin’ On Me’
Jake Davey is a multi-talented artist – a singer, songwriter, producer, videographer and photographer. He has released several infectious country-pop singles and the latest is 'Workin' On Me'.
Since releasing his last single, Davey's life has changed considerably. He and his wife, Grace, are now parents to a son, Dalton, a development which is particularly significant given that a spinal cord injury in 2023 left doctors telling Davey he was unlikely to walk again, let alone have children.
‘Grace literally walked into the studio and was like, “Baby”,' Davey recalls in this new interview. ‘And I was like, what do you mean?’ That moment was the spark for 'Workin' On Me', a song about wanting to show up as the best possible version of himself – for Grace, and for Dalton.
‘I wanted to write a song about growing up in the right ways,’ Davey says, ‘admitting that I've had moments where I was selfish, and that's fine. This was my surrender to being the best version of me.’
The song was written in Nashville with Dakota Striplin and Charles Walker at Ronnie Dunn's publishing house, part of a trip that yielded eight to twelve songs in total (so we know there are more songs in the works). Davey produced it himself, though he's candid about the particular challenge that presents.
‘Having ultimate control over your music is a dangerous thing because you're never done,’ he says. But, as he tells me, a quote he encountered during the process helped: perfectionism is procrastination disguising itself as progress. The strong reception for the song has come in the wake of a great start to the year, with Davey’s fourth consecutive sold-out show at Moonshiners Honky Tonk Bar during the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
‘Workin’ On Me’ is accompanied by a video that Davey made with longtime collaborator Jackson James. It features Davey's family, including a notably relaxed Dalton, who slept through most of the shoot! With more singles already in the works and a headline hometown show on the cards for later in 2026, Davey is already looking ahead, and that includes his packed schedule as a producer and videographer.
Listen to ‘Workin’ On Me’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Workin’ On Me’ on Spotify
See the video for ‘Workin’ On Me’ on YouTube
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Mon, 09 Mar 2026 - 23min - 390 - Sunburnt Country Music news - 27 February 2026
Mentioned in this episode:
Kelly Brouhaha - 'This Is All For You'
Amber Lawrence - 'That’s Cowgirl To Me'
Charlotte Le Lievre - ‘I Yearn To Love Someone’
Tom Busby - Rockhampton Hangover- interview coming up
Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley - ‘Now I've Said It’
Felicity Urquhart & Josh Cunningham - New Frontier EP
Sara Berki - ‘Where I'll Be (For Adeline)’
Interviews coming up:
Jake Davey
Clancy Pye
David Kirkpatrick of Two Tone Pony
Lindsay Waddington
Dylan Wright
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Sun, 01 Mar 2026 - 7min - 389 - Melinda Schneider on her heartfelt new album Tender
Melinda Schneider first appeared on stage at the age of three and on a recording at the age of eight. Since then she has released fifteen albums and won six Golden Guitars. She runs her own label, Mpower Records, she's a keynote speaker and much more besides. Her latest album, Tender, is a moving collection of songs.
There is a particular kind of courage required to make an album like Tender. Schneider has spent decades as one of Australian country music's most celebrated performers – six Golden Guitars, fifteen albums, a career that began before most people's memories form. But she is candid about the fact that much of that work was made while she was privately struggling. ‘I was putting on a happy face in public and then being in a lot of pain privately,’ she says. The depression she experienced in 2018 became, in her telling, a turning point: the moment she stopped what she calls ‘the impersonation of perfect’.
Tender is the album that reflects what came after. Most of the songs were written in the last decade, during what Schneider describes as the happiest and most peaceful period of her life – since meeting her husband, Mark Gable, and since becoming a mother. The result is a collection that moves between vulnerability and warmth, grief and gratitude, with Schneider's voice carrying each shift with complete conviction.
The title track is a duet with Diesel, a pairing Schneider chose deliberately, looking for someone ‘respectful of women’ and emotionally present enough to meet the song where it lives. A duet with Gable also appears on the album, a song she wrote only months after they got together.
The album was shaped by Schneider's instincts alone. As the founder of her own label, the creative decisions – which songs made the cut, how the album opens and closes – were entirely hers. It begins with the upbeat, Americana-inflected 'Open Up' and ends with 'Story of My Life', a song she first wrote 22 years ago that now sounds, she says, like a different person singing it – freer, more at ease.
Alongside the album, Schneider exhibited a series of eleven paintings, one for each song, a practice she took up during the pandemic that has since become a weekly meditation. The Tender tour is currently under way, with New South Wales and Victoria dates already announced and more to follow later in the year.
Tender is out now.
Listen to Tender on Apple Music
Listen to Tender on Spotify
Listen to Tender on YouTube
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Wed, 25 Feb 2026 - 23min - 388 - Faith Williams on her ‘Holy Grail’ and forthcoming album
Faith Williams is an artist from the Central Coast of New South Wales who last year released an outstanding debut EP, Queen of Hearts. She is now set to release her first album later this year, and the first single from it is 'Holy Grail'.
When Queen of Hearts arrived in early 2025, Williams released it independently and, as she says in this new interview, ‘I didn't have a lot of knowledge into the industry at all. I was fairly green.’ In the year since, she has quietly accumulated the kind of experience that can't be taught: festival appearances she didn't expect, a New Songwriter of the Year win at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, radio play on ABC Country, and – just recently – being added to the playlist at Triple J, nearly a year to the day after the EP's release.
That growth is also evident in her approach to the new album, which was recorded in September at Rabbit Hole Studio with producer Brandon Dodd, who also helmed Queen of Hearts. Eleven tracks were laid down in three days — an efficiency Williams credits to arriving with her songs fully formed and a clear sense of what she wanted. The album features one co-write, 'Black Fire', written with Millie Mills at a songwriting retreat run by Lyn Bowtell — otherwise the writing is entirely her own.
The lead single, 'Holy Grail', is a love song that deliberately resists the conventions of the genre. Williams describes it as being about ‘choosing real over ritual’ – the kind of love that doesn't need to be dressed up or explained. It's also an example of what makes her writing distinctive: she's drawn to stories and characters, to the specific detail that opens into something universal. Her song 'Dear August', about the loss of a pregnancy, has that quality; so does 'Joe', which she traces back to a mental image of a stranger at a bus stop, telling their life to someone they'll never see again.
At the time of recording, Williams was in the last trimester of pregnancy, due at the end of March. She plans to take a few months off before returning to gigging, with an album launch and a return to Tamworth pencilled in for later in the year. I was hugely impressed by Queen of Hearts when it released, so needless to say I’m excited to hear the album, and to see Williams release a wider audience, as she deserves.
Listen to ‘Holy Grail’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Holy Grail’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Holy Grail’ on YouTube
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Sun, 22 Feb 2026 - 22min - 387 - Sunburnt Country Music news - 15 February 2026
Mentioned in this episode:
Max Jackson – new album Dangerous in Denim
Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley – new single ‘Now I’ve Said It’
Morgan Evans - ‘Steel Town’
Saralyn – ‘Cowgirl Blues’ - THIS TRACK PLAYS AT THE END OF THE EPISODE
Jo Page – ‘When We Knew Nothing’
Jasmine Sparkes – ‘You’ve Got Time to Kiss Me’
Jake Whittaker - ‘Boots On’
Tour news:
Sara Storer, Shane Nicholson and Shane Howard - For the Sake of the Song. Limited shows in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT in May.
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Sun, 15 Feb 2026 - 7min - 386 - ALBUM REVIEW: The Hardest Thing by Catherine Britt
ALBUM REVIEW: The Hardest Thing by Catherine Britt
This is the audio version of the review (and an addition to the types of content available on the podcast). If you'd like to read it instead, you can find it on Substack or the website.
The Hardest Thing is out now through Red Rebel Music/MGM Distribution.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
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Mon, 09 Feb 2026 - 6min - 385 - Sunburnt Country Music news - 8 February 2026
🎵 COUNTRY MUSIC NEWS ROUNDUP 🎵
Six BIG new releases you need to know about:
KINGSWOOD - the new track ‘Highway Signs’ is out from this hard-working country-rock band. They’ll have a new album later this year and no doubt you can catch them from the road this year.
WICKER SUITE released ‘Younger Me’ ft. Ashleigh Dallas—a heartfelt anthem about mental health & self-compassion. Catch them on tour through QLD, NSW, VIC & NZ!
BECCY COLE announces first solo album in 7 years! Through The Haze arrives 13 March (vinyl 27 March). Raw, honest storytelling exploring heartbreak, healing & resilience. New single ‘The Gardener & The Flower’ out now.
BUD ROKESKY announces his second album Dusk (out on 8 April) + Australian tour in May. New single ’45’ is out now.
TYLA RODRIGUES has a new EP, Hold On Tight, out now + major festival slots at CMC Rocks and more later this year. She’s also just had her first Golden Guitar nomination. Full album coming later in 2026!
FAITH WILLIAMS - impressive new single ‘Holy Grail’ from her forthcoming debut album. She released the excellent EP Queen of Hearts last year.
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Sun, 08 Feb 2026 - 10min - 384 - Christina Lacy from The Paper Kites on their outstanding new album
Melbourne five-piece The Paper Kites formed in 2009, and released their first album, States, in 2013. They have spent several years touring the world and their music has been streamed over two billion times. They have a new album, their seventh, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It, and recently I spoke to keyboard player/ guitarist/ vocalist Christina Lacy about it.
Ahead of the album, three singles were released: ‘Change Of The Wind’, ‘Shake Off The Rain’, ‘Every Town’ and ‘When The Lavender Blooms’. The first of these has a video which refers to the story of how the album was named, and I asked Lacy about this during the interview.
Lacy, who is a founding member of the band, also talks about how The Paper Kites came to write and record – and name – the album, and we discuss how she balances her creative life with motherhood, and the importance of carving out ‘time to be creative and time to be inspired’, as she puts it – and I love that she made that distinction!
Lacy was generous with her insights and it was clear, talking to her, that the band has lost none of its passion for making music together.
The Paper Kites play Twilight at Taronga in Sydney on Friday 6 February and will tour the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe and Scandinavia in February and March before joining Bernard Fanning in Brisbane on 15 March. They will then tour the USA and Canada. All details are on their website.
If You Go There, I Hope You Find It is out now through Sony Music Australia.
Listen to If You Go There, I Hope You Find It on Apple Music
Listen to If You Go There, I Hope You Find It on Spotify
Listen to If You Go There, I Hope You Find It on YouTube
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Thu, 22 Jan 2026 - 21min - 383 - KYARNA on her lyrical Lost Soul Love Letters
Titles of books, albums (or EPs), movies – any creative work – can be hard to come up with, as they need to do so much work, especially in an age when we make very quick decisions about what is going to win our attention. A title needs to not just capture our interest but convey the experience of reading that book, listening to that album, watching that movie as concisely and effectively as possible.
The debut EP from KYARNA, a folk-country artist from the Yuin Nation on the far south coast of New South Wales, is called Lost Soul Love Letters. It’s such an evocative title, prompting us to wonder: Who is the lost soul? Who are the love letters for? Happily I was able to ask KYARNA these questions, and also talk to her about each of the six tracks on this EP, which more than lives up to the promise of its title. (This interview was recorded in late 2025, so when KYARNA mentions ‘this year’, it’s 2026 she’s referring to.)
From the first track, ‘Meet in Love’, we know we’re in for stories that are going to take hold of us and which are probably going to be bittersweet, in that they may make us smile in recognition – or cry for the same reason. There is quite a story behind this song, and each of the songs that follow it. KYARNA recorded the EP with producer Matt Fell in Tasmania, and there’s a story there too. I’ll let you find that out from her in this interview.
KYARNA has many more songs – we talk about the prolific nature of her songwriting – so it will be fascinating to see what she decides to record next. These six songs will keep you going for a while, because they are rich in story and meaning, but, of course, a fan always wants more!
A note on the sound: we had some wi-fi glitches in the first half. I edited out some but you’ll hear a little bit of it.
Listen to Lost Soul Love Letters on Apple Music
Listen to Lost Soul Love Letters on Spotify
Listen to Lost Soul Love Letters on YouTube
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Mon, 12 Jan 2026 - 40min - 382 - Bianca Joulianou gets herself into a ‘Bad Routine’
Earlier this year Sydney artist Bianca Joulianou released the single ‘Gambling Man’, which was based on a story that’s very close to her. We had a chat about that at the time and also talked about Joulianou’s gig schedule. She’s been busier since then, opening for Australian Idol winner Dylan Wright as well as Shannon Noll, Diesel and The Wet Whistles. That’s in addition to playing regular spots at venues such as Jolene’s in Sydney’s CBD and with Out West Country, which is a Sydney-based events company.
Joulianou’s latest single is the very catchy ‘Bad Routine’, which is about wanting to break free of something – such as a relationship – but being pulled back into bad habits. It was produced by Jake Davey, who is himself recording and releasing music, and he plays on ‘Bad Routine’ as well. As they recorded two songs, another single is in the pipeline for release in 2026.
In this new interview about ‘Bad Routine’, I asked Joulianou if she has any bad routines of her own – you’ll have to watch or listen to it to find out what she said – but it’s probably fair to say that she’s mostly in good routines, given she fits her music career in and around full-time work as a mental health support worker.
Joulianou is heading to the Tamworth Country Musical Festival in January and has a few shows lined up, including at the popular Riverside Stage, and she’s making plans for more writing – especially co-writing – next year. And she’s open to writing with anyone, so if you’re keen to write with her, you can find her on her socials!
Listen to ‘Bad Routine’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Bad Routine’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Bad Routine’ on YouTube
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Mon, 22 Dec 2025 - 24min - 381 - Chloe Marks on what’s ‘Cheaper Than Therapy’ in her big new single with band The Mayhem
Before this year started, Brisbane outfit Chloe Marks & The Mayhem had not released any songs, although Marks herself has released music with duo Scotch & Cider, and as a solo artist. She also plays in other people’s bands as well as performing regularly with The Mayhem, as she’s been doing since 2023.
The band’s first single was ‘Carolina’, released at the end of February this year, and since then they’ve released ‘Skip September’ – for which Marks and I had a chat – and ‘Porch Light’. Now with the release of fourth single ‘Cheaper Than Therapy’, it emerges that these four songs form a story arc, with ‘Cheaper Than Therapy’ putting the full stop on that tale. Each song is different to the others, but the thread is there when you listen to them back to back.
In my previous interview with Marks I talked to her about her fascinating creative life, which includes photography and extreme sports, so you can head to that if you’d like to find out more. In this chat I concentrated on the brace of singles, with a focus on ‘Cheaper Than Therapy’, which has the refrain ‘When I get stoned I talk to God’. Marks and I talked about belief systems and what does and doesn’t get mentioned in public, or even to friends and family. As she says, the song has ‘opened up a strange but wonderful conversation within the band’.
All four songs were produced by Michael Muchow, and Marks has new material that will see her heading back into the studio in 2026. That studio time will be slotted in around her performance schedule, and that of The Mayhem, which includes dates at the 2026 Tamworth Country Music Festival (see below). They’re also playing on New Year’s Eve at Chattahoochee Joe’s, one of the homes of country music in Brisbane.
See Chloe Marks & The Mayhem live:
Wednesday Dec 31 – Chattahoochee Joes – Brisbane QLD
Friday Jan 16, 2026 – Tamworth CMF – Tudor
Hotel – Tamworth NSW
Saturday Jan 17, 2026 – Tamworth CMF –
Tudor Hotel – Tamworth NSW
Sunday Jan 18, 2026 – Tamworth CMF – Joe
Maguires – Tamworth NSW
Tuesday Jan 20, 2026 - Tamworth CMF – Joe
Maguires – Tamworth NSW
Listen to Chloe Marks & The Mayhem on Apple Music
Listen to Chloe Marks & The Mayhem on Spotify
Watch the official music video for ‘Cheaper Than Therapy’ on YouTube
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Sun, 21 Dec 2025 - 29min - 380 - Robbie Mortimer charts his path through creativity and country music
When you’re talking with Australian country music artists, Robbie Mortimer’s name comes up a lot, whether it’s as a festival performer or a co-writer – several artists work with him either to write songs from scratch or to enhance songs that already exist, even in part.
He’s the youngest of five brothers who grew up in the Central West of New South Wales, and perhaps negotiating with four siblings led to him being able to work well in a collaborative environment. Or maybe it was growing up in an NRL family, and having team sports as the default. That same environment also introduced him to poetry – his father writes it – as well as country living, which has influenced the stories he tells, and hard work.
Mortimer has several irons in the fire, for himself and with others – but, as he says in this new interview, he’s used to ‘squeezing absolutely everything out of a 24-hour day’. He says his father and brothers are wired the same way: ‘all gas, no brakes’. That ability to make the most of time and opportunities is married with Mortimer’s creative drive, which he has in spades. And it is a creative drive more than a drive for success because, he's discovered, ‘Everything I’ve done for the artistry of it has gone really, really well’, whereas anything he’s created while trying to replicate the success of something else has not fired the way he’s hoped.
Mortimer has released several singles this year, the latest of which is ‘The World Keeps Turning’, to go with the ones he released last year – pretty much an album’s worth across that time, but he’s looking ahead to what’s new and what’s next.
This is a long conversation because there was a lot to chat about – as there would be, given his work rate! There is much more to come from Robbie Mortimer, so this chat is by way of closing out a big year and looking ahead to an even bigger one in 2026.
Listen to Robbie Mortimer on Apple Music
Listen to Robbie Mortimer on Spotify
Watch/listen to Robbie Mortimer on YouTube
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Sat, 20 Dec 2025 - 46min - 379 - Brook Chivell on making guitars, singing the blues and ‘Like a Country Girl’
Each time I organise an interview with a country music artist there is an impetus for it – usually, as you’d expect, a new release, either single or album. I do my research and write questions accordingly, but I do not go into any interview with an expectation of where the conversation will go because expectations tend to become pre-set limitations, and there’s a danger of missing out on something interesting if those limitations are in place.
So it was that when I started chatting to Brook Chivell, an artist based in south-east Queensland, the reason for the chat was his latest single, ‘Like a Country Girl’ but the first part of the conversation was about guitars. For one thing, all his guitars are tuned to E flat. For another, he’s been building his own guitars. If you’re not interested in talking about guitars, well, maybe skip the first ten minutes. But I tend to like asking questions about the technical parts of being a musician because it’s really interesting to hear about other people’s work.
We also chat about the burgeoning country music scene in south-east Queensland, the blues songs Chivell has been recording and releasing … and, of course, about ‘Like a Country Girl’, which is a song for the girls who start the dance floor at a gig – the ones, says, Chivell, who can shift the mood of a show in a very positive direction.
I also ask Chivell about co-writing, which he’s done a bit – so it seems as if he likes doing it. His answer was surprising, and led to him talking about his writing process in general.
Listen to Brook Chivell on Apple Music
Listen to Brook Chivell on Spotify
Listen to ‘Like a Country Girl’ on YouTube
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Sat, 20 Dec 2025 - 35min - 378 - Roo Arcus on the experiences that made The Man I Am
Roo Arcus became a singer unintentionally – he didn’t know he could sing until he was somewhat strong-armed into it in a group setting. The cattle farmer from the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales has been on the land all of his life and spent his formative years listening to what he calls ‘the golden era’ of country music.
Arcus spends a lot of time in the United States of America where he’s asked, ‘How can you talk like an Aussie and sing like a Texan?’ His singing voice developed, he says, due to what he was listening to and singing along to when he was younger.
His first album was called Station Boy and it’s not available on streaming services, although the albums since are – including his fifth, The Man I Am, which was created in the wake of a devastating fire on his property, which destroyed not only farm vehicles and equipment but instruments and his children’s belongings. (This is captured in the song ‘Just an Old Shed’ on the album.)
The recording of the album in Texas was booked, however, and Arcus pressed ahead with it despite not having all the songs ready. What emerged was, perhaps, the truest expression of where he was in his life because he didn’t have time to think about it much or try to edit himself. The resulting album is not raw so much as honest, and Arcus too is honest about the impact of that time in this interview.
We also talk about his longtime affection for the US, where he travels several times a year, and especially for Texas, which is his second home.
Even after three decades in music, Arcus says he still feels like ‘a cattleman that sings … I don’t know how I ended up in this business.’ While that may be true, he’s stayed in it because he writes songs that reflect his experiences and they connect with people, as does his voice, and you’ll find out all about the development of both in this chat.
Listen to The Man I Am on Apple Music
Listen to The Man I Am on Spotify
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Wed, 17 Dec 2025 - 42min - 377 - Laura T Davis reclaims her power on ‘Not Your Fault’
‘Songs can become our best friend. And sometimes songs can save a life.’
Laura T Davis, a singer-songwriter from northern New South Wales, says this a fair way into our interview. The reason for the interview was her latest single, ‘Not Your Fault’, and the story behind that song is that Davis is a victim-survivor of extreme sexual violence perpetrated upon her in her teens. So when she talks about songs saving a life, she’s talking about what songs have meant to her and also what writing this song has done for her.
We talk at length about this part of her story, in particular, and also the other parts of her life, such as her beloved animals – horses and dogs – who are, she says, ‘part of my healing’. We talk about her musical background, being classically trained in piano and voice, and the time she spent performing for hours each day on ships on Sydney Harbour. About how, she says, there is a calling for music in her heart.
Davis released a single in 2020 called ‘Make It Till Christmas’, which was partly about how people on the land will hold on – to make it to Christmas, for example. It was inspired by what she saw around her, in the region she lives in, which is also an area that has been so badly affected by floods. By these acts of God that have been visited upon the residents. Acts that are not their fault any more than what happened to Davis was hers.
‘You have to tell yourself it’s not your fault,’ she says of the realisation she came to after years spent in the aftermath of the violence done to her. ‘You have to forgive yourself … That was the catalyst for this [song]. It was probably the only way that I could heal ... I didn’t want to suffer in silence any more.’
Davis is no longer suffering in silence but she is also incredibly self-aware and articulate about what it has taken for her to arrive at the place where she could not only write this song but record it and release it. For anyone who has been through a similar experience – and I sincerely hope you have not – I believe her story will give you heart. For anyone who has not, I hope you will listen to her with an open heart. That’s what she is offering to the world, when we have no right to expect it of her.
Listen to ‘Not Your Fault’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Not Your Fault’ on Spotify
Listen to ‘Not Your Fault’ on YouTube
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Mon, 15 Dec 2025 - 43min - 376 - Jo Page on ‘Fire in His Eyes’ and her creative fire
Each interview I do is, obviously, different because each artist is different – they have unique backgrounds, sounds and stories. Some of them turn out to be packed with lots of interesting elements – subjects I could have pursued for much longer conversations, except I’m mindful of trying to keep the chats relatively short and focused on music.
This interview with Jo Page, a country music artist from Port Lincoln in South Australia, was one of those. I start off asking Page about Port Lincoln – which is Australia’s seafood capital, which I didn’t previously know. Page also mentions that she won Port Lincoln’s Got Talent as part of Tunarama at the age of 20 – and, well, I had to ask her about something called Tunarama! You’ll have to watch/listen to find out what she said …
Page has been performing live since that time, although, as she says, at school she was ‘always the nerdy choir chick that would give up lunchtimes to do music stuff’. But it was the competition which led to her being introduced to a local producer with whom she formed a duo and then a band. She has only recently started writing songs, however, because she only started playing guitar three years ago. Now she’s written hundreds – as she says, you need to write a lot in order to find the gems – and one of those is ‘Fire In His Eyes’, which she wrote with Kevin Bennett and recorded with Matt Fell at Wilder in Tasmania. The character in the song, says Page in the interview, is based on how she envisages her grandfather, who was a cowboy – and there’s more to it but, again, you’ll need to watch/listen to find out!
Page is pursuing her music while also being a frontline domestic violence worker and mental health advocate. We talk about how she takes care of her own mental health, and a lot more besides. Maybe next time I’ll get to pursue those other subjects in more detail, but I certainly enjoyed this chat and hope you do too.
Listen to ‘Fire In His Eyes’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Fire In His Eyes’ on Spotify
Watch/listen to the song on YouTube
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Sun, 14 Dec 2025 - 31min - 375 - Tom Nethersole and Kye Arnot on their haunting, unforgettable ‘Holiday Spirit’
Earlier this year Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Tom Nethersole released a country single, ‘Ardmona Rd’. I hadn’t heard of Nethersole before that – his previous releases were mainly pop songs – but I loved the song and therefore was happy to chat to him about it. It was a great pleasure to interview him, so when he told me that he had a new folk-tinged song, ‘Holiday Spirit’, written and recorded with fellow Victorian Kye Arnot, of course I wanted to talk to them both.
Arnot has developed quite a following on TikTok, and we talk about that aspect of being an artist these days, as well as his single ‘Common Things’. Nethersole has also released an EP, Father, Son & the space in between, since we last spoke and it’s been on high rotation for me, because he has a certain way with melody and words so that his songs don’t let you go.
‘Holiday Spirit’ is no exception. It’s an ode to loved ones lost, and how that loss affects what is supposedly a festive season. In our interview Nethersole and Arnot talk about how they came to write together, and how the recording worked – and they reveal that there is, in fact, another recorded version of the song in existence, which frankly I would very much like to hear!
While there is nothing at all country-music about ‘Holiday Spirit’, one of the benefits of Sunburnt Country Music being an independent enterprise, and me being the only person here, is that I can cover what I like if I think it’s worth telling you about. I value your time and attention, and this enterprise keeps growing – across multiple platforms – because of it. These two artists are special, I think, and they’ve made something special together. I hope you enjoy meeting them, and listening to their song.
Listen to ‘Holiday Spirit’ on Apple Music
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Fri, 12 Dec 2025 - 32min - 374 - Saralyn on her time on The Voice, her new single and chasing dreams
Last year singer-songwriter Saralyn won the Mothertone Gympie Muster Talent Search, which was a terrific achievement – but she was also working on something else significant at the same time, and it wasn’t until this year that we found out what it was.
Auditioning on the hit TV show The Voice, Saralyn turned the chair of judge Ronan Keating and joined his team. Although she didn’t make it through to the finals, she cherishes the experience, as she told me in this recent interview. It turned out she applied for the show two years ago and wasn’t selected to audition; this time around she was approached instead, and it was, she says, the right time. She has in competitions from a young age, and performing in festivals for several years. The Voice offered something that allowed her to deepen her already extensive experience.
Now Saralyn has released her version of ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes’, a song written by Garth Brooks and very popularly covered by Keating. It’s a song that is tied to and emblematic of her time on The Voice, and now she has her own unique version of it.
It was clear during our chat that Saralyn was invigorated and motivated by her experience on The Voice, ready to step even more fully into her creative life, which has included some really lovely singles, such as ‘White Butterfly’. If you hadn’t heard of her before The Voice, there are some great songs to catch up on – and, no doubt, to look forward to.
Watch the video for ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes’ on YouTube
Listen to Saralyn on Apple Music
Listen to Saralyn on Spotify
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Thu, 11 Dec 2025 - 54min - 373 - Ruby McGrath-Lester from Team Love on new album Now Things Ain’t Coloured Rose
Team Love are a six-piece alt-country and folk band (full list of members below) from Victoria who released their first album during the pandemic. Since then lead singer and songwriter Ruby McGrath-Lester and partner/bandmate Shaun Stolk have become parents, so they’ve had a little bit on their plate. But as I found out when I chatted with McGrath-Lester recently, they have been writing songs – and there were around two dozen which were candidates for their second album, the recently released Now Things Ain’t Coloured Rose.
The band worked up all of the songs before making a decision on which to record, and the resulting eleven songs are in part McGrath-Lester showing us some fairly tender parts of herself. Being vulnerable in art usually requires not only a commitment but a leap of faith for the artist, and part of what’s great about these songs is that in acknowledging that there are some things that aren’t ‘ideal’ (depending on how that is defined), she’s not going to change them. There’s a comfort in that for the listener – a reassurance that, no, we don’t all have to fix ourselves all the time. Because maybe we actually don’t need fixing – we just don’t to be more self-accepting.
The band’s tenth anniversary is looming, and there may well be some live shows in honour of it, so keep an eye on the band’s socials for news of upcoming gigs.
And a note on the audio: towards the end my wi-fi connection became unstable (as Zoom likes to say) so I had to cut the part where I’m attempting to say goodbye to Ruby!
Team Love are:
Ruby McGrath-Lester (vocals, acoustic guitar)
Ruby Cattell (violin, vocals)
Monique Bricknell (keys, vocals)
Shaun Stolk (guitars, vocals)
Paddy McGrath-Lester (drums, vocals, guitars, percussion, mandolin)
Tom Thomas (bass, additional keys)
Listen to Now Things Ain’t Coloured Rose on Apple Music
Listen to Now Things Ain’t Coloured Rose on Spotify
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Thu, 11 Dec 2025 - 27min - 372 - Courtney Keil on ‘Friends for Life’ … and Christmas cheer
Country-pop artist Courtney Keil started her musical life in Melbourne and now lives on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where she is an integral member of what has long been an established country music community (which includes Lyn Bowtell, Kasey Chambers, Felicity Urquhart and Josh Cunningham, and previously Beccy Cole and Shane Nicholson) and which now has more venues opening and, therefore, more opportunities for artists to perform.
In our chat about her latest single, ‘Friends for Life’, I asked Keil about what’s happening with music on the coast, and we talked about the organisation Central Coast Music and Arts, which I was very pleased to learn about! We also talked about Keil’s other musical project, the duo The Midnight Black, and her next album, which she’s working towards.
‘Friends for Life’ was recorded in Nashville, with Keil’s longtime producer Rod McCormack – who, along with his wife, Gina Jeffreys, is also an important part of that coast country community. The song was written with McCormack and Sally Barris, with whom Keil has written before, and it’s all about honouring friendships – and as Keil mentions, given she had a rocky start to this year, her friends have been a great support. We also talk about her decision to record in Nashville – and it transpires it’s been five years in the making …
This interview was recorded towards the start of November, and Keil already had her Christmas tree up, so of course I had to ask her about that – and it turns out she will be performing on Christmas Eve at The Entrance, so if you’re in the area make sure to pack your picnic rug and get along! And she’ll be appearing at the Tamworth Country Music Festival on 18 January at the show That’s Where the Faith Comes In – tickets available here.
It's always great to chat to Courtney Keil – this interview was no exception – and if it’s your introduction to her, I hope you enjoy it and the song!
Listen to ‘Friends for Life’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Friends for Life’ on Spotify
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Mon, 08 Dec 2025 - 28min - 371 - Tom Mac on his ‘Nomadic’, adventurous life in music
Tom Mac is a country music artist from south-east Queensland who has extensive experience as both a performing and recording artist, whose story – as I found out during this interview – has many strands to it, all of them weaving together to form the artist who is now releasing the songs he’s always wanted to bring to people, including his latest single, ‘Nomadic’.
Mac was in his car when we spoke, with his guitar, Maton ECW80 cutaway, in the back seat, so I decided to start the conversation there, and he certainly had some stories to tell about it! However, Mac’s first instrument was piano, which he started playing at eight, encouraged by his mother, who was a primary school music teacher who also introduced him into musicals at school, including Grease and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. The experience in musicals stands him in very good stead as a performer today, in large part because of the singing involved and the confidence to do it. As he says, ‘A lot of people can sing, they just don’t know that they can.’
By his late teens, though, Mac wanted to play Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi – and also play an instrument that was of his own choosing. And ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was the first song he learned to play on guitar.
Mac started playing gigs – lots of gigs – and developed his repertoire of covers, before moving into original music, and his experiences there were not straightforward. He released music in a genre other than country music, under a different name, but it wasn’t the direction he really wanted to be in. It’s only in the last couple of years that he’s started releasing country songs, and the latest of those is ‘Nomadic’, which started life as a riff Mac heard on social media – performed by a busker in Byron Bay – and became a song inspired by some of the many adventures he’s had, travelling around Australia and performing.
Listen to ‘Nomadic’ on Apple Music
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Sat, 06 Dec 2025 - 35min - 370 - Sandy Louise on storytelling, community and ‘Tears in the Driveway’
Newcastle, NSW artist Sandy Louise started her musical life on flute and picked up guitar at the age of eighteen, which is also when she started writing songs – and songwriting has become a passion of hers.
Influenced by Kasey Chambers, The Cranberries and Alanis Morissette, Sandy has been writing songs ever since and is now an integral member of the Australian Songwriters Association (ASA), acting as the regional coordinator in her area. In that capacity she organises open-mic nights – and it was at a different open-mic night that she met Bill Chambers, father of Kasey.
Chambers subsequently became Sandy’s producer and is the co-writer of her latest single, ‘Tears in the Driveway’. Inspired by what actually happened at the end of a visit by Sandy to her sister in South Australia, it’s about leaving behind love ones and how we manage that distance when those we hold dear are so far away.
Sandy has released four albums, and she’s currently working towards a fifth. She runs her musical life in tandem with full-time work and family life. Although it can be hard to fit creativity in and around those sorts of demands, it was clear during our interview that the music side of her life is not negotiable.
If you’re in the Newcastle area and would like to participate in one of the open-mic nights run by Sandy, she talks about those in the interview. You can also go to the ASA website.
Listen to Sandy Louise on Apple Music
Listen to Sandy Louise on Spotify
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Thu, 04 Dec 2025 - 29min - 369 - Olive Mae on the amazing family story behind new single ‘El Caballo Blanco’
Australians of a certain age who grew up in certain locations will remember El Caballo Blanco. It was a show featuring dancing white horses – hence the name – and as I grew up in Sydney, one of two Australian sites for El Caballo Blanco, I remember the TV ad, despite the fact I was only allowed to watch half an hour of television a day. That’s how effective the marketing machine of Western Australian artist Olive Mae’s grandfather was. Her grandfather was a remarkable entrepreneur who founded several businesses apart from El Caballo Blanco. He died before Mae was born but, intrigued by his story, she wrote a song about it with esteemed artist Gretta Ziller, and has now released the single, entitled ‘El Caballo Blanco’, which was produced by Matt Fell.
Mae met Ziller at one of the SHE Songwriting Retreats run by Lyn Bowtell – you can find Bowtell talking about these in my recent interviews with her (as referenced by Mae in our own interview!) – but they didn’t write the song until later.
Mae then went on to attend the Academy of Country Music – of which Bowtell is the director – and found it a valuable experience, not least because she is in WA and, as she says, while there several country music artists in that state, they’re all spread out, and Academy is an opportunity to form connections with other artists.
The first time I interviewed Mae, a little while ago now, I found her a hoot and the experience was repeated this time. She’s also a really thoughtful and interesting artist, and it sounds like there are more songs on the near horizon, so stay tuned for more great stories from Olive Mae.
Listen to Olive Mae on Apple Music
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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 30min - 368 - Sara Berki on songs, storytelling and her new EP Outrun
If Sydney-area country music artist Sara Berki had only released her EP In the Neon earlier in the year, played her first headline tour – which was a two-set affair – as well as major festivals, and the NRLW Grand Final, as well as two Golden Guitar nominations (for New Talent and Female Artist of the Year) that would be a year in which she could put her feet up by now and have earnt a rest. Instead, she has just released another EP, Outrun, which is moving and memorable, offering a different musical treatment to In the Neon although still very much complementary to it.
When we spoke about the EP, I wanted to ask about individual songs, as they cannot be taken as a group. The single, ‘Porch Light’, which was released first, has quite a story behind it, as Berki tells me in this interview. ‘Happy House’ needed a separate conversation – you will understand why when you watch or listen to the interview – and the title track felt like an origin story, so it was great to discover the context for it. The last two tracks, ‘Lily of the Valley’ and ‘Heaven & Hell’, see Berki in storyteller mode.
Berki wrote four of the tracks alone – which is how she has mostly worked – and ‘Lily of the Valley’ with Nashville songwriters Brand Hood and Billy Montana. Since her first single she’s always demonstrated that she’s an exceptional songwriter; this EP is her taking those skills and adding (even more) courage as she shows us more of herself, telling more of her story.
Although I’ve interviewed Berki several times, there’s always more to discover, and so it was in this conversation too.
Listen to Outrun on Apple Music
Listen to Outrun on Spotify
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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 - 25min - 367 - Tate Cole takes us down Whiskey River for his debut single
Tate Cole grew up on a small family farm in south-east Queensland, heavily involved in the rodeo scene from a young age, following the lead of his father. At the same time as he was taking his chances on horses and cattle, he was developing his musical talents. His mother encouraged him and his brother to learn piano even before they’d started school, and while he was still in primary school Cole asked if he could learn guitar.
Growing up, he heard country tunes in the family car on the long drives that will be familiar to anyone who has lived in or spent time in the country, and he would sing along – so those songs shaped his taste as well as his voice. Once he started to write music of his own, he found that he has ‘a tendency to write sad lyrics to upbeat songs’, and that was how his first single, ‘Purgatory’, came to be.
His second single is ‘Whiskey River’, penned by Cole with Kane Vincent and Cody Walker (contacts he made through the Academy of Country Music), whom he’s known for a couple of years, in a serendipitous fashion, and produced by Jared Adlam, who also works with James Johnston, amongst others.
Cole plays regularly in Brisbane, and you can find the dates on his website. And a note about the sound in this interview: there were some wifi issues in the second half, so you’ll hear a slight delay in his responses. I could edit it out but, hey, I tend to like these conversations to be presented to you as they happened.
Listen to Tate Cole on Apple Music
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Wed, 26 Nov 2025 - 27min - 366 - Mak & Shar on the New Problems of their new album
Mak & Shar are a duo and they are also brothers. They have been making music together since childhood, as two-thirds of Brothers3, and also pursued music and musical studies individually. So they have already achieved a lot, and they’ve also been through a lot, which we have discussed in previous interviews and they elaborate on it in this one.
Their debut album together is called New Problems but both the song and the album are uplifting – the new problems are not big problems. As Shar says during the interview, ‘With our family, I don’t think you’re allowed to be really upset too often’ – and when you learn the context for that, and know what the brothers have experienced, this statement is all the more extraordinary.
They could so easily make music that is heavy, and no one would question that. Instead they choose to pursue open heartedness and joy – and making music together, despite naysayers. As Mak says, ‘It’s really important to look at the positives in life and keep on grinding.’
The latest single from New Problems is ‘Simple Things’, written with Robbie Mortimer, and I ask each of them about the simple things that bring them joy – and they have great answers for that. I also ask Mak about ‘Amara’s Song’, which was written for his eldest daughter at the time she was an only child … He now has another daughter, so obviously needs to write a song for her!
Each time I’ve interviewed Mak and Shar I have very much enjoyed how they interact with each other – because they genuinely like each other, quite apart from being brothers – and admired how they have made a commitment to continuing to make music together, and the processes they follow to do that. They are musical artists to their cores, and I think that shines through in this chat.
Listen to New Problems on Apple Music
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Mon, 24 Nov 2025 - 44min - 365 - Andrew Swift on his Lucky Stars and big, meaningful year
As the saying goes, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Three-time Golden Guitar winner Andrew Swift has named his latest album Lucky Stars, and it’s his document of the last few years in his life, which have been full of personal and professional opportunity – and the album itself is testament to the ‘preparation’ part of the equation.
Swift is an accomplished and astute songwriter who also loves live performance, honing his sound and his instinct on the road to ensure he presents his audience with an album that is not only memorable but clear in its communication. The themes of the album are set with opening track ‘Nothing Better’, and consolidated throughout.
Swift is currently on the road and has shows and festivals booked through until March next year (dates below) and no doubt beyond. He’s also recently been to Canada, as he’s signed with a Canadian management company. In this interview we talk about that decision, as well as the newest Swift: his daughter, Valentine, for whom he and partner Simone Sordello wrote and recorded a song that appears on the album.
Given everything going on in his life, Swift might be forgiven for not having time to be aware of all the good things in life, but it’s clear in this conversation that he means what he says in the album title: he counts his lucky stars. And he also takes them on the road, and into songs, for others to enjoy.
SEE ANDREW SWIFT LIVE
21st November - St Andrews Hotel - St Andrews VIC
22nd November - Bellarine Estate - Bellarine VIC
23rd November - Kindred Bandroom - Footscray VIC
24th January - Blazes Showroom - Tamworth Country Music Festival NSW
5th February - Mt Gambier Bowls Club - Mt Gambier SA
6th February - Wheatsheaf Hotel - Adelaide SA
7th February - Quorn Hall - Quorn SA
8th February - Murray Delta Juke Joint - Goolwa SA
14th February - Boyup Brook Country Music Muster - Boyup Brook WA
28th March - Echuca Country Music Festival - Echuca VIC
Tickets on sale now and available via www.andrewswift.com.au
Listen to Lucky Stars on Apple Music
Listen to Lucky Stars on Spotify
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Tue, 18 Nov 2025 - 29min - 364 - Fanny Lumsden on her new national tour and so much more
There will never not be a lot for me to talk to Fanny Lumsden about. The two-time ARIA and multiple Golden Guitar-winning singer, songwriter, videographer, tour specialist and joy bringer from the Upper Murray region of New South Wales has a full life that has this year seen her tour the United Kingdom and Ireland, supported Paul Kelly on his European and Australian tours, record new songs and release the single ‘Look At Me Now’ and its accompanying video, which features moments from Lumsden’s whole career and was made by her husband, bandmate and collaborator, Dan Stanley Freeman. This is combined with raising two children, being a mentor for others in the music industry and general and specific fabulousness.
So this is not a quick chat that I had with Lumsden. I’ve been a fan since her debut EP – which I mention in this interview – and that was for her music first. Lumsden is a fantastic songwriter, telling stories that are evocative, inspiring and also relatable. It was her songs I loved first – and then I started seeing her play live.
The live enterprise that is Fanny Lumsden and her band, the Prawnstars, has taken her around Australia multiple times, building her audience through the Country Halls Tours, as well as to the Glastonbury Festival, which in turn spurred her UK tours. Her upcoming Australian capital cities tour is the reason for this interview but it’s by far the only topic we cover.
I will say this, though: I will never be unbiased on the subject of Lumsden, her music and her shows. She is one of the most powerful forces for good in the Australian culture, leading by example and excellence, always pushing herself to create work that is more exciting, more insightful, more uplifting, more entertaining. For a fan, what could be more exciting? So that’s why I go to every single show she puts on in my home town (Sydney) and I encourage you to see her play live too. There will be laughter and playfulness and unexpected moments – and always, always there will be the songs and the harmonies and the excellent band. The dates to see Fanny Lumsden live are listed below.
Tickets available at https://www.fannylumsden.net/tourdates
Friday February 6 - Rosemount Hotel, Perth, WA
Saturday February 7 - Lion Arts Centre, Adelaide, SA
Friday February 13 - Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne, Vic
Saturday February 14 - The Triffid, Brisbane, Qld
Friday February 20 - Factory Theatre, Sydney, NSW
Saturday February 21 - UC Hub, Canberra, ACT
Listen to Fanny Lumsden on Apple Music
Listen to Fanny Lumsden on Spotify
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Sun, 16 Nov 2025 - 46min - 363 - Wade Forster on storytelling, giving 110% and gooseneck parties
‘Lyrics first. Lyrics always first. I’m a lyrics guy beyond anything.’
Wade Forster says this early on in our interview about his latest album, Gooseneck Party, and what then followed was a discussion about his songwriting process – he writes almost exclusively on his own. He mentions that in the last two or three years he’s written upwards of 70 or 80 songs on his own, and the tracks on the album are ‘just twenty-two of the better ones.’
Forster has rich material to draw from. As he says in this chat, ‘I’ve lived a hell of a life … I’ve got a lot of stories from a lot of different towns.’ He’s had a variety of jobs, from fridge mechanic to rodeo rider and a lot else in between. He also mentions in the interview that he gives 110% to his shows because he knows what it’s like to save up money to go to a show, and he wants to make sure his audience has a great experience accordingly. Having seem him play live I can attest that this is a case. Forster is a showman, and one with substance.
This was my first time interviewing Forster and I didn’t know what to expect. What I found was a thoughtful, well-rounded artist who puts a lot of time and attention into making his songs the best they can be, then curating the best selection for the album or show, not only to tell the whole story he wants to tell but to create something unique and memorable for his audience. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting conversation, and I hope you find it the same!
SEE WADE FORSTER LIVE
Nov 15 – Townsville, Otherwise QLD
Nov 20 – Geelong, Barwon Club VIC
Nov 21 – Melbourne, Howler VIC SOLD OUT
Nov 22 – Adelaide, Jive SA SOLD OUT
Nov 27 – Katoomba, Baroque Bar NSW
Nov 28 – Sydney, The Lansdowne NSW
Jan 19 – Tamworth, The Longyard NSW
Listen to Gooseneck Party on Apple Music
Listen to Gooseneck Party on Spotify
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Sat, 15 Nov 2025 - 28min - 362 - James Johnston on his landmark second album, WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME
Since multiple award-winning and -nominated country music artist James Johnston started releasing singles, I’ve interviewed him several times. Although we’d met in person none of those interviews have been in person before now, and it was wonderful to have the chance to chat to Johnston about his second album, WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME, the follow-up to his smash-hit debut RAISED LIKE THAT. Because we filmed this in person and I don’t have a whiz-bang multi-camera studio, you’ll see only him on camera – although I did have nice microphones on us both!
There have already been several hit singles from WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME, including ‘Hell Boy’ and ‘Good For Me’, but as with RAISED LIKE THAT Johnston held some things back for the album. In the sixteen tracks we hear his stories, yes, but my impression was that this album seems more structured around themes, such as loyalty, love, dedication to family, appreciation of friends, hard work and very much not taking anything for granted. I put this to Johnston in the interview, and you can watch/listen to hear his response!
Johnston wrote dozens of songs before he recorded his first single, and his dedication not only to creating but to editing his output means that his albums are curated to offer an experience to the listener. Even a song that looks like a party song from the outside – such as ‘I Oughta Know Better’- offers details that build a world, rather than relying on cliché.
There’s also a special song called ‘Can I Keep Talking to You’, which I saw Johnston perform live ahead of the album release and immediately noted. It was lovely to hear the story behind that too.
I’ve never been shy about my admiration of Johnston, who not only has the talent and application but professionalism to match. His rapid rise was many years in the making, and he has consolidated the success of his first releases with a second album that will deepen his connection with fans, and no doubt bring in new fans too.
Listen to WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME on Apple Music
Listen to WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME on Spotify
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Wed, 12 Nov 2025 - 18min - 361 - Loretta Miller on her lifetime of creativity and debut solo album
While Loretta Miller has extensive experience in both recorded and live music, as the frontwoman of Melbourne band JAZZPARTY amongst other things, she hasn’t released country music before – so this is the first time I’ve interviewed her, and it was to talk about her debut album, Loretta.
This turned out to be a long conversation because Miller has had such an interesting life, growing up in a family of musical artists (including her aunt, Lisa Miller) and painters, that there was a lot to talk about. What became clear is that Miller takes chances – in music, in life – and is prepared to risk something not working out, which has had the effect of her having rich, varied experiences. Her world view is expansive – a case of ‘what else is out there?’ not ‘I am satisfied with what’s in here’ – and whether that is the reason why she takes chances or is a result of it, the effect is the same: she has a big life and she embraces all of it.
We do talk about the album, of course, which includes great songs like ‘Dog’ and ‘Passenger Side’, and about why she is drawn to country music as a style and genre (hint: she grew up with it). If you’re watching this interview rather than listening to it you’ll see the light around me fading, but there’s really no good time to say ‘I’m just going to put a light on’ so I went with it – Miller is the focus, after all, and it’s worth listening to this entire chat to find out more about her.
Listen to Loretta on Apple Music
Listen to Loretta on Spotify
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Mon, 27 Oct 2025 - 54min - 360 - Ella Powell on latest single ‘Passerby’ and exciting new direction
Central Coast country music singer-songwriter Ella Powell began this year as a Grand Finalist in the prestigious Toyota Star Maker competition, with the final held during the Tamworth Country Music Festival. It was no surprise that Powell had this recognition: since she began releasing music in 2020 she has stood out for her songwriting as well as her vocals.
Last year she collected her releases in an EP, The End of the Beginning, marking the end of that chapter and the start of a new one. This next phase has begun with the single, ‘Passerby’, which we talk about in this new interview. The song is about feeling like you’ve been left behind, that life is passing you by even as you hold onto your dreams. Musically it’s a shift in direction while lyrically it is true to Powell’s intelligent, emotionally astute writing.
The song was written with Ben Horsley, who was also the producer. Powell has often written on her own in the past but is evolving her songwriting practice along with her sound, writing with new people as well as having some songs co-written with Horsley in the vault.
I always look forward to Powell’s new songs, as well as the opportunity to talk to her about them, as she’s an exciting young artist who has already achieved so much. She had a great beginning, and this next part of her life as an artist is already off to a wonderful start.
Listen to ‘Passerby’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Passerby’ on Spotify
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Sat, 25 Oct 2025 - 28min - 359 - Jade Gibson on daydreaming in poetry and what makes for the ‘Perfect Crime’
Victorian country-pop artist Jade Gibson has a knack for creating infectious country-pop tunes and she has performed them in all sorts of places, from festival stages to pubs. Next year she’ll be on stage at CMC Rocks. And no doubt her latest single, ‘Perfect Crime’, would be on the set list.
Written with the song’s producer, Ben Horsley, and Nashville-based songwriter Ava Suppelsa, the song is about ghosting – the ‘perfect crime’. The first song Gibson recorded with Horsley was ‘Technicolour’. As she describes in this new interview, it marked a turning point – she let go of some of the pressure she’d put on herself to achieve certain goals, and she has now been achieving some of those very goals.
That doesn’t mean she hasn’t had challenges and knockbacks, and we talk about those too, as well as about her experience at Nashville Song Hubs, where she wrote ‘Bygones’, her single released earlier this year. We go into the rather tough story behind that song too.
Gibson’s Instagram bio says ‘daydreaming in poetry’, and we talk about that, and several other things, including her pushing herself outside her comfort zone – and I offer some unsolicited ‘writer therapy’!
Please note that I had a cold when this was recorded, so my voice sounds bad! I can’t believe Jade even understood me. Thanks to her for persevering.
Listen to Jade Gibson on Apple Music
Listen to Jade Gibson on Spotify
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Wed, 22 Oct 2025 - 43min
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