Sunburnt Country Music

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, Th...

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 – th...

The members of Queensland country-rock duo Benson Manor, Chris Knight and Phil Behrens, have been performing together for over two decades but have only recently started to release original music, first with ‘Dirty Weekend’ and now with ‘Let’s Talk’, a song about the power of talking out problems rather than leaving them festering inside.

I had no idea what to expect when interviewing the pair, as they only have the ...

Trinity Woodhouse started singing at a very young age. As she tells me in our recent interview, she was playing every sport imaginable and singing while doing it – including while swimming which, as she says, takes some doing! When she was eight her parents suggested she have some vocal lessons, although she didn’t agree to them until she was eleven. She started performing at twelve, and took up guitar initially so she wouldn’...

Sally Jane is an emerging country music artist from Serpentine in Western Australia who started singing in early childhood – often in paddocks, as she told me in this interview! – and who has already played in many venues and around the country. Indeed, she has crossed the Nullarbor Plain eleven times to play the east coast of Australia. 

Last year Sally released two singles, one of which was ‘Bombs & Bullets’, w...

The latest single from Central Coast NSW artist Jasmine Sparkes is ‘Sparkes Road’ – based on a real Sparks Road that she travels often, the spelling has been altered slightly to reflect the metaphorical and literal journey Sparkes has taken through her musical life, which began with learning piano in childhood and takes in classical training and musical theatre. 

Growing up on the land, and still passionate about ...

Corey Colum emerged into the Australian country music scene in 2009, when he won the Telstra Road to Tamworth competition. He released his debut self-titled album in 2012 – and then we didn’t hear from him for a good long while. 

Colum didn’t step away from music so much as releasing music. He’s still been very much playing, and writing. But he also had some other – rather important – things to do like raising a family, and...

It’s fair to say that Lyn Bowtell is a doyenne of Australian music, and not only because she’s the director of the Academy of Country Music, overseeing the Junior Academy each July and Senior Academy each January and everything in between – although that would be qualification enough. So it is that but it is also this: she has this glorious voice that can prompt tears and break hearts in one phrase, and she writes these s...

During this interview with Tamworth-based country music artist Aleyce Simmonds you’ll occasionally hear her talking to her young daughter, Georgia, who was nearby during the chat, and, towards the end, her husband. I could have edited out these lines, but for what reason? To pretend that Simmonds wasn’t at home, doing the interview near her garden, with the setting sun and birds nearby and her beloved child at her feet? T...

The first time I interviewed Sydney singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Michael Carpenter, I found out how he organises his time so well (hint: it’s a simple to-do list and actually remembering to look at it), although I also think he marries that organisation with a sense of living in constant creative flow. The output of his own music, whether that’s solo, with The April Family or with the Banks Brothers (...

Many musical artists immerse themselves in their work, embracing many facets of it, sometimes as singing or instrument teachers, or writing songs for other artists to perform, making videos or producing. Victorian artist Hazel – who performs with her band, The Thief – runs a popular venue, The Pig & Whistle in Main Ridge, scheduling more than 100 shows a year, which in and of itself would be enough to keep her qu...

‘Everything is a song. Life is a song. Books are a song.’ 

That’s what Victoria-born Queensland resident Kaitlyn Thomas told me when I asked about her songwriting process in our recent chat about her latest single, ‘Mississippi Lies’, which she recorded with in-demand Gold Coast producer Jared Adlam. Thomas was talking about how she’d had the title of the song in a songbook for a while and brought it to life with ...

While I enjoy interviewing artists for the second, third or fourth (sometimes more!) time, it’s always lovely to meet someone new and find out about their life in music. Emily Joy is a country-pop artist from Western Australia whom I knew had studied music extensively, but there’s only so much you can glean from research online – which is at least one of the reasons why it’s good to have these in-depth chats. In this inte...

Early on in my interview with award-winning, chart-topping country music artist Kaylee Bell, I discovered that she has a background in sport – this was not something I’d found in my research but I always like exploring this angle when it comes up with musical artists because to me, at least, there are commonalities in both pursuits. Both require an understanding that most of one’s time will be spent in preparation: practising,...

It can never be said that Jindabyne local now Queensland resident Brad Cox has rested on his laurels. From his debut self-titled album, released in 2018, through second album My Mind’s Projection in 2020 and Acresin 2023, he has evolved his sound while building his audience, often through touring his own shows and playing festivals. His voice is big, and so are the stories and themes in his songs. 

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Sara Berki is a country music artist from the greater Sydney area who impressed audiences from her very first single, ‘Fallin’ Off the Heartline’, and has kept releasing songs that not only consolidate those early impressions but shift her as an artist into new territory while also being identifiably her sound, as evidenced on her recent second EP, In the Neon.

Berki performed at the inaugural Ridin’ Hearts...

Jake Davey is one of those multi-talented artists who must have an incredibly well-organised diary because he moves so regularly between making videos and producing music for other artists as well as writing and recording his own songs, and playing live. Two years ago, however, it seemed there was little prospect of any of that when Davey was given a diagnosis of cauda equina syndrome, which meant he was told he may not walk a...

Copperline are a four-piece alt-country band fronted by Brad Christmas, who is also an in-demand musician who has played with acts such as Boney M and Steve Kilbey in between writing songs and also writing books – his first book for young people, Saltwater Boy, has had award acclaim and Christmas is now at work on his second.

Copperline’s new single, ‘Sleepwalking’, was produced by Shane Nicholson, with whom they have ...

Brooke Schubert is a country rock artist living in Brisbane, Queensland. She is in a musical lineage that includes her great-grandmother, Iris Atkinson, who was the first woman in Australia to produce a vinyl recording, her aunt Karyn, an opera singer, and her mother, Susan, who performed at the first Gympie Muster and was also a professional golfer. 

Both music and sport have been prominent in Schubert’s life – she ha...