Sunburnt Country Music

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 NSWMay 8 - Full Throttle Ranch, Buttai,Newcastle NSWMay 9 - The Baroque Room, Katoomba NSWListen to Through the Haze on Apple MusicListen to Through the Haze on SpotifyListen to Through the Haze on YouTube

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 MusicListen to Savanah Solomon on SpotifyListen to Savanah Solomon on YouTube

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 SpotifyListen to Camille Trail on YouTube

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 MusicListen to Dylan Wright on SpotifyListen to Dylan Wright on YouTube

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 MusicListen to Rockhampton Hangover on SpotifyListen to Rockhampton Hangover on YouTube

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 MusicListen to Lindsay Waddington on SpotifyLindsay Waddington on YouTube

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 MusicListen to ‘You Haven't Heard of Me Yet’ on SpotifyListen to ‘You Haven't Heard of Me Yet’ on YouTube

**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 HazeMelanie 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 YouAmy Sheppard & The Wolfe Brothers - ‘Fool Outta Me’Briana Dinsdale - ‘Never Love Again’

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 MusicListen to ‘My Hometown’ on SpotifyListen to ‘My Hometown’ on YouTube