Sunburnt Country Music

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. Listen to ‘Country Songs’ on Apple MusicListen to ‘Country Songs’ on SpotifyListen to ‘Country Songs’ on YouTube

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.Listen to Ella Powell on Apple MusicListen to Ella Powell on SpotifyListen to Ella Powell on YouTube

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 MusicListen to I Don’t Think About You at All on Spotify

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.Listen to ‘If She Only Knew’ on Apple MusicListen to ‘If She Only Knew’ on SpotifyListen to ‘If She Only Knew’ on YouTube

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. Listen to Brooke Seabrook on Apple Music                  Listen to Brooke Seabrook on SpotifyListen to Brooke Seabrook on YouTube

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/Listen to ‘Better This Way’ on Apple MusicListen to ‘Better This Way’ on SpotifyListen to ‘Better This Way’ on YouTube

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. Listen to Ally Paterson on Apple MusicListen to Ally Paterson on SpotifyListen to Ally Paterson on YouTube

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/ Listen to Butcher, Lover, Runner on Apple Music Listen to Butcher, Lover, Runner on Spotify Listen to Butcher, Lover, Runner on YouTube