EP review: The Mezcaltones

The Mezcaltones have been together for a handful of years and over the past couple they have developed an enthusiastic fan base at the Tamworth Country Music Festival. The reason for that is that they turn on professional, exciting, entertaining live shows that mix up covers and original material, instrumentals and songs, and never let the audience get bored.

Although the Mezcaltones aren’t strictly country music people – their style is Tex-Mex rock with a dose of Western swing – they share something fundamental with country music artists: an interest in their audiences. That’s why their shows are so good - they are put together with the intention to keep toes tapping and heads nodding. The band members are, to a person, experienced musicians and performers who have refined their skills until they are exactly on point.

The Mezcaltones’ eponymous debut EP captures that live experience: the mix of covers with original material; the driving, upbeat tempos; the lead vocals from Col Porter that a perfect fit for the band’s sound, and the general sense of the whole enterprise being a good time to record as much as it is to listen to.

The EP is seven songs’ worth of material that is guaranteed to bring a smile. If you never make it to a show, rest assured you are getting the next best thing – and turn it up loud.

The Mezcaltones is out now.

www.the-mezcaltones.com

Album review: Airborne by Kalesti Butler

Over the past year or so, whenever I've listened to ABC Country, I've heard the song 'She's a River' by Kalesti Butler, and each time I've wondered what Kalesti Butler is up to. As it turned out, she was up to the creation of a new album, Airborne.

Butler grew up on a cattle station in the Gulf Country in Queensland, so she is steeped in country - and country music. Airborne is authentically country, drawing on stories that evoke the landscape and the lives of people living in it, and it's contemporary too. Butler has a lovely voice that carries these stories of land and love very well. Not all the songs are written by her -some are written with her mother, Val, while others come from completely different pens, including that of Luke O'Shea - but she makes them all her own.

Australian country music is competitive: any emerging artist, as Butler is, has to contend with the robust, experienced talents of artists like Kasey Chambers and Beccy Cole. Butler offers something different yet complementary: she is telling authentic tales of country life as she knows it and the authenticity is there in every note she sings. Like Chambers and Cole, she is not afraid to be vulnerable nor to entertain.

Butler's career began at the age of three,when she appeared at the Charters Towers Country Music Festival, so it's not surprising that she sounds comfortable on this album, as if she has arrived at a place and time she was meant to. Airborne is a strong piece of work. That early song that ABC Music has on regular rotation was no fluke: with Airborne Butler has made a significant contribution to Australian country music,

Airborne is available now.

www.kalestibutler.com

Moreland & Arbuckle on tour in Australia

Blues-rock trio Moreland & Arbuckle make their home in Kansas but play around the world, and this month they're coming to Australia to bring their amazing sound to new audiences in support of their latest album, Promised Land or Bust. I spoke to guitarist Aaron Moreland about the band's genesis and sound, and what he's hoping to find in Australia.

 

Whereabouts in the United States do you originally hail from?

I’ve never lived anywhere but Kansas. It’s always been my home. I grew up in a little tiny town called Madison, Kansas – I had a grand total of fourteen people in my graduating class.

It sounds like it was rural, then.

Exceptionally rural. I’ve never lived in a city bigger than 25 000 people.

What sort of music did you listen to while you were growing up?

Mostly I heard what was on the radio. I grew up listening to classic rock and then I discovered blues. As I got older more, different kinds of rock ’n’ roll and once I had wheels I was able to drive to the closest city and buy music, then it kind of opened up more. But up until I was about thirteen it was mainly what was on the radio or eight-tracks or LPs or cassettes that somebody happened to have. Mostly it was classic rock and the blues.

Given that you were in such a small community, did you have any musical friends to talk about music with or share music with?

I did. I grew up with a couple of different people who were good musicians. One of them was a few years older than me, so I learned about some things I wouldn’t have learned about otherwise. Then another was my age but he would go off to summer camp really far away from where we grew up and he’d come back with all this interesting stuff that you couldn’t hear on the radio back then, at least not on a commercial radio station, like Depeche Mode and The Cure. He was into stuff like that but I’d never even really heard of it. It was before the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers made it big – that kind of alternative scene before it really blew up.

At what age did you start playing the guitar, and what made you start?

Well, my biological father was a guitar player. He left when I was really young, but for as long as I can remember all I ever wanted to do was play guitar and listen to music. I started playing when I was fifteen. I got a guitar when I was thirteen and I couldn’t really make any music out of it at that point, so it mainly just stayed in its case. I really didn’t start playing until I was fifteen and then I picked it up and things kind of made more sense. I don’t know if it was a mental maturity thing or what. Music’s always just been really deep inside of me. As long as I can remember it’s one of the things that I’ve always had. I think it is the thing that I’ve had the longest-standing passion for in my entire life.

I know you don’t sing in this band, but have you ever sung?

I do sing a little bit. I’m not a very good singer. Some of our early records, actually, I did some singing on but I just don’t have a very good singing voice.

I tend to find that people who say that are better singers than they think. But I’ll leave it and move on another question. As you started to play guitar and find your musical voice in that way, did you develop different musical influences to the ones you’d had before that? Did you start to listen to music differently, to pick up guitar parts or because it seemed interesting?

I think I did as I got older. Right at the beginning I’d say no, that was not the case, because I was so limited in what I could do. But as I’ve gotten older and still to this day I’ll hear things differently that I maybe didn’t notice even just a few weeks ago. I don’t know if this ever happens to you but there’s times when I just have certain days that things just sound different and I’ll notice things that I’ve never noticed before and I’ll hear songs almost like I’ve put a different filter on my brain or over my ears. It makes me hear things like I’ve never heard them before and that still happens to me with a good bit of regularity.

That sort of experience is ephemeral – you hear it but trying to record it in your brain is quite difficult. Do you then tend to pick up a guitar and try to … it’s almost like working out a puzzle.

Sometimes. One of the best songs that I’ve ever writ kind of just dropped into my lap. I either had it in my head and picked up a guitar and figured out what it was in my head or I was just dinking around, playing, and suddenly I had a new tune.

And that sort of activity suggests that you don’t tend to censor yourself too much – you trust what comes through. You may edit it afterwards but you certainly trust the source.

I think so. If I hit onto something that’s pretty good I usually know it almost always in the moment. The biggest mistake that I make is that some of the best songs I’ve ever written I forgot before I could get them recorded. A friend of mine and I used to joke that we were lifelong members of the Forgotten Licks Club. So much comes out sometimes and if you don’t capture it exactly how it was, it’s gone. If I know I’m kind of in a real good spot when I’m playing around on my guitar by myself, practising – I don’t do as much as I should these days – I will record myself. It’s so easy now with cellphones and such. But I’ll record myself and oftentimes go back and listen to it and think, ‘Well, I don’t remember that at all’ – so that’s good. Some of the tunes that have appeared on a record have been that way. They’re songs that I wrote or riffs that I wrote that I’d kind have forgotten about but luckily I was rolling some kind of recording device to help revisit them.

You said that music is a lifelong passion – did you always want to be in a band?

I always wanted to be in a band. I started playing guitar in December of 1989 and I think I was playing semi in a band, at least very informally, within four, five, six months. It happened pretty quick.

And were you the band leader of those early bands?

I was always the one that seemed to find the guys, yeah, I would say so. I look back on it and realise that for my age period and where I lived I had a resourcefulness that I am amazed that I had. I remember calling up to the local university when I was fifteen years old and speaking with the vocal professor there and asking if he had any college kids that may be interested in singing in a rock ’n’ roll band. The guy literally just printed off his entire class list of all his male singers and sent it to me in the mail. Looking back on that it’s, like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty unbelievable.’

Except I wonder if it’s not to do with that passion you mentioned earlier – you had that drive to be involved in music and the practical side of that is, ‘If I want a band I have to get the elements together.’ I can certainly see that continuum.

I hadn’t thought of it like that. I certainly found a way to make what I wanted to happen, happen, from pretty early on.

And, of course, the current band is now seven albums in. When did Moreland & Arbuckle form, how did you meet? Did you like each other straightaway?

I did like him straightaway. I met Dustin Arbuckle at an open-mic in the early part of 2001 then later crossed paths with him again because I was just doing this little solo home-spun thing and I needed some harmonica on it. I didn’t even know he could sing at that point. I hadn’t heard him sing, I’d just heard him play harmonica. Then we got together and I heard him sing and I said, ‘Damn, man, you’re a really good singer. This really works good.’ We were both at that point wanting to play pretty much pre-war traditional blues and even though Wichita’s about half a million people there really weren’t a whole lot of other people around that were interested in that, so it clicked right away.

And pre-war traditional blues is very specific, so it seems almost like you might have been destined to meet.

I would say that’s absolutely right. I’m a firm believer that everything in our lives happens for a reason. I think most things are predetermined to an extent. I’m a big believer in fate, as you are saying.

Your current album is your seventh and there’s a sense on the album that this is a band who knows exactly what you’re doing – you know what your sound is and you’re not trying to prove anything or sort things out. But did it take you a while to find your own sound?

Well, it’s kind of interesting – it sort of goes back to your question of how the band formed. It’s been an evolution, for sure. We’ve gone from playing just the two of us, as a harmonica and acoustic guitar duo doing the pre-war blues stuff to playing in a quartet with typical guitar, bass, drums, singer and Dustin would play harp, and some of that early stuff was really more of a blues-rock jam band typical of what you’d hear out of an average band. And once we lost our second bass player we realised at that point that we were just going to move forward without a bass player and see what happens. I wasn’t really that excited to do it but Dustin convinced me that it was what we should do and it’s actually really worked out well. There have been many permutations that have got us to where we are now and the sound has evolved very much in an earthy, non-planned way.

When you mentioned that you weren’t too excited to not have a bass player, was that because that was convention and you wondered if you could do without one?

That’s exactly right. I said, ‘Man, I don’t know how I’d ever do this’, and actually I kind of had a knack for it and I didn’t know it because I’d spent all those years just sawing away on my resonator guitar playing old blues stuff … I had it in me and I just didn’t realise it at the time.

Certainly, listening to your music it’s not like it’s a thin sound – there’s a lot in each song. I can’t imagine there is room for a bass in there now. Which may mean that your sound’s evolved that way but also it’s perfect as it is.

And a recorded album is a totally different experience to our live show just because a record is a forever thing because you have more opportunities to add layers. There are bass parts on some of our recordings. Dustin does play bass a little bit now live, so a handful of our tunes live have bass, which frees me up a little bit, but by and large the best compliment I could get is really the compliment you just gave: when somebody sees us at a show and says, ‘I don’t even miss the bass player. You guys have such a cool sound.’

When I was first listening to the album I went back to the bio checking for the name of the bass player – I didn’t miss it either but I was convinced there had to be one because of the sound. But I’ll move on to talk to you about your tour schedule. Before you come to Australia you’ll be in the UK, you’re back home in Kansas for a couple of shows and then you’re on a cruise. Is your schedule usually like that – do you pack the year out?

Our schedule’s pretty insane sometimes – we go all over the place. Travelling all over Europe and North America. It can be pretty intense. It’s the hardest part of the job of being a musician. The intense travel can really turn it into a grind.

It would be one thing if you could be magically transported to a gig but so much of your time is spent travelling that I would imagine it could sometimes be counterproductive in that it’s quite tiring.

At this point I honestly would say that only 10 per cent of the amount of time we spend on our jobs as musicians is playing music – if 10 per cent, maybe less, because of everything that goes into it. We’re not at the point where we’re on a tour bus or a private jet. We’re driving ourselves to all shows in the US, all shows in Europe. That’s one nice thing when we come to Australia: we actually have somebody that’s going to be driving.

I’m glad about that because Australia’s very big and just looking at your list of gigs, to get around would take up pretty much all the time.

Yeah [laughs]. I’m all too familiar with taking up lots of time. There’s times when we’ve driven 30 hours non-stop to play a one-hour show.

Do you have any expectations of your Australian trip or do you tend to go into all your gigs expectation free?

I’m excited about it. I’ve learned over the years that to have too many expectations can be good and/or bad at times so I try to shy from too many expectations. But based on everything I’ve heard and everything I’ve read, and everybody I’ve ever talked to that’s been there as a visitor or as a performer has told me that it’s one of the most amazing places they’ve ever been and that the people in Australia love live music and are really down to earth, and [it’s] a fun place to be, so my expectation is that it will be really, really cool.

MORELAND & ARBUCKLE AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES Saturday 18th February Holler Roots Music Festival Caravan Music Club 95-97 Drummond St Oakleigh VIC Ph: 03 9568 1432 www.caravanmusic.com.au . Sunday 19th February Spotted Mallard 314 Sydney Rd Brunswick VIC Ph: 03 9380 8818 spottedmallard.com Monday 20th February Prince Bandroom 29 Fitzroy St, St Kilda VIC Ph: 03 9536 1168 Dinner & show tickets also available www.princebandroom.com.au Wednesday 22nd February Stag & Hunter 187 Maitland Rd, Mayfield NSW Ph: 02 4968 1205 stagandhunter.com.au Thursday 23rd February Black Bear Lodge 322 Brunswick St Fortitude Valley QLD www.blackbearlodge.com.au Friday 24th February Soundlounge 165 Duringan St Currumbin QLD Ph: 07 5534 7999 soundlounge.com.au Saturday 25th February The Basement 7 Macquarie Place, Sydney NSW Ph: 02 9251 2797 Dinner & show tickets also available www.thebasement.com.au Sunday 26th February The Brass Monkey 115A Cronulla St, Cronulla NSW Ph: 02 9544 3844 brassmonkey.com.au Tickets to all shows available at www.morelandarbuckleaustralia.com

The McClymonts begin their Endless tour

After launching their new album, Endless, at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, the McClymonts are about to commence a long tour around Australia. I was able to chat to Samantha McClymont just before Tamworth to find out what they have planned, and about the creation of their album. The full list of tour dates is on their website.

Are you rested and ready for Tamworth?

Yes, we definitely are. Tamworth just comes up so fast, though – you have Christmas and New Year and then it’s, ‘Okay, we’ve got to knuckle down, it’s Tamworth time.’ We’re back into rehearsals again now and getting all the new songs down pat, because it will be the album launch in Tamworth. Playing all the new songs for the very first time, which is always quite daunting, a bit nerve-wracking playing them up on stage first go. But it’s so nice to finally have new music. It’s been two and a half years – nearly three years. So we’re definitely ready to have some new stuff.

As someone who always eagerly anticipates your albums, I was getting a bit shirty that there hadn’t been a new one for a while. But I did feel there were good excuses: a wedding, a baby, that kind of thing.

[Laughs] I know, there was so much going on. We’re lucky, though, that we weren’t being rushed by our label. They said, ‘Whenever you’re ready start songwriting and go into the studio’. And that was nice because we felt like when we had the songs we wanted we could go to record, and that was really cool. We were happy with all the songs because we were in such a good place and we were writing and weren’t rushed. We’re really happy with the songs. Have you seen the video?

I’ve heard the whole album and it’s yet another top-shelf effort. One of the things I love about the band is that the sound of you three singing together is always magic but the songs do evolve. There’s obviously different things going on and different things you want to say. On this album I was wondering what moods were coming through and for me there was quite a bit of contentment but quite a bit of regret and wistfulness, and I don’t know if that’s what you meant to put through.

There was a bit of a mixture. Definitely contentment. It’s hard for us to write really sad songs at the moment because we are happy. But what country songs are about is being truthful. As country songwriters you need to be truthful because an audience can see through it if you’re fake and writing about something that doesn’t relate to you. And we’ve drawn on stories. The song ‘Unsaveable’ is from our friend’s experience – our best friend going through something and we said, ‘Okay, we’ll use that, thank you very much’ [laughs]. Do a bit of a Taylor Swift and just grab bits and pieces from people. And those songs about making relationships work – obviously we are all married and we travel and we’re away, and relationships are tested a lot and we can write about those things. You’ve got to really work hard to make it work and we’re happy to write about those things because that’s what we’re going through.

That balance of work and family and creativity – you’ve all been doing it consistently for over a decade. I certainly find the way you operate individually and as a group inspirational. Do any of your audience members tell you that you inspire them to be creative?

It’s taken us ten years to learn how to do it [laughs]. It wasn’t that way at the start. We’ve always been creative – it doesn’t stop, it’s no nine-to-five. That can sometimes be detrimental because you don’t have an off switch and you just go-go-go and never stop, and we actually found that we had no work-life balance. It wasn’t until Tiggy [Brooke’s daughter] came along four years ago that we had to make time for work-life balance. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to us because if you live a little you have more to write about [laughs]. So we realised that we needed time to ourselves and we needed to have breaks and needed family time and alone time.

In country music shows, so often the artists look like they’re enjoying themselves. I’ve always noticed in your shows you always look like you’re having a great time and it looks genuine. But I guess even on the nights you’re not feeling it, that intention to go out and have a great time carries you through, and I wonder if that’s influenced the longevity of the career.

I think it helps that we have each other as well. I think that’s a big part of it. On the road it could get quite lonely. People think it’s very glamorous, you’re travelling all the time and doing all these amazing things. But if you’re not with your loved ones it could get quite lonely. So I think we’re so lucky that we are family and we are together and it does make it enjoyable. We have slowed things down to two or three shows a week now – once again, that work-life balance. We have Monday to Thursday home and then we’re back out on the road again. That works for us and makes us really happy, and that makes us really love the shows, because we’re ready to get out on the road – we’re excited: ‘It’s Friday! We’re ready to go!’ And I think we’re really pumped for this new tour because we only did the ten shows last year for the ten-year anniversary so it was a very short tour. It’ll be nice to get out there and play a lot more places that we haven’t been to for a long time.

The tour dates have been announced up to April but the press released said more dates will be announced – so will this tour take up most of the year?

We’re actually up to July now. There’s definitely more in there. We’re trying to get all over the place.            

Hopefully that rhythm of having the start of the week off will mean you can go for longer because obviously you’re trying to reach as many people as possible – you’re playing some places you haven’t visited before and some you haven’t been to for a while.

Absolutely. And new album – we want to get the music out to as many people as possible, we want people to hear it and play to people who have been following us for ten years. We try to make sure we get around to as many places as possible. Of course we’re going to miss some places but that’s the beauty of music, and if we can continue to do it there will be more places in other years. We’ll try to get around – Australia’s a big place.

And the more albums you release the tougher that set list gets to create. Every show I’ve seen you play something from the first EP – but it must get hard to decide what to sing.

It does. And this has been so hard to put together. The girls and I went back and forth for weeks for this Tamworth show and the tour because we’ve got so many songs, and we want to play the new ones but obviously people don’t want to be flooded with too many at the start of the tour because they might not be familiar with new songs yet. So we went back and forth – ‘I think we have to cut this song’, ‘But it’s my favourite!’ We thought it would get easier the more songs we have but it’s definitely become a lot harder.

If you’d written a whole lot of albums of bad songs, it’d be easier …

[Laughs] Thank you. It’s not a bad problem to have, then.

Talking about the songwriting – what was the first song you ever wrote and what age were you, do you remember?

Yes – they were pretty bad [laughs]. We had songwriting school in Grafton, where we grew up. They’d have these creative weeks the town would put on and you could do anything. People went to singing or whatever and I went to a songwriting workshop. I think I was twelve and I’m pretty sure [the song] was called ‘Wish’ – pretty appropriate for a twelve-year-old to write a song called ‘Wish’. It was pretty terrible but you’ve got to start somewhere.

And by that stage Brooke was probably writing already.

Brooke’s five years older than me. She was definitely leaps and bounds ahead of me at that stage, and that’s probably why I thought mine was so bad.

When did you start writing the songs for this album?

We started writing probably a year after the last album and then we really kicked into gear at the start of last year. We had a bit of a break. We’d do a bit of writing then we’d get busy – Mollie had a baby [laughs]. And then when Ned was a few months old we started again. She’d bring him along to songwriting sessions and we started doing it consistently from that moment, writing a lot and getting together. And even just having discussions about what’s been going on the last few years – what’s the stories that have been happening in our lives – and try to put it together.

Given that Brooke is your older sister, is she more of a boss in the songwriting sessions or is it more egalitarian than that?

Oh, she can be a little bit [laughs] but not in a bad way. Being sisters, we can shut each other down pretty easily. But she generally does have some great ideas or has something in mind that we can really go off. She’s a good bossypants.

I’m curious about the technical details – when you write a song, do you try to sing it at that stage, or do you try to work out bits and pieces on guitar then you put the harmonies together later?

We write it then we put it down as a demo and write a few harmonies on it, but when we’re in the studio, that’s when we really focus on the harmonies and if there are different parts. When we’re doing the song it’s more about the song and the lyrics. It’s all such a different process – every stage of making a record, which is great. Because there’s never a dull moment.

The harmonies sound effortless but I would imagine they are not.

To be honest, it probably is the easiest part for us. We’re lucky in that sense – we’ve been harmonising since we were little girls. But there’s obviously songs where they are a bit harder and it pushes us a bit more because it’s not as straightforward and we have to focus a bit more and get into the theory of music. But it’s very rare. We are lucky. There’s just something very natural about sibling harmonies and it’s definitely the fun side for us.

In country music that relationship with the audience is so important – people will turn up show after show, year after year to see you. When you’re choosing songs for an album do you think about that audience and what they might expect, or is it better to concentrate on the work itself and not worry too much about that?

It definitely comes into play. We do have more songs [than we need] and we put certain songs on the album because we know that the audience will love that song. And there are songs we don’t put on because we say, ‘You know what? I don’t think this is us at the end of the day – this isn’t the McClymonts. It’s a great song but it’s not suited to what we’re about at the moment or our audience.’ So, yes, they play a huge part in it because they are the ones who come out year to year and we want them to love our music. We obviously want to mix up and try to change things a bit but you hope you’ve grown together the last ten years and you know each other. They know our sound and we know them and what they want to hear, and we can continue doing it together and going on this journey together, and pushing each other a little bit. Seeing how far we can go with the music and changing it up a bit. And I think they can see our growth in the music, as well – where we’ve come in the last ten years.

All the great pillars of your sound were there from the start but certainly there’s been progression, and that’s fantastic for any fan, to have that, because obviously you don’t want to buy the same album over and over again.

No, and I think you’re always going to get the McClymonts sound with the harmonies because of our voices. We just hope we’ve grown musically and that our songs have grown and they sound a little bit different. I think the lyric content is a lot stronger because we’re able to get more personal these days, so I think in that sense the songs are a lot stronger.

And one of the great things about your shows is that I’ve seen people there who are eight and I’ve also seen people who are eighty.

I know! And I think that’s because country music is really generational and it’s passed down. So that eight-year-old, their mum’s there and their mum was brought up with country music playing. It’s kind of scary when you have that ten-year-old who says, ‘I have a photo of my first concert – I was just a baby’, and their parents have brought them to every show since and it’s kind of wild. That sometimes makes it hard, because we think, We are playing to every generation, we’ve got to make it acceptable to everyone [laughs]. So we have to be appropriate for an eight-year-old but then still be yourself. It is kind of crazy when we do look out in the crowd and see such a mix. So many women come along to our show dragging their boyfriends. I think the girls seem to relate to our music a lot, which is so nice to see.

One last question: as you look at this tour coming up and you have to keep yourselves in good health, do you have any tips or tricks for your voice to make sure it doesn’t wear out?

Oh yes, as hard as it is, sometimes I just have to not talk. Literally. It gets to that point where I think, I need to shut up. I talk too much. Sing too much. Much as our husbands love it – but I think it’s more annoying because you’re writing notes instead of talking. But lots of rest. Now that the holidays are over I should probably get a bit healthy – but that starts today, right? [laughs]

The Endless tour starts in Sydney on Friday 3 February. For all other dates, visit www.themcclymonts.net.au

Endless is out now through ABC Music/Universal.

Ann Vriend returns to Australia for February/March tour

Canadian artist Ann Vriend has a lot of fans in Australia, and she's going to help them ease out of summer by playing a string of dates in a variety of locations, accompanied by the Rooster Davis Group. Just for the tour Ann will release an EP just for Australian audiences. Entitled Anybody's Different, fans will be able to buy it at her shows - dates appear after the interview - and in the meantime enjoy the single 'Real Love'.

How was your 2016?

It’s been quite a year, I think, for a lot of people – politically and we’ve lost a lot of great artists. Economically a lot of people aren’t doing as well as they had hoped and I’m definitely in that camp. For me it’s been a really busy year touring, too, so I am really behind on things like … well, everything: paperwork and organising and my inbox is terribly unattended to.

I’m sure people who email you understand that you’re often on the road and it can be hard to keep track of things like email.

Yes, but then you get off the road. And there’s such a large amount of things when you’re an independent artist and wearing a lot of hats, doing all the business side as well as the music side. You’re not trying to be rude and ignore people, but you only have twenty-four hours in the day [laughs]. You hope people understand. There’s some people I’ve heard who say, ‘I’ve got everything cleared in my inbox’ – Oh, are you serious? [Laughs] Who can do that?

I think those people have assistants they can delegate to. When you’re an independent artist you are the delegator and the delegatee.

A lot of them aren’t yes/no answers, like: ‘What’s your marketing strategy for the next five years?’ and you can’t say, ‘No’ or ‘Yes’. That’s an involved thing to answer. Or somebody says, ‘Can you give me career advice?’ Maybe, I don’t know. The things that are more involved you tend to put off because it takes a lot of thought.

It is the challenge of the two halves of what you do: your creative work, which includes playing live, and then the business side which is that more administrative thing. There’s quite a different rhythm to that, so throughout the year it probably feels a bit like you’re chopping and changing.

That’s really one of the hardest things, just wearing these different hats and being in a totally different head space doing creative stuff to doing emails that are, like, ‘What about May 16, 2018?’ and then they ask you for your tech rider. Also: ‘What’s the new title for your EP?’ That’s exactly what I’m dealing with today when I get off the phone – I have to decide on my next EP title and then book dates to go to Europe. So you’re always mixing up, but it’s what everybody has to do. I think back in the ages when there was a lot more money in music and major labels were the only way you could have the music business work, there managers and record labels did all that stuff for the artists and the artists were just purely artists. But since the internet, that has changed everything [laughs].

I’m interested in how those changes affect creative work – creative output. Part of the reason for having that structure of the business is so you can concentrate on your creative work, because it is such a different thing to do. Perhaps we’re yet to see the effects of that and maybe we won’t for a while, but I wonder if songs get shorter and albums cease to exist simply because artists won’t have time to do that many songs at once and instead they’ll just release singles.

The way people are consuming music these days – which is largely on streaming sites like Spotify, or making their own playlists on iTunes – having an album, like a group of songs presented together, seems less and less of a thing. For instance, my record label are deciding to release a single at a time rather than a whole album, not because I don’t have enough songs but because they want one song at a time to have attention and push. Because otherwise what was happening was that you’d have this album of twelve songs and they all cost an equal amount of money to record and then only one or two were the singles that were on the radio or that people would hear or that would get marketed. So you’d have these other ones that almost got forgotten and then ignored and people who were investing in them, like a record label, weren’t really getting a return on investment. That’s the business model they’re working with. But I think you’re right in that what’s happening with artists now, because they have to do so much more than before, is that, yes, there is a danger of the music suffering, either because their output isn’t as much creatively because they’re doing all this business stuff or the quality suffers, unfortunately, and not because anybody wants it to but because you only have so much energy and head space and time to work on your time and practise every day and write every day and get better.

It’s the head space and also that mental quietness out of which songs or stories can come. You need those pauses in your life to be able to do that.

Exactly. And time. As you’d know, as a writer too, you can’t say exactly how much time it’s going to take you to write something. You start it and then you might erase a lot of what you’ve written and start over, or have to come back to it and redo parts because your editor said. So when people say, ‘Can you do this by tomorrow?’ well, maybe or maybe not. It depends, when I sit down, what comes out. I can’t tell you yet.

You mentioned your EP – and that’s scheduled for release in 2017, so I imagine you’ll bring some copies with you when you come to Australia?

Technically we’re just going to get them manufactured in Australia, not wanting to bring five suitcases [laughs]. But, yes, I’m going to have that with me. I think it’s officially going to be released on January 20 in Australia and that day a new single will be coming out, and that one’s called ‘Real Love’. And two of the singles are out on the internet because it’s been released in Canada already. So that will be the third single from it but the first one that’s really being pushed in Australia.

The last time I spoke to you, you were having your album pressed in vinyl. How did that work out? Would you do vinyl again?

Definitely. It’s a ton of work, getting all the artwork organised because it’s obviously a different size than a CD. But I’m a huge vinyl lover myself – I have a big record collection and really get off on the whole vinyl thing, love going to second-hand stores and finding treasures. What’s fun about is that there’s this resurgence in vinyl going on right now. People are going back to wanting the tactile thing and having the artwork in front of them that’s not this tiny little CD thing or zero artwork where it’s digital. We always include a download card with the vinyl so people can have the best of both worlds. So it’s really fun, although it’s still a hassle because a box of vinyl is heavy – but it’s worth it. It’s a fun thing to have and it’s more lasting, in a way.

The last time you came to Australia, I don’t remember that you had the Rooster Davis Group with you – is that right?

Yes.

And there’s no guitar or bass – it’s two keyboards and drums. So in terms of transporting yourselves around, does it get a bit bulky?

Yeah, it’s quite annoying – I’m not gonna lie [laughs]. There’s many days when I wish, Oh, couldn’t I just play the piccolo or just something small like a spoon? But it’s hard to sing while playing piccolo, for one thing. When I musically put things together what I was doing I wasn’t smart enough to think about the logistics of travel. The Rooster Davis Group itself is a band unto themselves as well, and I perform in it. So when they’re doing their music, which is New Orleans blues and boogie and funk, I am either a backing singer or sometimes I sing lead, but just not my own music. And then I hire that band to be my backing band to do my original music. So on this tour we’re doing some Rooster Davis shows and some Ann Vriend shows, so that’s part of the reason that I might bring them along, so we can do these two things on the same tour.

So when you do the blues festival in Goulburn, is that you as you or is that them?

Well, in that case it’s going to be a combo [laughs] – just to make things more confusing. We’ll do a couple of my songs and then a couple of theirs and sort of change it up back and forth between who’s band leader, which keeps things interesting. The music is definitely markedly different, so people will notice the difference, but it belongs in the same lineage of being part of the R&B tradition. One is older music and mine is more modern soul.

Is there a certain freedom for you when you’re a member of the Rooster Davis band and the spotlight is not on the way it is when it’s you? I’d think it’s a nice balance for you, to be able to do that.

Totally. There’s way less pressure as a support musician rather than [when] it’s my band and the focus is on me and I’m the bandleader. It is really nice. In a way I have a lot more fun doing that because there’s less pressure on me and it’s really fun music – it’s impossible to not have fun in that genre. But it is a really nice contrast. I really enjoy being able to have those two hats to wear musically.

And it’s a paradox: the pressure is on you when you’re the bandleader and it’s your material but that’s what you work for, to have that career, but at the same time it’s hard and you’re responsible for other people. So it’s good to have a break.

Exactly. If I didn’t want it, there’s no one holding a gun to my head saying, ‘You have to have it’. I do want it and it’s really rewarding, but it takes my energy when it’s your music and it’s close to your heart and being pretty vulnerable.

You’re coming out in February and March to play a range of towns and venues – how far ahead have you planned this tour?

I’m lucky in that I didn’t have to book this one myself. The woman in charge of the company who booked it did a great job. She’d never booked a tour before – her background is in merch sales – but she did a really great job. We had another guy lined up but he got really sick, unfortunately, so she had to take the reins quickly.

There’s some great clubs there and also some good towns to visit in warmer weather, like Byron Bay.

I’m looking forward to it. I used to have to do all that [booking] myself when I was in Australia and, as you can imagine, it’s a ton of work and a lot of emails and phone calls, and sometimes by the time you’re on the tour you just want to crawl into bed because you’ve been married to your laptop and phone for so long. It’s so nice to have a team there now and people who are good at what they do. I’m very lucky.

Thursday 9th February 2017

Brass Monkey, CRONULLA NSW

Friday 10th February 2017

Australian Blues Music Festival, GOULBURN NSW

Saturday 11th February 2017

Australian Blues Music Festival, GOULBURN NSW

Sunday 12th February 2017

Smiths Alternative, CANBERRA ACT

Friday 17th February 2017

Paris Cat, MELBOURNE VIC

Friday 24th February 2017

The Heritage Hotel, BULLI NSW

Saturday 25th February 2017

Venue 505, SYDNEY NSW

Thursday 2nd March 2017

Lizottes, NEWCASTLE NSW

Friday 3rd March 2017

Flow Bar, OLD BAR NSW

Saturday 4th March 2017

63 First Ave, SAWTELL NSW

Friday 10th March 2017

Nightquarter, GOLD COAST QLD

Saturday 11th March 2017

Brisbane Jazz Club, BRISBANE QLD

Sunday 12th March 2017

The Rails, BYRON BAY NSW

For more information, please visit www.annvriend.com

Lee Kernaghan: Australia Day show in Tamworth

The Tamworth Country Music Festival almost always includes Australia Day, 26 January, and it’s arguable that there’s no one more appropriate to headline an Australia Day show than Lee Kernaghan. No one can doubt that Lee loves his homeland and he finds ways to show it, whether it’s raising money to support farmers doing it tough or encouraging young Australian country music artists. At this year’s festival Lee is putting on a special Boys from the Bush 25th Anniversay Show at 8.15 p.m on the 26th, at the TRECC. I chatted to Lee towards the end of 2016 to find out what he has planned.

What does Tamworth mean to you, both the town and the festival?

It’s an amazing town because it gave birth to my music career. I first turned up in Tamworth in 1978, at the CCMA Talent Quest. I won best new artist under 14 years of age. And through the years I was lucky enough to win the Star Maker and pick up my very first Golden Guitar at the Country Music Awards in January 1993. So I really owe that town a whole heap.

When you were in that under-14 competition, was that something you’d always wanted to do – you were a really little kid working up to it – or did you just decide to do it at the time?

I think country music has been in my blood, part of my DNA. I was born with it. It had always been my dream to go to Tamworth and these days I get there and get to play some of the great venues in town, and it really has given birth to careers of people like Keith Urban, James Blundell, Kasey Chambers, Troy Cassar-Daley, and we’re all really, truly grateful for what the town has done for us.

Given that you play in so many different places – and you play so much, full stop – do you have a special feeling about playing in Tamworth or is the same sort of show as elsewhere?

It’s always extra special and it’s because of those people who travel from all around Australia to be there, to share in the music. Or they might be there to try to break into the music industry – it might be busking down there on Peel Street or entering one of the talent quests, like Star Maker. There’s just so much excitement around the town. You get down there on Peel Street during the country music festival and the atmosphere is electric.

Mind you, I’d think it’s hard for you to walk down Peel Street without it taking about five hours to get from one end to the next.

Well, I don’t mind because I made my very first film clip in Peel Street, for ‘Boys from the Bush’, and I’m going back there in January and I’m going to make another film clip because it’s the 25^th anniversary of The Outback Club [album]. We’ve also got a big concert on at the TRECC on Australia Day to launch the 25^th anniversary tour.

The Australia Day slot is a pretty special one to have at the festival and this year you have it. Given that it’s 25^th anniversary, and it’s that special day, what’s going to be different about this show?

It’s going to be different because a meeting has been called of the Outback Club and they are coming in from all over the place for this one. We’re going to be playing a lot of hits, of course, but I’m also going to be playing a lot of brand new songs that I’ve been working on in the studio with some of my heroes and mates and legends in Australian music, and we’re going to start unleashing some material on that crowd on Australia Day.

Are the Wolfe Brothers going to be with you?

I can’t confirm or deny [laughs]. I’m under strict instructions, I’ve got to keep the lid on all of that.

Except I did see on your Twitter feed that Nick Wolfe was in the studio with you …

That’s right. There’s leaks everywhere [laughs]. I love those boys and I love working with them and playing live is an awesome experience.

You’re very good complementary acts because you have incredible work ethics and you really understand audience and communicating with audience.

I remember seeing the Wolfe Brothers for the first time on Australia’s Got Talent and they just blew me away. A couple of months after seeing them on TV I ended up in a rehearsal studio with the boys, having a bit of a jam session. At that time they all had day jobs and I said, ‘Fellas, how would you feel about giving up those day jobs and coming out on tour with me?’ They jumped at the opportunity and we hit the road.

And, of course, they haven’t looked back and you roll on and get bigger and bigger as the years go on. It’s been a long time – you were there as a teenager, it’s been 25 years since ‘Boys from the Bush’, and this is a job that’s quite demanding. It’s physically demanding; it can be quite emotionally and creatively demanding. What motivates you to continue every day and every year?

The after-show parties [laughs]. I was reminiscing about the early days, back in 1992. I was on tour with James Blundell, in his band and I was his opening artist. Out there on that tour, every day would be a new town and another motel room and another big party. And we partied like there was no tomorrow – and the reason why we did that was that we thought, This is too good to be true – this can’t last [laughs]. But it did and it’s been 25 years now.

I don’t for a second believe that you indulge in too much partying because you’d have to be fit to keep up your pace.

Oh yeah, you gotta be in training, mate [laughs]. Don’t want to come into this undertrained. You’ve got to turn up, shut up and get into it.

Have you found that the shape of your audience has changed? Are they growing up with you, or older with you, as the case may be? Or do you see a lot of younger people coming into your shows?

It’s really been amazing me throughout the last two and a half decades how the audience keeps regenerating. There’s a lot of kids who get into it and I think that’s probably why ‘Boys from the Bush’ and The Outback Club impacted the way it did, because it was about a younger generation of Australians living and working on the land. And they’re still out there today and still coming along to the shows but so are their mums and dads and their grandparents. It’s a great privilege to play to all these people and I absolutely don’t think of them as fans at all, they seem to me to be more like my extended family.

I really believe that they feel that in return for you. The country music audience is accepting of a whole lot of different and new artists but I think their requirement is authenticity and connection, and for people to turn up for you year after year they really feel that connection strongly.

That’s so true, Sophie. It comes down to being real and I think that [in] the country music fraternity there’s a great level of camaraderie between the artists and, of course, their fans. It’s a great relationship. Country music, the way I see it, it’s the music of our people, our country, our way of life. It’s all about the things that make us tick, and that’s what makes it real for me.

I’m sure there are people who talk to you who might have a song idea or something they’d like you to write about, do you feel that the stories or, perhaps, concerns of your audience are changing?

With songs, you just never know where the next one’s going to come from. Often it’s in a chance meeting, a turn of phrase, rolling into a country town for the first time. It’s hard to really pin it down, where they come from. But I know that a song is only ever as strong as the idea behind it. And I think great songs are things you don’t actually manufacture in a songwriting workshop – it’s more about getting out there and living life, experiencing it first hand and talking to people, and I know that’s where most of my material comes from.

It’s probably impossible for you to pick a favourite song – but do you have one, or do you have a handful of favourites?

Songs, when you record them and you put them out on a record it’s like giving birth to a child and it’s hard to pick favourites amongst your own kids [laughs]. But ‘Boys from the Bush’ was the one that kicked down the doors and paved the way for me, so it’s a song I’ve sung thousands of times and never ever once got sick of performing it.

As an audience member I’ve often wondered how artists play the same songs over and over again, but I guess the crowd is new each time and the venue’s new, and you just never know who you’re singing that song for on that particular night.

That’s true. You share the song with the country, with the people – it’s ours. They all mean different things to different people. I know that there are certain songs that I was listening to when I was falling in love for the first time or breaking up with a girl, rolling on a mission on the Newell Highway in a 1978 Ford Cortina with a broken windscreen and I know I was listening to Hank Williams, Jr on my Craig stereo system. I had a broken heart and a broken windscreen. I think Trisha Yearwood did it best when she recorded that beautiful track ‘The Song Remembers When’.

Is there a venue or a town you haven’t played in yet that you would really like to?

Yes – Birdsville. I’ve played up in Birdsville [laughs] but I haven’t physically done a gig there. In July I’m going to be the Big Red Bash and it’s the most remote music festival in Australia and I’m going to joined by James Blundell, Troy Cassar-Daley, the McClymonts and a bunch of legends for this incredible event.

Finally: you’re well known for your charity work and supporting a lot of different causes. Is there anything you’re working with at the moment that you’d like to mention?

I’m a bit supporter of the McGrath Foundation, inspired by the Burrumbuttock Hay Runners – they did a terrific job getting feed to stock in drought-stricken Queensland. I’ve just returned from Western Queensland where it’s green, really green out there – it’s unusual to see it. There’s a lot more optimism there now than what there was a year ago. Probably the highlight of my career has been the Toyota Pass the Hat Around Australia concerts because every dollar that was raised in the town stayed in the town. No costs came out of it – it was all for the towns, and that’s how a couple of million dollars was raised for community causes around Australia and that’s something that’s still very close to my heart, and I think most people in Australia – whether you’re in the music industry or not – the Australian way is to look out for a mate who’s doing it tough. Whether it’s a drought, flood or a bushfire or an important community cause, when things are tough in Australia, Australians pass the hat around and they do look after their mates.

Lee Kernaghan plays the TRECC on 26 January as part of the 2017 Tamworth Country Music Festival. Tickets here.

Lee’s 25^th anniversary album will be released in March, with a tour to follow. Details at www.leekernaghan.com

The Wolfe Brothers and Shannon Noll join forces in Tamworth

The hardest-working band in Australian country music has to be the Wolfe Brothers, but they still found time to invite Shannon Noll to join them for a special show at the 2017 Tamworth Country Music Festival on 25 January at Blaze Showroom in West Tamworth League Club. Towards the end of 2016 I caught up with Wolfes guitarist Brodie Rainbird to ask about the gig, the band's massive year and what lies ahead.

Your This Crazy Life tour – how did it go?

It was so good. For all intents and purposes it was a complete success. The boys and I were so happy with that. We were really nervous about going out on such a big tour and it was all on us, money wise and profile wise and advertising. All this big, proper adult stuff – it was all on us, there was no one else to blame if no one showed up. If it didn’t work we were up the creek. It was a great success. All the other artists brought something that none of the others could bring to that kind of show. It was fast paced. The punters loved it. It was constantly changing. People didn’t want to leave to go to the bar and get a drink because they weren’t sure what they were going to miss. It was awesome. Could not be happier.

And maybe the only thing you could have done differently was have more dates.

At the end of it we all felt a bit sad, like, ‘Why are we stopping again?’ But it definitely feels like we could have toured for another six months with that show. I know it was only a fairly short tour. But, as I said, the whole thing was a bit of a gamble and we didn’t actually know it would go that well. Maybe we can do it again [in 2017].

As it was sort of a test of concept and it’s worked, you could roll it out – the only thing is whether you have enough time to do a longer tour given all your commitments.

Yes. It’s just a case of ‘do you want to be on two tours at once?’ because we’re going to be touring with Lee Kernaghan and can you do both at the same time? I reckon we could. Another feather in the cap.

Well, if any band can, you guys can.

[Laughs] Bring it on – bring it on, I say.

Isn’t that your band motto?

Something like that, yes. I think the official motto is ‘you gotta do gigs’. So if we’ve gotta do gigs, we’ve gotta do it.

I think the experience shows in the way you play because your shows are always entertaining. And speaking of entertainment, I’m here to talk to you about your 25^th of January show with Shannon Noll at the Tamworth Country Music Festival. So this seems like a marriage made in musical heaven – how did it come about?

It really is. It’s surprising that it’s taken us this long to do a gig with Shannon, because we love him. We’re all country boys; we all grew up in a similar way, on a farm. We all love our old Aussie rock and Shannon is now taking a more country approach to how it does things, and that’s really cool. The universe just brought us together one night after a gig that we’d both headlined at, and it’s taken us this long to find some spare time to actually be able to put on a gig with him – and where better to do it than Tamworth on Australia Day Eve.

How are you going to divvy up your time – are you guys playing first? Is he? Are you sharing some songs? How’s it going to work?

I don’t know yet! Being that it’s not a tour, it’s just a one-off gig, I think we’ll just go with the flow. We’ll just have some fun. We’re going to obviously share some time on stage – towards the end will probably be everyone on board, get everyone out on the stage and just really rock it out.

I was just thinking about what you said about the mini-tour and maybe trying something in 2017 … I’m foreseeing perhaps Shannon joining your line-up next time.

Maybe. There might have already been some talk. Nothing confirmed but it’s a cool idea and we’ll wait and see what happens.

As you said, that tour was all on you and organising it was moving into entrepreneurial behaviour, in a way – not that you guys haven’t always been business focused and that comes across in how professional you are, but taking those sorts of risks is a way to move your career forward and it’s exciting when it works but it is always nerve wracking. It looks like the impetus is there to keep going, though.

Yes – and people see the success more than they see the failure, because we had to fail so many times to get that success. We tried quite a few things in the past that hadn’t worked and we were due for some good luck, you know. We were due for a taste of success and we got it, and we’re so grateful.

There’s a lot of clichés about learning from failure but I would think in the case of your band, you might have learned from the failures but it seems like they give you a whole lot of motivation to keep working. What I find interesting about the Wolfe Brothers is that success seems to be a by-product of your willingness to work really hard.

Well, this way of life is all we’ve ever wanted to know. When we first got together in high school, in the very early days, this was all we ever talked about doing. We dreamed about putting arena shows on and how we would open them and the big curtain would drop and we would have lights going on over our heads, all this sort of stuff. So we just keep our eye on the prize, enjoy the success when it comes and when the failure comes it’s just gigs – that’s how life is, you just have to do it.

I think that is a very good motto for any kind of work. But back to Tamworth: apart from that show with Shannon I would think you aren’t doing another show at the festival, but is there anything else you’re looking forward to?

Just looking forward to enjoying the festival because we missed it last year – we were in Nashville writing and recording. Really looking forward to getting back. We do a lot of media stuff – radio interviews all day every day, they’re always cool fun. I wouldn’t mind getting out and seeing a few gigs, actually. Our festivals are usually so busy we don’t get the chance to enjoy them but I’ve decided to put my foot down and I’m going to see a gig. It’s going to happen.

What a revolutionary idea – seeing music at a music festival!

[Laughs] It’s usually the last thing we get to do.

And it’s not just seeing the music – it’s seeing the people you know. You can catch up with them fleetingly at a radio station but if you get to go to the gigs you can probably spend a bit more time.

Exactly. And it would just be nice to be out there supporting some other artists.

As we come towards the end of 2016 – and leaving the This Crazy Life tour aside – what have been your other highlights?

Our trip to Nashville was pretty great. We did some low-level touring over there. We did county fairs and we travelled all up the way up the Midwest. We did ten-hour drives a day in our old Chev that we bought. That’s probably a trip I’ll never forget. We worked really hard there; we met some great people. We sort of tested the waters to see if what we do would translate over there. It does, and people really enjoyed the shows and they love our accent. All they wanted to do was keep asking us about Keith Urban, for some reason.

Because Australia’s so small you must all know each other.

Yeah, yeah, exactly – we must have grown up next to him, right? He plays music. You talk the same. You must be the same person … But it’s funny – you tell people over there that you’re from this place called Tasmania and they’ve got no idea where that is. It sounds exotic – ‘oh my god, your accents’. So that was really cool; it was a great trip. We did a bunch of writing as well so we’re demoing up some songs for maybe the next album. That was a huge thing. The tour – god, what else happened this year? So much stuff. The ARIAs were a huge thing to be a part of [the Wolfe Brothers were nominated for best country album]. I don’t think you can go to an ARIA award ceremony without witnessing Australian music history, which we got to with Crowded House being inducted, so that was awesome. Met Roy and HG – that was really nice. They’re a good pair of guys. It’s been such a big year. We brought the album out. Hopefully we do some new singles soon from that, but we brought out the best album we’ve ever written and recorded, and hopefully the next one I can say the same thing as well. But it’s been a massive year – I hadn’t realised until I sat down and talked to you, how big it’s been.

And if you think about the fact that there are only fifty-two weeks in a year – the amount of stuff you guys have fit in, if you look at it like that …

Only fifty-two – yeah, that’s crazy. And we haven’t been home. This is the longest we’ve been home all year.

After such a busy year, are there any lowlights?

One low point, which was [when we were] over in Nashville – we got halfway through Kentucky and our car broke down on the side of the road. That was bad. That was really bad. The alternator broke. We had no electricity in the car. Couldn’t even push-start it because the battery was dead flat. And it was freezing cold outside and there were trucks rushing past the freeway. We had no lights. They didn’t even know we were there. So it was kind of scary. But we got through that – we managed to get a tow truck out. But that’s the only one that comes to mind, it’s just all been hard work and good times.

Hopefully you didn’t miss a gig because your car broke down?

No, we didn’t miss a gig, that was the thing. We managed to get there at about five a.m. We got to the hotel, checked in, went to bed, got up a couple of hours later and went to do the gig. That was an adventure. If I think of all the hours we spent on the road in the last few years, that’s the only time that’s ever happened – and it had to happen in a foreign country.

That’s rock ’n’ roll, I guess.

That’s rock ’n’ roll. That’s gigs. That’s life. That’s how it is – wouldn’t have it any other way.

Having that kind of experience in the United States, does that change your music in a way – you seeing that there’s a completely different sector to your audience now than the one you’ve had in Australia, so do you start to think differently about how you communicate to the audience and what sort of music you might play for them?

Absolutely. Stuff like that, it’s hard not to be influenced by it. Every corner we take, we learn something, and being in the US was a big learning curve too. Some things had to be approached a little differently – we had to learn to talk a bit slower because the accent, they think we’re from England and they find us a bit hard to understand. Australians are very lazy in the way we talk and the boys and I are probably the worst in the world at it [ed. note – Brodie actually speaks very clearly!]. So we had to learn to fit in a bit better. We watched a few Keith Urban interviews and realised that that’s what he was doing as well. He spoke very slowly and clearly so that people would understand what he was saying. Just little things like that you pick up along the way. We changed the way we did the gigs and played some different songs we probably wouldn’t normally get to play in Australia because we don’t have the big radio airplay for country in Australia. But over there one of the biggest things is country radio – it’s all over the [US].

As you head into 2017, you’re obviously kicking it off with a bang in Tamworth. Lee, of course, has you on the road again. And you mentioned that you wrote some new songs, possibly for a new album, so that’s on the cards for 2017?

Definitely on the cards. I think we will go back to Nashville to write and record again because it went so well last time. We know it works and we know when we put the pressure on we can really write some cool stuff and get it done. And we’ve just a week in the studio with Lee, cutting his new album too.

[Laughs] Again, I remind you, Brodie: fifty-two weeks in this year.

[Laughs] Well, that was one of them in Sydney with Lee. And that was so cool – it was something we never, ever thought we’d get to do. Well, we never thought we’d be Lee Kernaghan’s band but we didn’t think we would get a studio guernsey and then he said, ‘I want to change things up a bit, I want to get you guys in the studio and I want your sound on my record’, and we went, ‘Yes, you can have that.’

He would be really unlikely to find anyone more experienced – you’ve been playing with him so consistently – so it makes sense.

Yes, and Kerno’s always had a formula that’s always worked for him, and to step outside that formula and take a risk on us again, because he’s obviously already done it [with touring], was such an honour. We had Garth Porter in there, who’s produced almost every single Kernaghan album and it was a bit of a thing for him, too. I think he realised after the first day that this was not going to be your typical album. We did things completely differently. Everyone was sitting there getting a feel for it and how it was going to work, and it was awesome, there were no hassles at all. Everyone was really enjoying the change in the studio, the different mindset. It was really cool.

The Wolfe Brothers' latest album is This Crazy Life. 

Catch them during TCMF 2017 at Blazes on 25 January - buy tickets here: www.wtlc.com.au

www.thewolfebrothers.com