Sunburnt Country Music

Short version: This is an interview with Sarah Sands from Perth six-piece The Stumblers. Watch/listen especially if you want to feel inspired to live a full creative life and find opportunities for joy. The band’s latest single is ‘Rhyolite’. Long version: The Stumblers are a six-piece band from Perth, WA, with members Sarah Sands (vocals, banjo, guitar, dobro), Dan Durack (vocals, guitar, mandoli...

Kylie Jane has been working as a professional musician for several years – indeed, she had a short stint doing something else (as she reveals in this new interview) but it was clear she was meant to be a singer, and ever since then she’s had a busy roster of gigs and functions. She started singing as a child – her father’s cousin had a karaoke business, so there were several opportunities for her...

The first time Tom Mac was a guest on the Sunburnt Country Music podcast, we had a long chat – so long that it grew gradually darker in his car (he’d pulled over in order to do the interview) to the point where he was barely visible! This time around he was indoors, with a light, and we had another long chat, because he has stories to tell. The reason for the interview was his latest single, ‘Brav...

If you’ve been to see an Australian country music artist play at any time in the past few years, the chances are good that you’ve seen Tameka playing in the band. A highly accomplished and in-demand guitarist, she has performed alongside Ashleigh Dallas, Adam Harvey, Andrew Swift, Catherine Britt, Loren Ryan and Tori Darke, amongst others. Tameka has now released her own music, the country-pop sin...

When Central Queensland contemporary country artist Trent Richardson appeared in Australian Idol two and a half years ago, not only had he never performed for an audience before – he thought he was a long way from being a father, which is something he very much wanted. His life changed fairly quickly: he reached the final six of Idol , which gained him fans and propelled his burgeoning career in c...

Since they first emerged on the Australian country music scene seven albums and fifteen Golden Guitars ago, Tasmanian country-rock outfit The Wolfe Brothers have won fans and admiration with their hard-work ethic backed up by impressive live performances, professionalism and songs that take in good times and bad, sentimentality and straightforwardness. The Wolfe Brothers are Nick and Tom Wolfe, an...

There are pathways for Australian country music artists of all ages to develop their talents and skills, and that includes those who are young enough to still be in school. The CMAA Junior Academy of Country Music is for artists under 18 years of age – and NSW Central Coast singer-songwriter Lucy Beveridge has been a student there four times, in both songwriting and instrumental strands. She’s als...

NB: Saralyn’s sound was softer on the recording than it sounded when we spoke, so there are subtitles on this full-length interview. If you'd rather watch this with subtitles, you can find the full interview on YouTube . From the time she started releasing songs in 2023, it was clear  Saralyn  was an artist with a distinctive sound and point of view, and that she had a lineage in country...

[Mild language warning] In this new interview, Toowoomba-raised country-blues artist  Sue Ray  tells me that, ‘like a bad country song’, she moved back to the Queensland city to have her children. But it’s also where she formed as an artist, as a member of the Toowoomba Country Music Club along with Duncan Toombs and Lyn Bowtell, and as the child of a rock ’n’ roll father (about whom she...

There is many a songwriter in this fair land who will have either written a song with  Jen Mize  or been mentored by her in their songwriting. Mize has been a regular mentor and teacher at Song Muster and the DAG Sheep Station, amongst other places, and the number of times her name comes up is a clear indicator of how wonderful a collaborator she must be.  Collaboration is also at t...

Early in my interview with  Chris Cobb , who has just released his debut album,  More Questions than Answers , he speaks about his childhood in Bulolo in Papua New Guinea.  ‘Music was very much a part of me,’ he says, then he went on to talk about how there was a local bluegrass scene, and a band in which most players had instruments with two strings only.  ‘I got lost in it,’...

‘Saturday night’s the gooseneck party – this is the Sunday after.’ That’s how award-winning country music artist  Wade Forster  described his new album,  The Aftermath , to me in this interview. The album comes fairly hot on the heels of his last,  Gooseneck Party , hence his explanation, and he wrote them close together too, recording  The Aftermath  earlier this yea...

From the start of the enterprise that became Sunburnt Country Music, I was a fan of The McClymonts, the band Brooke McClymont formed with her sisters, Sam and Molly. Their country-pop songs were always clever and fun and musically unforgettable, due to their way with a melody and their harmonies. I saw them play live as often as I could. Thus, when Brooke released an album with her husband, Adam E...

Victorian  Andrew Swift  has released four ARIA chart-topping albums and won three Golden Guitars, in amongst touring regularly – although later it’s been a lighter tour schedule than usual, as he’s now the proud dad of Valentine. Swift has built his fan base with both releases and touring, and the temptation for any artist in that position must be to continue in the same vein with the s...

When I was researching this interview with Devonport, Tasmania-based country-rock artist  Zac Weeks , the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards – and his success at them – kept coming up, the point where I then went looking for information about where he was from in New Zealand. There was none, and therefore I decided that I’d start the interview by asking about this. It turns out that Weeks is very...

Victorian artist  Madeline Leman ’s latest country-folk album,  Ripen on the Vine , was recorded in 2023, and while Leman has released some singles since then, the album needed a little more time to emerge – for a very important reason. As she tells me early in this interview, her young son was unwell for several months, so the album’s release was necessarily delayed. Upon release it wen...

Georgia Scarlett  and  Joel Spence  are two Queensland country artists who have been releasing solo music independently for several years, and who have now found a creative partnership that has produced two singles which have taken them in a musical direction that is distinct from their own music while preserving their musical identities.  The first single is ‘The Wise Folks Sa...

Jessie Robins  grew up in Katherine in the Northern Territory as one of a set of triplets and the daughter of a helicopter mustering pilot, and – as she tells me in this new interview – she has been singing since she was a small child. Creativity also runs in the family as her sisters are also working in creative fields.  Robins now lives in Brisbane, where she performs regularly across...

Nashdale  are a Central Coast country duo – Kerryn Daniel on lead vocals and Brent Murphy on guitars and vocals – who have been playing together for over a decade and releasing original music since 2024. Their third single, ‘Boots Back On’, is out now, and an EP is in the works for the Tamworth Country Music Festival next year. While it seems like the pair came up with the perfect moniker for...

Art can emerge at any age, and that’s just as true of younger artists as those who find their creative voices later on. Sydney singer-songwriter  Hayden Phillis  is not yet twenty years old and has spent his teen years developing his skills as a musician, singer and songwriter, attending the CMAA Academy of Country Music three times – twice as a singer-songwriter, once in the instru...

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 playin...

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 wo...

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...

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...

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 thr...