Mack & Cook are Lizzie Mack and Murray Cook, two of the best credentialled musical artists in the land. As a duo they released their first single, 'Time Goes By', last year and their latest single is 'A Sign of the Times'.

The two have a long history together, most recently as the driving force behind the Soul Movers, now performing as Murray and the Movers. Mack & Cook came about partly as a practical solution – a way to play smaller stages and perform songs from their fifteen-year, four-album catalogue that were never quite right for a big festival line-up. 

‘Fifty or so songs have never really been played live because they're not bouncy and big and in your face enough for a big festival stage,’ says Mack. It also gives them room to be, as she puts it, a little more personal and a little more political.

'A Sign of the Times' is the latter sort of song. Written after a conversation early in the new year, the song grew from Mack & Cook's ongoing commitment to reconciliation and their frustration at the lack of progress since moments like the Apology and the Sorry Day bridge walks. The song is addressed, in part, to members of the Stolen Generation still alive today, an acknowledgement of what has been lost and an expression of hope for what could still be achieved. Lyrically it went through many revisions – Mack describes agonising over what to keep and what to cut – while the music came together quickly, continuing a recent pattern for the duo.

Both singles have circled the theme of time, something the two say was not entirely conscious but not entirely surprising either, given where they are in their lives and careers. The richness that comes with that experience is evident in their live shows, which are booked through to the end of the year. 

And a note: this interview was recorded in March, and some show are mentioned which are now in the past. That’s because I can’t always publish interviews quickly! But there are also future shows mentioned.

‘A Sign of the Times’ is out now.

Listen to Mack & Cook on Apple Music

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As it’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to bring you some news, some of these releases are from March. 

Melbourne duo The Smith & Western Jury have released their foot-stomper 'Rolling the Dice'. The song was inspired by a trip we took to Joshua Tree in California, where a trailhead sign warned: ‘Don’t die today’. 

Wagga Wagga artist Nathan Lamont is at the vanguard of country-pop in Australia and he’s released another infectious song in the form of ‘Into It’. Nathan is a great singer and his songs are guaranteed earworms.

Pete Denahy is one of Australia’s favourite country music artists. He got his start in Slim Dusty’s band and his solo releases are a combination of high-standard bluegrass as befits this legendary fiddle player, and songs that deploy observational humour in an unforgettable way. His latest release, ‘I Didn't Notice Her Hair’, is in the second category. It’s under two minutes long and that’s all it needs to both deliver the story and have you howling.

I recently interviewed young artist Mackenzie May about her EP, All the Little Things, which contains seven songs, all very well done. It is out now and the interview will be posted soon. 

Melbourne alt-country four-piece Elly McK & the Unbelievers are one of my favourite live bands. Their latest single, 'I Am the River', was written with the wonderful Lyn Bowtell. The band has live shows coming up and I do recommend you catch those.

Jade Gibson is an artist who releases country rock and country pop. She just performed at CMC Rocks and around the same time released the gutsy single ‘Smoke Me Out’, which is really compelling and memorable. 

Gig wise: if you’re in Sydney, famed country music bar Jolene’s in the city is having its fourth birthday party on Saturday 17 April with a line-up that includes Missy Lancaster and Charlie Finn. Details on their website and socials. There are tours coming up by Dylan Wright, Max Jackson, Brad Cox and Henry Wagons. Catherine Britt has shows coming up both as herself and as half of The Pleasures with Lachlan Bryan. 

As a reminder: live music is live magic, and we all need some of that in our lives. 

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Sara Storer has won 22 Golden Guitar Awards, amongst many other accolades. Last year she released her eighth studio album, the outstanding Worth Your Love. Shane Nicholson has won ARIA Awards and 18 Golden Guitars, and in addition to making his own wonderful albums, he produces others. Shane Howard is one of Australia’s most esteemed musical artists. He founded the band Goanna in 1977, became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2016 for his service to the performing arts, and is generally what might be referred to as a dead-set legend. A show featuring just one of these artists would be a treat, and I can attest to that from personal experience. However, the three of them are uniting for a show called For the Sake of the Song, which is my pick for musical event of the year because the riches it promises are untold. 

I’ve interviewed Shane N and Sara separately, several times, but this was my first time interviewing Shane H. It was an interesting challenge to prepare for this interview, because how often does one have the chance to talk to THREE extraordinary individuals at once? It was also an immense privilege. 

As Shane N reveals in this interview, the idea for the show was his, and Sara and Shane H were his first choices as collaborators. Despite Shane N being one of the best-connected musicians in the land, the band who will back all three artists in this show has members who have primarily worked with Shane H. 

The openness to change and collaboration, the sense of curiosity that is fundamental to all three artists, has always been there in their individual work and it is what drives this show. They want to find out what happens when they’re all in the same place at the same time. So do I. How could anyone not want to find that out? These three are geniuses and also fun and, as I know from seeing Shane N and Sara in their own shows, excellent live. 

I hope you enjoy watching or listening to this wonderful trio talking about their show, and I certainly hope you give yourself the treat of going to see it. The dates are below, and more may be added in time. 

SHOW DATES:

Tuesday 12th May - The Street Theatre - Canberra, ACT

Wednesday 13th May - The Concourse Lounge - Chatswood, NSW

Thursday 14th May - Memo Music Hall - St Kilda, VIC

Friday 15th May - Theatre Royal - Castlemaine, VIC

Saturday 16th May - Queenscliff Town Hall - Queenscliff, VIC

Sunday 17th May - Archies Creek Hall – Archies Creek, VIC

Tickets on sale now and available via:

https://www.laing-entertainment.com.au/current-tours-events

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Bud Rokesky is a singer-songwriter from Brisbane who released his first album, Outsider, in 2023, and if you’re a fan of that album you’ve probably never stopped listening to it, because there’s such richness in it. Then he embarked on a project in 2024 to release two singles a month, and released an album’s worth of material. Now he has a new album, Dusk, with all-new songs – none of them from the 2024 project – and he has given us another LP to fall in love with. 

In between those releases he’s been touring, both his own shows and playing supports for other artists. Rokesky on stage is light in his banter and commanding in his performance. And what really stops everyone in their tracks, on the recordings and in the performances, is his voice and this sense that it comes from the deepest well, but that the well isn’t a place of darkness so much as understanding of the vagaries of being human.

This is not music that you can put on in the background and expect to not be drawn into. That’s because Bud Rokesky is here to break your heart and hold a mirror up to your foibles, and challenge you to go with him as he charts the human experience. That’s an artist who rewards close listening, repeated listening, attention, and a willingness to go with him on the road to …

Well, where is that road going to? From my perspective it’s a road to meaning, in a spiritual sense. Rokesky is an artist who inspires that sort of response. If you listen to this album – really listen – you’ll find him on that road and you’ll discover that he’s made it easy for you to go with him. That voice and all it embodies will carry you along. You can find this in just one song, too. If you listen.

So he’s not background music. He’s foreground and will always be. An artist striving for excellence and finding it. If you want music that you don’t have to pay attention to, there’s plenty of that. Bud Rokesky is not making it. He’s making music for people who really love music, who are seekers in many senses of that word; people who love language and the subtleties of the singing voice and who want to be moved by art. It’s a calling; a vocation. We’re lucky that he’s sharing it with us, and I was lucky to have the chance to talk to him about it in this new interview. 

Dusk is out now through Warner Music Australia

Listen to Dusk on Apple Music

Listen to Dusk on Spotify

Bud Rokesky on YouTube

BUD ROKESKY AUSTRALIAN TOUR

Tickets are on sale now HERE

Friday 1 May - Bootleggers, Sydney NSW *

Saturday 2 May - Meatstock Fest, Sydney NSW

Sunday 3 May - Full Throttle Ranch, Buttai Valley NSW

Friday 8 May - Shotkickers, Melbourne VIC ^

Saturday 9 May - Shiraz Republic, Cornella VIC

Sunday 10 May - Royal Mail Hotel, Birregurra VIC

Friday 22 May - Junk Bar, Brisbane QLD #

* with supports from Lady Lyon & CJ Stranger

^ with supports from Rupert Bullard & Bad Traffic

# with supports from Hayley Marsten & Jarith Hughes

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Sunburnt Country Music began in earnest – under another title – in late 2011, but its roots were in 2003, when I was in a country music covers band and we played the Tamworth Country Music Festival. One of the songs in our set list – possibly the only Australian song, come to think of it – was ‘Lazy Bones’ by Beccy Cole. It first appeared on her second album, Wild at Heart, released in 2001. It would go on to become a staple of her live set with its extended coda containing a tale – based on truth – that would change each time. ‘Lazy Bones’ live was the essence of Cole’s brilliance as an artist: her facility with language, her tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and attention to detail that, combined, could generate songs both comedic and sincere that would become beloved.

‘Lazy Bones’ was my introduction to Australian country music, and I would go on to inhale Cole’s albums, then those of artists who were associated with her. From there, a whole world opened up and eventually it led to me covering Australian country music, which is what you’re seeing and reading here. In other words: no Beccy Cole, no Sunburnt Country Music.

‘Lazy Bones’ has been retired from the live set but Cole’s brilliance is, thankfully, still very much present, and evident on her latest album, Through the Haze. Born of hard times, which she talks about in our interview – conducted in person at ABC headquarters in Sydney, on the day of the album’s release – it features eleven songs written by Cole alone, and one with Lyn Bowtell, along with a 20th anniversary edition of ‘Poster Girl’, a signature song.

Through the Haze is Cole returning to herself, as we also talk about, and offering hard-won wisdom along with the wit that is so much a part of her songwriting as well as her live performance. She has always been unflinching with herself and with us; she offers her heart and her experiences and makes it clear that we can take them or leave them, but she’d really rather we take them because, through the haze of everything that’s happened to her, we’re the reason she keeps going. 

Old fans of Cole’s will love this album. I hope she finds many new fans too. She deserves to, because she’s an icon who doesn’t stand there demanding we polish her marbled feet. She keeps showing up, making music, getting better all the time, thereby encouraging us to do the same.

Through the Haze is out now through ABC Music. Beccy Cole has announced some album launch shows, with more to follow, and I really do recommend you see her live, where she is in her absolute element:

May 7 - Lazybones Lounge, Sydney NSW

May 8 - Full Throttle Ranch, Buttai,

Newcastle NSW

May 9 - The Baroque Room, Katoomba NSW

Listen to Through the Haze on Apple Music

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Savanah Solomon is a singer-songwriter from Western Australia who has released the singles 'Magnolia' and 'I Don't Know You Anymore', as well as the 2023 EP Where the River Meets the Sea. Her latest single is 'Someday Somewhere', and it is a warm, hopeful song with more than a few great lines in it.

The song was written a couple of years ago, during a period of involuntary limbo. Solomon had just found out she'd secured a fly-in fly-out job, but the start date was months away. With no income, no momentum and a lot of waiting, she turned to pen and paper. What emerged was something close to a personal mantra – a song about sensitivity as a strength, about humour as a survival tool, and about trusting that good things come to those who keep showing up.

One line in particular lands with the elegance of something that sounds obvious only after someone else has said it: Worry is a waste of the imagination.

'Someday Somewhere' was produced by Josh Dyson at Villa Studios in Western Australia; Dyson also plays bass in Solomon's live band and contributes much of the instrumentation on her recordings. The video, directed by Emma Smart, was filmed near Solomon's home and features Solomon riding her father's red lawnmower down golden roadside fields, dressed in a blue op-shop jacket that she'd bought two years earlier with no specific plan, just a feeling it would come in handy. It is, as intended, an exercise in pure joy.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/xizjqiA020o?si=2mkWASRCYi5BocA-

Since releasing 'Magnolia' last year, Solomon has expanded her reach considerably, supporting Kingswood in Albany, playing Melbourne's Newport Folk Festival (to which she's returning in June), and completing a run of shows in Esperance and Nannup. 

An album is on the horizon – a blues and folk-leaning collection focused on storytelling – though Solomon is letting it develop at its own pace. More singles are in progress in the meantime.

‘Someday Somewhere’ is out now.

Listen to Savanah Solomon on Apple Music

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Camille Trail released her debut album River of Sins in 2021 and the EP Magic Trick in 2024. She is known for her thoughtful, articulate and often unflinching lyrics, delivered in a warm, distinctive voice. Her new single 'Postcard' marks a deliberate shift in direction while still being distinctively her.

After a big 2024 that included a UK tour and appearances at Folk Alliance in the United States, Trail spent last year recharging and writing. Personal changes fed into creative ones, and she found herself drawn toward something different – brighter, more energetic, more fun. 

‘I love writing my vulnerable, sad songs,’ she says in this new interview, ‘but most of my songs are sad and vulnerable, and it was exhausting. Every night I just wanted to have fun, dance on stage.’ 

Her latest single, 'Postcard', was written and recorded with producer Garrett Kato across three days in the studio, emerging on the final day when Trail arrived with a verse idea she'd developed the night before. It's not a country tune – but I’m never that strict about such things, especially when I’ve covered an artist before for their country music and I’m interested in whatever they do next. 

Instead of being country, ‘Postcard’ is an upbeat, indie-pop flavoured track with the characteristic Camille Trail sleight of hand: there’s a melody that makes you want to move, then you notice that the lyrics are doing something more searching. ‘I'm scared to be alone’ sits in the middle of what sounds, on first listen, like a carefree summer song. 

‘I'm such a sucker for juxtaposition,’ says Trail. ‘That's the whole metaphor of life.’

Trail grew up on a farm in Queensland and still keeps cattle – an arrangement that has, on more than one occasion, served as emergency music funding (as she says: ‘I’ll sell a cow’). That grounding in the physical world informs how she writes: melodies come first, words follow in something close to stream of consciousness, often arriving most freely in the car. 

Two further songs recorded with Kato are due for release later this year, both in the same fresh, forward-facing direction as 'Postcard'.

‘Postcard’ is out now.

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Dylan Wright has two musical identities that most fans will know about – as a solo artist and as one half of Golden Guitar-winning duo Sons of Atticus – and, as it turns out, a third. But more on that in a moment ... Wright’s new solo single is 'Those Nights', and he has announced an extensive Songs & Stories tour running through New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT from the start of May.

The Golden Guitar, won at this year's Tamworth Country Music Festival for the track ‘Born to Roam’ with Sons of Atticus bandmate Matt Joyce, was for Bluegrass Recording of the Year. It came after seven years of the duo writing and performing together across the breadth of country's traditions. 

‘We write music however we feel,’ Wright says. ‘Whatever's coming.’ 

And a new bluegrass recording is already in the works, as Wright tells me in this new interview. He also talks about his third musical identity: as a member of breathe., an electronic project with over 100 million streams and 850,000 monthly listeners, which recently sold out its first live shows in Turkey and toured Europe. Wright has been part of that project for a decade. ‘It's my darker, moodier self,’ he says. 

Wright’s latest solo single, 'Those Nights', was written in December 2023 and initially shelved when he won Australian Idol in 2024, one of around fifty songs he’s written that have been waiting for the right moment. It's a warm, nostalgic late-summer single and Wright’s vocal, as ever, lures us in and keeps us there. His talent and adaptability as singer means that there’s always something new to find in his songs, and ‘Those Nights’ offers another aspect to musicality.

‘Those Nights’ kicks off the release of between twenty and thirty songs that the prolific northern New South Wales artist has planned for release across all of his projects this year. Everything, he says, is mapped out twelve to eighteen months in advance.

In amongst those releases is the Songs & Stories tour, which will see Wright performing entirely alone – just him and a guitar – for the first time. He’ll be playing songs spanning his whole career, from busking days to the present, with the stories behind them. Venues include the Brass Monkey in Cronulla, where he first played at sixteen, the Stag and Hunter in Newcastle, Brunswick Picture House in Brunswick Heads, and Odessa at Levers in Victoria. 

As ever, it was a pleasure to talk to Wright – he’s always thoughtful and interesting, an artist with a sense of the bigger picture who is also interested in the details.

‘Those Nights’ is out now through Sony Music Australia.

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Tom Busby is well known to Australian music fans as one half of beloved duo Busby Maru. That duo remains very much a going concern, but Busby has now released his first solo album – the warm and deeply personal Rockhampton Hangover.

Busby grew up in the Queensland town of Rockhampton, and after two decades of relentless touring and recording with Busby Marou, he and bandmate Jeremy Marou made a deliberate decision to stop saying yes to everything. Part of Busby's break involved returning home to help run the family business after his father's death. It was, he reflects, exactly the kind of enforced stillness his subconscious had been waiting for. 

‘It's really gutsy,’ he says of the album during our interview. ‘It's raw. It's vulnerable. I'm not trying to impress anyone.’

The record was produced by Ben Kweller in Texas, a collaboration that began over Zoom and deepened into genuine friendship before a note was recorded. When Kweller asked to produce the album, Busby initially declined – he was supposed to be spending more time at home. But his wife's response was to suggest pulling the kids out of school, loading everyone into the car and driving Route 66 to a ranch in Texas for two months. They did exactly that. 

Two of the album's songs – including 'Stalemate', which features Busby’s children's voices – were recorded on an iPhone in his living room and appear on the album exactly as Kweller received them, with the band wrapped around the original vocal demos.

The album moves from 'Cyclone', an opener about the disorientation of going solo, through songs about Busby’s father ('Waiting for Tomorrow') and his wife ('Crazy'), to the closing celebration of 'Nothing Will Ever Be the Same'. It is, as Busby describes it, less a polished statement than a journal entry – one that happens to rhyme. Busby Marou fans may notice a shift in register, but the warmth that has always defined Tom Busby’s work is present throughout.

Since returning from Texas, Busby, his wife and their four children have committed to a new way of living: full-time in a caravan, touring the country doing The Great Aussie Lap, a series of intimate solo shows. Busby Marou festival dates will be woven in alongside.

Rockhampton Hangover is out now.

Listen to Rockhampton Hangover on Apple Music

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Lindsay Waddington has a career spanning more than three decades as a singer, songwriter, producer and renowned instrumentalist. He has released thirteen solo albums, won a Golden Guitar, and built a YouTube channel with almost nineteen million views. His latest release, 'Something of a Privilege', is a tribute to Australian music legend John Williamson.

The song began as a birthday present. When Williamson turned 80, Waddington – who has become close to Williamson over the past seven or eight years, and they’ve recorded together at Waddington’s studio in Queensland – sat down and wrote him a song. 

‘What do you give a bloke who's achieved everything? I’ll write him a song,’ he says in this new interview. 

Waddington sent the song to Williamson, then spent four anxious hours waiting for a response. When Williamson finally called, he was moved – and told Waddington the song was too good to save for his funeral! With the family's blessing, Waddington decided to release it, directing all proceeds to Williamson's Variety Bash car and the children it supports.

Brendan Radford, with whom Waddington won the 2020 Golden Guitar for Instrumental of the Year, features on the track – a pairing that has become a natural creative partnership. The two spend at least a day a week in the studio together, and Radford's contribution, Waddington says, simply made the song better.

The release sits alongside a remarkably busy creative operation. Waddington's studio has become a hub for Australian country music, with artists including John Williamson, Brian Cadd, Russell Morris and emerging talent William Alexander all recording there. Waddington’s YouTube channel – built largely around studio sessions and instrumental performances – has attracted a global following, with viewers from Ukraine, the Philippines and Japan. 

As Waddington notes, ‘There's no language barrier with instrumentals – if you can come up with tones and sounds they like to hear, that could be it.’ 

His eldest daughter, Madison, handles the videography and editing; the whole enterprise has become a family operation.

A further collaboration is already in the works: a song called 'Talking to a Drover', on which Williamson has contributed harmonies after hearing a work-in-progress version during a studio visit. An instrumental release is also planned for later in 2026. For an artist who admits he can sometimes deprioritise his own music in favour of others', there is clearly no shortage of things worth making.

‘Something of a Privilege’ is out now.

Listen to Lindsay Waddington on Apple Music

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