Recorded on location in Nashville with an award-winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who moved to the United States last year after a long, highly successful music career in Australia. He came to America having had 16 number one hits, 17 Top 10 hits, and 43 Top 40 hits on Australian country radio. He is a Golden Guitar winner, had five Australian Billboard chart-topping albums, and is an Australian Grammy nominee. He has had over 100 songs cut by major label and independent artists, with over 50 singles. He also holds the distinction of being the youngest Australian male solo artist to perform on the Grand Ole Opry stage. Last month he released a side project, and he’s working on a documentary, both while not only writing a new album project but getting ready to tour internationally in 2025 in addition to shows here in the U.S.
“I had just been through a flood where my house didn't get flooded, but the studio underneath was kind of half flooded. I just remember there being the cries of cattle floating downstream and seeing the island that we live on kind of just get all waterlogged.”
“Sometimes you think that all of this preamble that you have in a co-writing situation is just us just running our mouths type thing, but oftentimes, and it's very cool when the things that we talk about somehow seep through into the songs.”
“I love when, as we say here in (Nashville), you can find the song in the room.”
“I'm always trying to challenge myself, I'm always trying to further what I do to push my sound in new directions, to find different ways of being creative, to push the boundaries of what I do.”
“Some weeks you'd have five people come through the park and other weeks you'd have busloads of tourists that come in from Sydney … so it was entertaining from five to five hundred people. And those five people were a lot harder to draw in than the five hundred people. So, you really had to work hard to be able to connect with them.”
“I kind of have the same attention to detail because the devil is in the details and Paul Simon says, ‘the ear is drawn to the irritant’.”
“It's still part of my process to kind of try and write the best song or try and write the song in the room and serve it best and then think about how we're going to, where we're going to place it later on. Because I think if you're always trying to be driven by writing to a particular brief or writing to serve a particular purpose, it can kind of get in the way of the creative process.”
“I just remember that … reading all of the comments on Twitter and that about the song, I just, I was so glad that it really hit home for people when we played it.”
“I got to be friends with James (Burton) through some other Aussie friends of mine … we've been friends for about a year now and it's really cool. James, I think he's turning 86 this year and he's such a legend… Country Music Hall of Famer, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Musicians Hall of Famer.”
“Can You Imagine”
“The New Old Me”