Aussie country rock band, The Wolfe Brothers, are gearing up for the 2015 Tamworth Country Music Festival where they will be performing a show with Angry Anderson. “I can’t believe it,” guitarist Brodie Rainbird tells me excitedly during our recent interview. “It’s so cool! That guy’s a genuine bona fide rock star! To have him up on stage and of course the rock and country blend. It seemed only natural. We did a few gigs with him quite a few months ago. He’d never met us and we’d never met him. We were playing a bunch of his songs. The arrangement was we were going to be his band. He turned up and you could tell he wasn’t quite sold on the idea but he was sort of going along with it. He said ‘Are you boys right with these songs?’ We said ‘Yeah. How do you want to end them?’ He said ‘I don’t care. Once I finish singing, that’s your problem!’ For us, it was awesome to be sharing the stage with a genuine Aussie rock icon. He also enjoyed himself because I think we were slightly better than he thought we were going to be,” he laughs. “And he called out to our manager Steve halfway through the gig, ‘We’ve got a tour there Stephen; we’ve got a tour there.’ We are actually getting to do that now so that’s awesome.”
The guys are also finalists in the Golden Guitar Awards in two categories: Group or Duo of the Year and Single of the Year for ‘That Kinda Night’. “It’s nice to have a few nominations again,” Brodie concedes, humbly. “We’re so honoured to be nominated alongside those people.”
Brodie used to work in tiny roof spaces looking for leaks in refrigeration systems so he says that his current job is a welcome change of pace. He met brothers Nick and Tom in high school. The boys all lived near each other. They caught the bus to school together and listened to similar music. Both Nick and Brodie played guitar and there was a connection between them. One thing led to another and the boys started playing music together. “We were doing acoustic gigs at the school,” Brodie tells me. “And we had various bands. It kind of just evolved. We had a band in college called 5150 and we used to play heavy metal, Guns ‘n’ Roses and AC/DC and all that kind of stuff. As we got older, we got into the country scene somehow and it evolved into where we are now, mixing the rock roots with the country stuff. We all love country and we all grew up with country so it’s just a natural thing that happened. We’re doing what we can to lift the profile of country music in Australia. I think we came on the scene at the right time when country and rock are coming together. Look at the music that’s coming out of Nashville. There’s a lot of country hip hop and a lot of country rock stuff happening. It’s a very big thing over there at the moment. So we’re pretty lucky I guess.” And, as an added bonus, he says “We’re blessed because we can call each other friends and if the band finished tomorrow, we would still hang out together. We’ve got that bond.”
The band finally got to record an album in the studio and the result is ‘Nothin’ But Trouble’. “We’re very proud of it,” he admits. The album was recorded with their producer from Nashville, Luke Wooten. Luke had previously worked with such artists as Lee Kernaghan, Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley and Kellie Pickler. “He’s got lots of awards and lots of records under his belt,” Brodie tells me. “We really connected with him. We sort of met him through Lee Kernaghan and our management already knew him and when we went over there, we hung out with him for a bit. He knew what we wanted to record and I guess it was inevitable that we worked together on the next album and it’s done really well.”
The Wolfe Brothers toured with Lee Kernaghan on his Beautiful Noise tour last year and Brodie says that they learned a lot from Lee. “It was awesome touring with Lee. We all grew up seeing him on shows like Hey Hey It’s Saturday. He was such a big Australian icon and still is so to actually be able to call him a friend and a workmate, we are so honoured to be able to say that and now we’ve got Angry!”
2015 looks set to be a very busy year for The Wolfe Brothers with the Tamworth Country Music Festival in January and lots of dates already in place for the Nothin’ But Trouble Tour. “We’re just going to get out there on the road and do as many shows as we can and meet as many fans as we can and show them a good time,” he promises. “That’s pretty much what this band was built on.”
by Sharyn Hamey
Copyright © Sharyn Hamey 2014. All rights reserved
