Just over ten years since award-winning sibling duo The Wolfe Brothers captured the attention of their home country as they progressed to the final of Australia’s Got Talent, they have released their sixth studio album ‘Livin the Dream’. Only a few months after their appearance on the final they found themselves in a Sydney rehearsal studio auditioning for Australian country superstar Lee Kernaghan, with hopes of joining his touring band. After just two songs, Kernaghan not only hired them to play in his band, but also offered the brothers the opening spot at all of his sold-out concerts across the country. Here we are, a decade later with six albums under their belts. We were thrilled to talk to them about their journey and what it was like writing new album ‘Livin the Dream’ on zoom during the pandemic.
Thank you for your time, it’s lovely to talk Country music across the continents with other people who aren’t in Nashville, either! (laughing) You guys have had an established career for over a decade now -is this the first time you’ve reached out to the UK market?
Tom: It’s definitely the first time we’ve put a song out with a UK act. (Check out ‘Love Like That’ featuring The Shires) We’ve done some interviews with you guys along the way and had amazing support from different media outlets over there. It’s been quite refreshing to us to get to talk to some different people, right? (laughing)
Nick: It’s very refreshing for us to hear some different accents and see some new faces.
You both grew up in a very musical household on a family berry farm in Tasmania. Can you paint a picture of what life was like for you growing up?
Tom: We were very lucky to have an amazing upbringing. Nick and I are fourth generation farmers – raspberries, gooseberries & cherries. Along with the farming went music too. Our great grandad played the fiddle, our grandad played in what he called was The Wolfe Family Orchestra and played in town halls and barn dances all around Tasmania and our dad was in a Rock ‘n’ Roll band that played everything from the Beatles to the Stones to Dire Straits.
Our mum didn’t actually play but she loved music and I think that was where we got the Country bug from because as we were growing up there was that beautiful big boom in Country music in the 1990s so we got exposed to artists like Garth Brooks and great Australian artists like Slim Dusty, James Blundell and Lee Kernaghan too. We were into Heavy Metal when we were teenagers but the farming and the Country won out in the end! (laughing)
Nick: Yeah, there were a few years back then when we could have become a metal band back there in high school! (laughing) But we are country boys and we eventually came to our senses in the end!
Flash forward a few years and you come second on Australia’s Got Talent in 2012. What did you learn about yourselves by going on that show?
Tom: We were really lucky because we did four of five performances but we only did one cover. We were mostly playing original music on the show which is still unheard of on shows like that. So that meant that a lot of just, normal, everyday people connected with our songs which set us up to tour and we’ve been able to tour Australia ever since then. It set us up to get us out on the road.
Nick: We’re from Tasmania, which is the state right down at the bottom of Australia. Formally called Van Diemen’s Land, I think you guys might have used us as a bit of a prison back in the day! (laughing) We had a good following down here but the show enabled us to widen our fan base across the whole of Australia.
You also had a really strong relationship with massive selling artist Lee Kernaghan too.
Tom: There couldn’t be a better apprenticeship you could do anywhere in Country music than to work with Lee. He tours every corner of this Country and we’ve got to go on that journey with him. We, typically, would open the show as The Wolfe Brothers and then hop into his show and play as the Lee Kernaghan band for him. It was an awesome ride. We’re no longer playing with him any more but we are writing with him, I was on a zoom with him just today, and helping him produce his next album.
It’s been a decade since you released your debut album. How would you say you’ve changed as writers and musicians in that time?
Tom: It is! I’ve said this in a few interviews now but I feel like we are finally starting to get good at it! (laughing) That’s no disrespect to our first album, there’s a couple of really great songs on there, but you can hear the music on there being made by young guys playing at break neck speed, right? We were young boys going to the pub and making Country music back then.
We’ve had a lot of life experience since and faced hardships like losing both our parents along the way. We’re both really happily married and I’ve got a couple of baby girls now as well so I think all of that experience has made us better songwriters and you can hear that on the new album.
You’ve said in the press for the album that you’ve made a conscious decision to get back to your Country roots on ‘Livin the Dream’. What were the drivers behind that move?
Tom: With our previous album, ‘Kids on Cassette’ we explored a few different sounds. It was slightly poppier, there was some Rock stuff on there too. We’re very proud of that album but we felt like it was time to come home and do what we do best and make a Country record.
What was it like writing and working with Lindsay Ell on ‘Love Like That’?
Tom: She was fantastic. We wrote a bunch of stuff together on zoom but we actually got to meet her in person recently when she came over to Australia. She’s a killer artist and great person too. We did a showcase together which was great. I’d love to write some more stuff with her.
She co-wrote the song, ‘Love Like That’ that eventually would feature The Shires on with you too. What was it like working with them?
Tom: We saw those guys at a big festival we have over here in Australia called CMC Rocks, pre-Covid and thought that they were really good. Fast forward a few years and we’re on the record label BMG, working with Lindsay on this song that we thought would work great as a duet. The standard duet format in Country is to helm a verse and chorus and then the other person takes a verse and chorus but we wanted to do something where we sang the whole song together.
It was the label that said, ‘what about The Shires?’ and we thought it was a great idea, we’d seen them at CMC Rocks and knew that they were fantastic. When we got their parts back, it took the song up another level and far surpassed what we were expecting. Our goal, now, is to be able to perform the song with them at some point. That’s the next goal.
Tell me about where you got the inspiration for ‘Here’s to the Ones’ from, that’s such a lovely song.
Nick: Thanks. That song is actually our first 6/8 or ‘waltz’ feeling song! I’m not a big fan, traditionally, of that format and have been blocking them from our previous albums for years but this one felt right. The inspiration for the song came from a dinner we were having with one of our mates at his farm and and he was having a bit of a joke with his wife about how hard he’d been working all day and she was giving it back to him and then it kinda got serious and he said something that sparked a massive ‘lightbulb’ moment for Tom and I when he said that this is what it is all about, ‘the ones that feed the ones that feed the country.’ We were like, ‘and there’s a song, thank you for that, that’s awesome!’ (laughing)
The song became about all the women in our lives: our mums, our wives and all inspiring women and strong characters everywhere that do what they do. We wrote them a song. The video to the song is really cool too, very special.
‘Nothing Better to Me’ features the writing talents of Phil Barton, an Aussie living and working in Nashville. Do you have a long standing relationship with him?
Nick: Yeah, we do. We’ve written many songs with Phil over the years. This one came about after we went to a Bryan Adams concert the night before the writing session. We were really feeling the 90s kinda shuffle-thing that he was doing and we thought we should do that in Country music because no-one was doing it and now everyone’s doing it! (laughing) The song sat around for quite a while so it’s good to see it finally out there.
Is there a song on ‘Livin the Dream’ that people like me aren’t really talking to you about enough. One you really love that might not be getting as much attention right now?
Nick: There’s one that we’re really proud of called ‘New Dog Old Tricks’. You can’t get much more Country than writing about a dog, right? That one is hard for us to even play live. Dogs are our best friends and it’s so hard to say goodbye to them.
Tom: We grew up on the farm surrounded by some incredible dogs and it was such a part of our upbringing. I would have said the same thing, the same song. We’ve played it at a few songwriter rounds and people have been crying by the time we’ve reached the second chorus!
You mentioned your live shows. Tracks like ‘Put the House on it’, ‘Livin the dream’, ‘All in Good Time’ are all good time, live-leaning songs. When you write a song have you always got half a mind on your live setlist or does the song come out how it was always going to come out?
Nick: That is always a big part of our consideration. I’m always thinking when we write a a song, ‘Will this work played from the back of a truck?’ (Laughing) The trick is to think that if no-one has ever seen us or heard us before, will the song be the one that gets them onboard? Sometimes the song comes out in the form that needs to be but we do try and write with live in mind.
Your tour of Australia is going to keep you out on the road July, August and into September. What’s the best and the worst things about being out on tour?
Tom: The best thing is, obviously, playing live with our band. The band we have now is the best that there’s ever been. It’s such a family environment too. If we ever have two weeks off we’re all texting each other stuff like, ‘I miss you’ (laughing) which is so wonderful. Being away from home is the hardest thing, I’ve got two little girls now so as soon as the the last gig of the week is done I’m heading back home as soon as I can.
Nick: The worst thing is waiting around just to get home within your home country. Even gigs that are a couple of states away here can be a whole day of travelling. Here we are, sitting in airports again! That’s the worst although we do get a lot of frequent flyer miles!
I speak to a lot of British & Canadian artists who feel like they have to work five times harder just to attract the tiniest bit of attention from Nashville. Have your eyes ever strayed that way or have you always been content to make your careers in your home country?
Tom: Earlier on we did have our eyes on Nashville a little bit. We had an apartment there and would write and such have you and then we’d come back here and go out on the road for 3 months, you know? We’ve done a lot of writing and recording in Nashville but where we are right now in our lives, with our homes and our families here, we’re not really in that same space anymore.
We love our home, we love our home country and the best music and art that we can make is inspired by where we live and where we come from, right? If I went and lived in an apartment building in Nashville that is going to change who we are and what we stand for. In saying that, however, if Jason Aldean wanted us to come and play twenty shows with him then yes, we will! (laughing)
Nick: We do love travelling to new places and if new opportunities present themselves then we’d seriously consider anything. We’d love to be able to play for your guys one day and we have irons in the fire in Canada too.
Tom: If we could come over to the UK every twelve months, play a few shows in Canada and do all our stuff in Australia too, that would be awesome. We’re already ‘Livin the Dream’, but that would take it up to the next level.
Check out The Wolfe Brothers’ new album, ‘Livin the Dream’ right here.
