It’s been a while since we saw Australian native but Nashville-based musician Sinead Burgess over here on UK shores. Pre-pandemic she played incredibly successful support slot shows on tours with both The Shires and Paul Young, building up quite a buzz with her blend of rootsy, melodic, slightly retro-tinged Country music. She’s just released the fabulous new song ‘Rolling Stones’, announced her debut UK headline show and will be going out on the road with Kezia Gill in the Autumn. We were thrilled to catch up with her to interview her all about it.
Hi Sinead, thank you for your time today, it’s great to talk to you about this exciting new phase in your career.
Likewise, thank you for supporting the release of the ‘Rolling Stones’ video, I really appreciated it.
We last saw you over here in the UK supporting The Shires and then Paul Young before the pandemic.
Yeah, five years ago which is crazy to think about everything that has happened since. The pandemic hit in the middle so those years don’t count! (laughing) So, if we don’t include those years it was only two years ago!
Do you have fond memories of your visits here?
Oh my gosh. Anyone who knows me or who follows me online will be in no doubt as to how much I love the UK! I’d been coming over to write with musicians and producers since 2013 but that first trip for me to play, with The Shires, in 2018, was just incredible, I had the time of my life. I feel like there is just such an appreciation for good music over in the UK. There’s a lot of love for lyrics and caring about what the songs mean, which you don’t get in some other areas of the world.
When I’m in Nashville I make for Hattie B’s Hot Chicken as soon as I can. Where there any food or drinks that you fell in love with whilst you were here?
You can’t go wrong with a gin and tonic can you? (laughing) You guys do the tonic part really well over there. That’s the thing that really blew my mind. In Australia, at that point, and in Nashville, there definitely wasn’t an array of tonics that you could choose from but I was walking into places and there was black peppercorn with rosemary tonic and all sorts of choices, which I thought was amazing!
One of my favourite breakfast spots in the whole world is in Manchester. It’s actually an Aussie cafe, would you believe, although they do it better than the Aussies, though, to be fair! I also love the Indian food over in the UK, there’s nowhere better I’ve ever found if you like that type of thing.
Tickets to your London headline show are on sale now!
It’s crazy! Because of the time difference between there and Nashville I was up at 4am last Friday morning so I could be online when they went on sale and do some things on social media! I’m so excited and it means the world to me to be able to do this show in London, it’ll be a very special one for me.
And you are out on tour in the Autumn supporting Kezia Gill. She’s got that sort of cross genre appeal that very few artists mange. The Country fans love her, the Rock fans too, Blues also.
I adore Kezia’s music. I think she’s really talented. I first found out about her when she was opening for The Shires and Crissie was texting me about how awesome it was to have her out on the road with them. To me, strong, feisty, talented women are really exciting and she’s definitely that, I’m really grateful to her for having me out on that tour.
I was a big fan of the ‘Damaged Goods’ album from 2018. It’s been a while since that now. Was the pandemic the reason for the big gap between releases?
A bit. In 2019 was I gearing up to release some music, I’d recorded a few songs, like a song called ‘Reno’ which is going to be the next one you hear from me, leading into my new album. I went home to Australia for Christmas of that year and then we all know what happened in the Spring of 2020, right? What was supposed to be a six week trip back home ended up being three years! All of a sudden I couldn’t be on the road anymore, couldn’t write in the same room anymore so I spent a lot of time sitting in front of my childhood piano with just my feelings! (laughing)
All of a sudden these songs started pouring out of me and I started writing on zoom with one of my favourite co-writers, Brian Koppelman, and we really dug in deep and went to a lot of places that I didn’t really know we were going to go to in terms of songs and lyrics.
In that sense, that’s why this music has taken a little longer to get out there. I wanted to say something important. ‘Damaged Goods’, to me, was such a raw and real record and I pride myself on that. People resonate with honesty and connect with subjects that apply to their lives also, so if I’m kind of half-baking a truth in a song, it’s not going to feel authentic or very good at all. I’m finishing up a song today that you guys are going to hear soon and the whole album is written so it won’t be too long now.
How has your writing style and evolution as a musician changed since the release of ‘Wolf’ in 2016?
Dramatically! The ‘Wolf’ era was me chasing down a very different sonic path. I’d grown up playing Country music but by then I’d been put into a place where the Country music the label wanted me to make wasn’t really resonating with me. I’m a girl with a guitar, a piano and with something to say but at that point my ‘something to say’ had been diluted somewhat. I wondered whether it was the genre at that point and I wondered about stepping away and trying something else. The ‘Wolf’ EP was definitely a melting pot of styles.
‘Wolf’ was basically about being in a situation where there were certain business people in my life that weren’t ideal. That was the whole idea behind the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’. There’s a song, ‘Fickle Heart’, on that record, that is still one of my favourites – I did that song with one of my friends, Tom Jordan, who is in Seaforth, actually. That was the first moment where I began to realise what I wanted to do and it sparked the move towards being what ‘Damaged Goods’ ended up being.
A lot of my favourite artists that I’ve loved over the years have been almost genre-less, if that makes sense? You can listen to something and hear that it’s Country but you don’t think of it in that light because you just love what they have to say. That’s what I’m aiming for on my next album.
Tell me about ‘Rolling Stones’ and why you wanted to release that one first ahead of other songs that I know you will have squirrelled away and ready to go.
I think I just needed a celebration track, you know? Something a bit vibey, a bit fun, to come back with. I didn’t want to come out of the gates with something too heavy – there will be plenty of time for that soon, down the road! (laughing) It felt right. We wrote it on zoom, right in the middle of the pandemic. I was sitting on the floor of a bedroom with my guitar and Brian and I wrote this song that felt like the opening song of a record and the opening of a new chapter for me.
Do you have a favourite Rolling Stones song?
Ohhhh. That’s a hard one. The song that takes me back the most, in a cool way, is ‘Miss You’. It takes me back to a time when I had just moved to Sydney at about 19 or 20 years old. At the time I was packing boxes in a warehouse to be able to pay for my band to play shows at the weekend. We did cover gigs in-between and anything you could to keep the ball moving. I played this gig with my guitarist Travis, who still plays guitar for me when I’m back in Australia, and we had a drummer and I was playing bass. I painstakingly learned the bass runs for ‘Miss You’ so we could play it and every time I hear that song it takes me back to those times.
There are so many songs that you could pick from the Stones’ catalogue but that one really resonates with me from a specific time and place. The Stones are one of those bands that, regardless of whether you like their music or not, you should admire their longevity and what they have achieved. They are still doing right now too!
‘Rolling Stones’ is part of a wider body of work that you have coming, then. Tell me a little about that.
It’s been a minute but there is an album on the way. The next couple of tracks will get a little deeper into what I’ve experienced in the past few years and i’m very excited for people to hear it. Raw, stripped down and very, very honest. I can’t wait. It’s time!
Grab tickets to Sinead Burgess’ headline show in London and the tour with Kezia Gill right here.
