Australian country star Max Jackson has rapidly emerged as one of the most exciting new voices in the genre, blending high-energy performance with a deep-rooted love of traditional country storytelling. Raised in the small town of Coonamble in New South Wales, Jackson picked up a guitar at a young age and was performing live by her early teens, quickly developing into a confident and compelling artist. Her career breakthrough came when she won the prestigious Toyota Star Maker competition in 2022, launching her onto major stages across Australia and beyond. Since then, she has continued to build momentum with chart-topping singles, a growing international fanbase and multiple Golden Guitar Awards, including Female Artist of the Year and Single of the Year.
Her latest album ‘Dangerous in Denim' (our review here) has further cemented her status as a rising force, showcasing a sound that is both contemporary and rooted in classic country influences. The record has a confident, high-energy feel and a fabulous sense of fun, with uplifting moments with heartfelt storytelling, capturing an artist who is both self-assured and still connected to her roots. With a reputation for dynamic live performances and a growing presence on the international stage, including appearances at festivals like C2C, Jackson represents the new wave of country artists bringing fresh energy to the genre while honouring its traditions. We caught up with her at C2C to talk all about it.
Lovely to talk to you Max, thank you for your time. You've been a whirling dervish around London this weekend!
Yeah! (laughing) A lot of travel, air con, a lot of schedules but there was nothing that was gonna stop me! I've been steaming my voice, drinking all the water……. (laughing)
We loved seeing your set at the Dutton Ranch. You really attacked that show. Could you feel the energy in the room? Did you feel like you were getting a response?
Absolutely! It was cool in there. There was a sea of cowboy hats and everyone in there was with us from the start. It was so special because I didn't know what to expect at all. We'd just been to Germany the weekend before so we had had a taster of some different crowds and they were amazing out there but it's just so extra special here – I feel like everyone here had put in extra effort – they've researched the music, learnt the lyrics, stealing our setlists off the stage – it's really really special!
You performed ‘Dancing Queen' as a Country song and that went down a storm. When did you have the idea for that?
So I sort of started this series back in 2023 with three videos where I was, basically, trying to tell people about my song, ‘Little More Country.' So it was a way to promote pre-orders without having to harp on about pre-orders! It became a crowd favourite – the full band version sounds so cool with the four on the floor and kick drum. It has quite literally changed my life, when I got to Germany I was the very first meet and greet, 10.30am in the morning, and I figured no one would come and so many people came and said hi and lots of them said they had discovered me through the ‘Dancing Queen' cover.
There are obviously a lot of low points with social media and the internet but it has helped people on the other side of the world get to know me through that song. It ended up on some viral playlists in Norway and Sweden and Jill Johnson (Swedish Country artist), who I met last June in Nashville, said to me as I walked in to this place, ‘You're the Dancing Queen girl!' She said that Bjorn had shared it on his Instagram story, actually shared it, which was mind blowing!
You grew up in rural New South Wales. When did a career in music stop becoming a dream and you realised it was actually something that could happen in reality?
I reckon it was in high school. I mean, I basically only stayed in school because there were things like ‘Star Struck' where all the schools would do this big performing arts showcase, so I stayed in school to be able to do all these performance opportunities! (laughing) After school I worked in a shoe shop, worked as a receptionist for a little bit but it was always just to fund being able to be a musician. I never really had anything else that I wanted to do. I never had a back up plan or anything like that.
It's hard when you first start playing live because you can get stuck on the cover gig circuit which is relatively easy money but at some point you have to sacrifice that and write your own music if you want to break through. It's tough so I did anything I could to make that possible.
‘Dangerous in Denim' is very different to your debut album, ‘Life of the Party' which you released in 2020. When did that passion and pivot happen?
It was in the COVID lockdown. I released that album in March 2020! Worst timing ever! I'm really proud of that album, it's much more a singer-songwriter album. I was actually writing a lot, behind the scenes, for other people for a really long time, across lots of different genres and that album featured the best songs I could have written over the ten year period leading up to it.
When we went into the COVID lock down things felt very uncertain for a long time and we were all stuck at home and not allowed to go out. The one thing I kept coming back to was that I just wanted to get back on stage. Not only did I want to get back on a stage but I wanted to bring the fun and the positivity back too – people have always said they have fun whenI am around and it occurred to me that that is what I should be doing on stage! That's when the shift came and I entered this big competition in Australia called Toyota Star Maker. I wrote ‘Runnin,' which was kinda my first big shift, musically, I wrote it to play in the competition and it set the tone for everything that came after it.
How did the Toyota Star Maker competition change your life?
It was huge. The Tamworth Country music festival is one of our biggest festivals back home and everyone knew who I was when I played there, thanks to winning that competition. So the name recognition was huge, there was a validation from the industry too. On a different level, the prize itself was massive – I got a recording contract, I got a car for a year and the fuel to be able to drive myself to gigs all over the country: you also get to go and play in Nashville at CMA Fest too! It was a meaningful prize.
‘Dangerous in Denim' is a great album. When did you realise it was going to be a special album?
I really wanted to make this album an experience – like an album you would have listened to back in the 80s and 90s. I wanted it to have highs and lows and not just be a random collection of songs or singles. That was really important to me – I was a psycho about the sequencing of it and the way I wanted one song to lead into the next. I didn't write the songs thinking they would go in any one particular spot but they told the story of me and showed a lot of different sides of me. Love, family, friendship, Country music and Country people – they are all the things that are important to me that I wanted to be represented on there.
It's a very real album and very much from the heart. The album title was, actually, the very last thing to come about. It was inspired by Lainey Wilson's ‘Bell Bottom Country' idea and how that is not a song but a concept – I wanted to do the same but with denim! When you show up in the world in a way that makes you feel confident and strong, you can do amazing things and be amazingly ‘Dangerous in Denim.'
Your husband, Jeremy, is the guitarist in your band. How do you deal with domestic niggles and still put on great shows? (laughing)
We are complete opposites as people! I care about everything he doesn't care about and vice-versa. That's great, I think. I reckon I am way harder to work with than he is! (laughing) The great thing is that when I have a gripe about something, he laughs at me and that's probably how we deal with most things!
We really do wake up every day and think about how lucky we are to be able to do music for a career. We've been together since the end of school and so we've grown and changed together. He was in a rock band when we first got together and had some good success there. A lot of our friends, who are couples in the industry, are like, ‘We could never go out on tour together!' (laughing) It works, we work and, like I said, I'm the more difficult one to have to work with!
‘Dangerous in Denim' came out early this year and so there is a lot of life, legs and singles to come from it still. Have you got a bank of songs that might form the skeleton of your next project or are you enjoying being in the ‘D.I.D' phase for the time being?
I actually do have a couple of songs that I decided not to release on ‘Dangerous in Denim' because I felt like they would be good to hold back for the next album. I'm always going to be putting out fun, high energy music that matches our shows – I want to play inside the C2C arena one day and you need big songs for that! We're writing the music to play there one day. There's a song written from my mum's perspective about my grandad teaching her to drive called ‘The Real Road' and that's going to be a special song that will be coming down the line in the future. It's about how the same lessons that you learn when you are learning to drive are also valuable in life full stop.
You mentioned playing the main stage at C2C and you also said in your Dutton Ranch set that you are coming back with a full band. When will that be?
We'll be coming back next year. We definitely have some things in the works around August next year and we can't wait to get back, already! (laughing) If any other opportunities arise before then we will get on a plane straight away! (laughing) We'll bring the whole band next time – it's great connecting with people in an acoustic way, we did the same out at CMA Fest but the band thing…… the energy is huge. My songs aren't really supposed to be played acoustic – you need the drums and the electric guitars! We want to make the UK and Europe a place where we connect with people and play regularly for them, this isn't going to be a one-and-done kinda thing at all.
Check out Max Jackson's fabulously fun album ‘Dangerous in Denim' in all the usual places right now.
