For most people who see me play live around Cowra and the Central West, I’m the guy with the guitar playing all the songs they know and love. But before the clubs, the weddings, and the weekend crowds, I was a songwriter and that part of me has never really gone away.
I started writing songs back in the early to mid 90s while carving out a path in the Australian country music scene. Influenced heavily by American artists like Garth Brooks and Brooks & Dunn, I poured everything into my own songs and found myself collecting a few regional songwriting awards along the way. Some of those early tunes made it onto big stages during the Tamworth Country Music Festival, where I got to share them with large crowds of country fans. One song even made it as background music on the Kerri-Anne midday show years later! haha
As the decade turned, I stepped away from the scene and from writing altogether. Life had other plans for a while. Then, around 2004, the itch came back, but something was different. This time it wasn’t about fitting a genre or chasing a career. I started experimenting with recording, with tones, textures, and rock influences. It became less about the words and more about the sound. That experimental phase taught me more about music than I realised at the time. But don’t get me wrong… those recordings were, let’s say, not great. Lol. But this was also a time when I had become a professional musician and the bills had to be paid. Cover music does that, pays the bills. So to be able to do music for a living, I put all my time into cover gigs at clubs, pubs, weddings, parties, etc and songwriting took a back seat.
Fast forward to today, and songwriting has found its way back into my life again. Only now, it’s deeply personal. My new songs are reflections of real experiences: love, the IVF journey my wife and I have been through, and even the ongoing battle with depression. These songs aren’t just tunes; they’re pieces of my story that I hope my children and their children can one day listen to and understand who I was, and what I felt.
Next week, I’ll be releasing a short EP titled The Songs That Almost Got Away. It’s a small collection of recordings from that experimental period roughly 20 years ago: Songs that were never meant to see the light of day but somehow found their way back to me, so I figured I would share them with you!
Then, on November 27, something truly special is coming. I’ll be releasing a brand new duet — a song that means a great deal to both me and my “sister-from-another-mister,” duet partner. It’s one of those songs that hits hard (at least it does for me!) about depression and having someone standing by you through it all. The release will coincide with Aus Music T-Shirt Day and we hope to be performing it on the night of “Play It Forward” at the Cowra Civic Centre (more on that to come).
I’m excited to finally share these sides of myself again. Being known as a cover muso has been a huge part of my journey, but songwriting is where it all began and where it’s headed once more.
Stay tuned for the releases and thank you to everyone who continues to support Shane Kerr Music.