Sydney country music artist Coral Renee attended the CMMA Junior Academy of Country Music and been releasing singles since, her latest being ‘Pink is My Colour’. At Academy students not only have the chance to write songs and perform them at the graduation concert; they also learn about the business of music, and they form connections. Those connections make communities, and engender community mindedness amongst the artists.
While Academy may not have been at the top of Coral’s mind when she decided to put on a writers round show, Cowgirl Boots (named after one of her songs, ‘The Devil Wears Cowgirl Boots’), no doubt that sense of community was in her subconscious, because during the show on Friday 31 July at Low 302 in Sydney’s Surry Hills she essentially created a community of four artists on stage, with all the warm feeling and support that implies.
The three singer-songwriters joining her were country-folk artist Abigail Wighton, country-pop dynamo Amy Solylo, and Jessica Laffan, whom Coral met through the Talent Development Project, which is run for school students.
Wighton and Solylo have both released music. During the show Laffan mentioned – in passing – that she’s still at school, which prompted an ‘oooh’ from several audience members, including me, because her songs and guitar playing and singing certainly suggested that she was already well established (and one can become an established artist while still in school, but it remains a surprise!).
Having seen all of the artists bar Laffan live before, what I loved about this show was the chance to get to know both their songs and them in more depth. It wasn’t just about hearing the stories behind the songs; as the format of a writers round gives artists the opportunity to speak amongst themselves as well, we get a more well-rounded sense of them as artists. After each artist performed the song, the next would invariably have something to say about it – supportive in tone, and mindfully so, offering a perspective on the song just played rather than anything generic.
The show allowed me to discover that Solylo – whose released single is called ‘He Wants Me (Dead)’ – has a rich and imaginative vein of nihilism running through her songs, which are also highly entertaining. Wighton has long written songs that are wistful – an underrated quality in art – and which also reveal her to be quietly determined. Coral Renee played some new songs which are moving her sound and lyrics in a great direction with a sense of mission. And Laffan has a sense of the epic, in both writing and execution.
Musically and lyrically Cowgirl Boots offered variety: four artists who were very different to each other while being united by a drive to tell stories, entertain and create something together. It was interesting throughout, and inspiring to be part of, and hopefully Coral will keep running them, in Sydney and elsewhere.
