LEAD guitarist Brodie Rainbird said the Wolfe Brothers were proof that the music that parents exposed their young children to could have a lifelong influence.
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As teenagers, Rainbird and his bandmates Tom and Nick Wolfe, preferred to listen to music that was very different to the country rock that the Tasmanian band has become known for.
“Growing up, you want to listen to Guns and Roses, Warrant, Van Halen and Mettalica, especially,” Rainbird said.
“But we ended up coming full circle and coming back to what we grew up on and what our parents were listening to which, of course, was country music.”
And Australia is glad they did.
The Wolfe Brothers have released their fourth studio album, Country Heart, and have embarked on a national tour to promote the record.
The tour will take the band to The Entrance Leagues Club for a gig on Friday, September 7.
Rainbird said the band had taken a new approach to recording the album, and the result, he hoped, would reflect a maturing of the band.
Previous recording sessions were approached like a “bull at a gate”, he said.
“We’d ende up with a fairly heavy-fisted rock sound.
“With this one we wanted to show a bit more restraint, and pull things back a bit.”
Producer Matt Fell helped to facilitate the new approach.
“One song we wrote was supposed to be is the style of Steve Earle - a Copperhead Road kind of song – but we realised it just didn't fit on the album. It was like a square peg in a round hole,” Rainbird said.
Fell intervened and suggested playing the song very differently.
“We ended up recording the song in a way that we would never have thought of, and it ended up being the first single, Ain’t Seen It Yet.”
The Wolfe Brothers have enjoyed more than six years of touring with Lee Kernaghan. Hitting the road as the headlining act was different to what many people suspected, Rainbird said.
“It’s definitely not as wild as people think it is. If you want to take this seriously, it’s not a party,” he said.
“The boys and I are often trying to get away from a gig as quickly as we can, to get to bed and get some sleep so that we can keep doing this, week after week.”