![]() Aptly, the instrument’s often given the nickname ‘the sad machine’. He was also pretty taken by the pedal steel players he’d hear on Main Street (“although all of them would be playing Seven Spanish Angels”). To cope, he’d lose himself fishing in the local rivers with his brother. “I grew up Catholic and the most useless emotion there is, is guilt.” “I didn’t really know who I was as a teenager and I had trouble with severe anxiety,” he says. In more innocent times, he was obsessed with Buddy Holly, dressing up in glasses to mime songs at family barbecues. “It’s only the ‘Country Music Capital of Australia’ for two weeks of the year,” he points out. Golledge grew up in Tamworth, where as a kid he felt the oppressive weight of the city’s conservatism and isolation. ![]() “You have to reflect on heavy events and understand,” Golledge says. Some of the songs have been percolating for years, but as the saying goes, it’s best to write from the scar, not the wound. Unsurprisingly, Strength of a Queen is real road-trip music, from the self-explanatory ‘Dreaming of a Highway’ to the Dylan-y ‘Love Like This’, and it’s not always an easy-going ride. There’s an element of danger that I learned over there that I’ve put in our music.” “In Australia it’s a persona or a performance, there it’s a way of life. “It made me understand country music on a different level,” Golledge says of that trip. For six months in his late-twenties, Golledge travelled the States in a van, clocking up around 20,000 kilometres that were plotted around the best fishing and op-shop spots, stopping for the night in Walmart parking lots. “I thought it was the best of both worlds.Īlthough visually there’s a lot of ’80s Australiana to Golledge’s aesthetic (and lyrically there are local references, such as to the Kurrajong Hotel and tumbling into lethargy in Newtown), Strength of a Queen is a solid homage to American country. “I always wanted to be an actor, then I picked up the guitar and realised I can express my emotions and also still perform,” Golledge says. You might recognise Caitlin’s name as the frontwoman of Caitlin Harnett and the Pony Boys, but actually Golledge’s whole band have their own bands – they’re what you’d call ‘lifers’. These are epic tracks, of cosmic country, crying-into-beer ballads, harmonising guitars (“guitarmonies” he calls that), righteous falsettos and sweet duets with Caitlin Harnett. But he needn’t have worried because the end result is reeling with big feelings. “The whole idea of constructing a record around a click track was so foreign to me because there’s no emotion there,” Golledge explains of putting off recording the album for so long. He’s even got a radio show, Country & Inner Western. The mission was to nail the unpredictability and energy of the live show – Golledge and his band have been barnstorming Sydney’s haunts for 15 years. His debut album, Strength of a Queen, was produced by Ryan Miller and John Vella, at the former Bowlo where Golledge slings schooners as a bartender. His name has practically become folklore in Sydney’s Inner West, both for the exhilarating unpredictability of his live shows and the curveballs of his repertoire, genre-hopping between ’60s country and ’80s Greatest Hits rock. If Golledge is only just now beeping onto your radar, we almost envy you the voyage of discovery. He has variously been sketched as “an intriguing man with a horny moustache”, “your old man back in the day”, “an alt-country superstar” and “trapped in a ’70s tuna fisherman’s body.” He says of the latter, “The MC at Dashville festival shouted that out across the crowd and I thought, I’ll accept that.” Andy Golledge invites a colourful description.
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