Still Call Australia, Er ... Austria

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday January 15, 1999

BRUCE ELDER

Over the past decade Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Wylie and the Wild West Show, John Berry, Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis have all been wheeled out to persuade Australian country music fans that they should really love some multi-million selling cowboy or cowgirl who calls Nashville home. And, in spite of the money involved (the publicity budget to convince us all to love Garth Brooks was well over $1 million), they have all failed.

But no, January would not be complete without the arrival of some new hopeful. This year's model is Pam Tillis. She is the daughter of Mel Tillis and, after six albums, she has sales in excess of six million records in the US, has had five number-one hits on the US country music charts and has won the Country Music Association's Vocalist of the Year. She's a major US country music talent. So why is she coming to Australia to play the Goulburn Soldiers Club, the Yallah Woolshed and the West Tamworth Leagues Club?

"I think the better question would be, 'Why not?' But it's true that a lot of artists want to go global and it is fun to go to different places around the world. No-one has preconceived notions about me in Australia. There's a certain amount of freedom that comes with that," she replies down the telephone line from her home in Nashville. She then reveals that she doesn't know any Australian country acts ("but I have a pile of CDs which I'm planning to listen to on the plane ... I hear it's a really long flight") and that she is only bringing her keyboard player and lead guitarist and picking up a local band, so she will "do what we have to do" to get them up to pace to perform her songs quickly.

It is such a strange way to operate. Why bother to try and crack a small market like Australia when you are so successful in a huge and receptive market like the US? It is hard not to feel the dead hand of managers and over-zealous record companies on a such a project. Maybe one day someone will go and talk to the Nashville spin doctors and explain to them that Australian country music lives in a very different land and that success in both the US and Australia is purely accidental. Till then, expect to see more wide-eyed Nashville hopefuls dreaming of Tamworth success.

Pam Tillis plays at the Sweeney's, Ingleburn, on Sunday.