Why Beccy Cole rebelled: ‘I was this massive dyke getting told to ... show off my tits’
And, as always, Australia’s country music rebel plans to do things precisely her own way.
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Beccy Cole holds a pint and sits, clearly relaxed, by a fire at Thebarton’s Wheatsheaf Hotel. The logs are roaring, escaping the opening act of an Adelaide winter which is getting colder by the day.
Talk quickly turns to the rollercoaster ride of the past few months.
In no particular order this includes her Aussie Road Crew regional tour, a venture she embarked on directly after a triumphant appearance at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in April.
There Cole was inducted on to the Roll of Renown at the Australian Country Music Awards – arguably the highest individual honour the industry hands out – and hosted the awards with longtime friend and collaborator Adam Harvey. She later played to a sold out show of her own.
It was the highest of highs … following the lowest of lows.
Unbeknown to the crowds in Tamworth, Cole was lucky to have appeared at all.
Backed by family and friends, she spent time at a mental health retreat in Queensland.
There she undertook art therapy, music therapy – and even equine therapy.
Speaking about the retreat’s resident horses, she says: “I was cynical, but it was one of the most incredible things I have experienced, to be with horses who are so intuitive, they can feel what you’re going through.”
Now nestling into the pub, Cole is clearly energised and bubbly, a far cry from a few months earlier. She chats openly about growing up in Adelaide, her passion for the Crows (she’s a club ambassador), and the tenacity it took to “make it” in an industry which so often tried to pigeonhole her.
Of course she rebelled, but it wasn’t always easy as she grappled with her own sexual identity at a time when label executives were preoccupied with image and finding the next glamorous country music diva.
“I’ve had something like seven or eight managers, I seem to not be able to be told what to do,” Cole says, laughing, her cheeks beaming through that trademark smile.
“I’ve always rebelled against conformity; I think also in those early years I was doing so as an unwitting feminist. I come from a family of really strong and funny women and I didn’t ever want to be told that I needed to be sexy.
“All of this was happening at the same time I was discovering my sexuality – I was this massive dyke getting told to wear dresses and show off my tits!”
Ten studio albums and 11 Golden Guitar Awards later, she’s happy she stuck to her guns.
Cole turns 50 this year.
Born on October 27, 1972, at the Glenelg Community Hospital, she grew up in Blackwood. Hers was a house filled with music and the adoration she holds for her mother, Carole Sturtzel, an acclaimed country singer in her own right, who had met her father, Jeff Thompson, a saxophonist in a local rock band, The Strangers, is obvious.
“In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s you could be a big fish in a small pond, so Mum used to sing on all the music television shows which were being made here,” she says.
Cole wanted to emulate her mum but didn’t play much music in school; she says a music teacher in early high school even told her she wouldn’t amount to anything.
“I think this teacher had heard me make noise about wanting to be a singer like my mum,” she says. “She said I would never get anywhere because I was never interested in theory.
“I still can’t read music to this day, I’ve never needed to, but that isn’t something I spruik if I’m ever asked to play at schools!”
However she simply loved country music, with the new brand of country espoused by the likes of US group The Judds, the soundtrack to her childhood.
This wasn’t just straight country, but a new stream of music infused with rock and blues. And it was being done by a mother and daughter team.
“The only thing I can liken discovering them to is my dad’s story of when he first heard Elvis,” Cole says.
“As a saxophonist he only ever used to play swing, but coming home and hearing Hound Dog on the radio, he said he did a flip over his mother’s bed to turn it up. I felt like that. I’d always really liked country music and when this new sound came along which injected some blues and rock into the country, that’s when I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
“It was like The Eagles … being done by women. Hearing groups like The Judds and Reba McEntire, that’s when I got really excited.”
So she picked up a guitar and, as a child, started joining in with her mother’s popular country-rock band Wild Oats, going by the name Beccy Sturtzel. By the age of 14, she was the full-time guitarist.
“Mum’s band by that time was quite successful and would pack out the Duke of York Hotel on Currie St,” she says.
It was an exhilarating apprenticeship, with the band often playing four nights in a row throughout the mid to late ’80s.
“Mum’s band is where I cut my teeth, three four hour gigs a week on top of school, that’s how I learnt my chops,” Cole says.
“The gigs are what make you a performer, a lot of people can sing one song great and turn red chairs, but the hard slog, loading in, loading out, driving to Melbourne for one gig – that’s all so important.”
Then in 1990, she met another young up- and-coming country singer with a similar outlook on life.
Her name: Kasey Chambers.
A close friendship ensued, which has lasted tothis day, and the following year she would join Chambers’ father’s group Dead Ringer Band, which gained something of a nomad reputation by hunting and trapping rabbits and foxes that raided Nullarbor poultry farms, then selling the pelts.
“I met Kasey and her brother Nash and thought, ‘Wow, people my age who like country music’,” Cole says.
She got her first taste of the hard yards touring between regional towns across Australia, fell in love with the lifestyle and, in 1992, headed with the band to her first Tamworth Festival.
It was also a tough slog; they quickly realised they needed to do more than just show up and, instead, they began busking outside on busy Peel St.
“The crowd built up and built up each night we played, it was fantastic,” she says.
It proved to be a transformative experience.
Cole learned about the Star Maker talent quest, which she would come back to perform at the following year, signed with her first manager (Deniese Morrison), rebranded as Beccy Cole, went out on her own and embarked on a mission to make a name for herself at Australia’s country music capital.
“It was really nerve racking, I’d only ever been part of a line-up, I’d never been out the front,” she says.
It wasn’t easy. She had to confront debilitating anxiety which pushed her to the point of vomiting before performances.
The next year she won the quest and, as part of her prize, recorded a debut single, a song called Fooling Around.
“It was written by a Perth songwriter Mark Donahoe, he’s a great songwriter but this was a terrible song,” she says, laughing.
Still, it had the desired effect. It was well received and earned Cole her first Golden Guitar award at Tamworth the next year as best new talent. She might have thought she was on her way, but the hard work was just beginning.
“I never considered that I was going to be some solo ‘superstar’ or anything like that, I just wanted to play music no matter what,” she says.
“It was another seven years before my next Golden Guitar award after that; they’re actually really hard to win. It had just felt like a whirlwind, from busking, to the Star Maker, to the award, but after all that … that’s when the hard slog started.”
Now living away from family and friends in Sydney, surviving on “Vegemite sandwiches and working my ass off from there,” the now 21 year old began to struggle with feelings of isolation and badly missed the family dynamic she had in Dead Ringer Band.
“I missed that unit, I’d been thrust into a solo thing which I didn’t necessarily want at that point in my life,” she says. “There’s no camaraderie, I really missed being part of a band. Looking back I think that’s why there was a gap between bursting on to the scene in ’94, and not finding more success until later.”
Arriving at venues alone, Cole would hand out sheet music to house musicians who often turned their nose up at the young singer.
Throughout this period she also struggled with her lack of drive to have the sort of romantic relationships pushed upon her by her friends and peers.
It also didn’t help that she was made to feel like a product, not an artist.
“These managers wanted to send me to Nashville. I remember them basically saying it doesn’t matter what I sing like, it was all about the package,” she says.
“There was a push to objectify every female country singer who came up in the ’90s.
“That was the time where you did get slapped on the ass, you did get propositioned or told you’ll get played on the radio if you pash this guy. I refused all of that.”
She turned down her first opportunity to visit Nashville and harbours no regrets.
“I guarantee I would have just been a flash in the pan had I followed along with it,” she says.
There were bright spots, too, along the way.
In 1995, Cole toured with Australia’s king of country, Slim Dusty, instantly admiring his approach to touring, which saw him be a mate to all and any, an attitude which had a profound impact.
Then, while sharing a flat with fellow artist and lifelong friend Gina Jeffreys, she began a strong friendship with Mick Albeck, a prolific violinist on the country circuit.
Their humour and mutual affection eventually blossomed into a relationship. The pair married in 1997.
“We always got along really well, it was a real whirlwind and happened very quickly,” she says.
“We were always meant to be good mates and in each other’s lives, he’s a really talented and funny guy.”
In 1999 while in Nashville for meetings, Cole realised she was pregnant while watching country superstar, Ricky Skaggs. She named the baby Ricky Albeck.
The marriage only lasted 18 months, but the friendship has endured.
“We’re on great terms and almost never weren’t. The end of the marriage was almost a hiccup and had a lot to do with my discovery of my sexuality,” she says.
“If you ever wanted to have an ex-spouse, he’s the pick of them for me. None of the things we dug about each other has gone away since.”
As a single mum, Cole brought her newborn child on the road, with baby Ricky minded by his grandmother, as well as friends like Angry Anderson and Chambers, while mum hit the stage.
“There was a roster of friends and peers who would lend a hand, the bonds there are very strong,” Cole says.
“I feel very, very lucky, musically it’s never felt like a competition, we’re all in it together, the success of someone like Kasey or Keith Urban all helps the cause.
“In Golden Guitars you’re always up against someone you love.”
As her boy grew and her career continued to develop, she developed something she hadn’t felt since her days with Dead Ringer Band: a sense of community.
“I got a text from Troy Cassar-Daley today actually, asking how I was,” Cole says.
“That support is unending. That’s the world that I’m in and the world Ricky grew up in.”
That sense deepened when she took Ricky and moved to the NSW Central Coast – something of a mecca for like-minded artists, which was dubbed “hillbilly heaven”.
During those years, she also noticed a shift in attitude towards her as both an artist and a woman.
“I think Ricky actually saved me from that [the propositioning], because when I turned up as a single mum with a baby to shows, there wasn’t that element anymore,” she says.
“The focus became more about survival and honesty, which goes hand-in-hand with country music.
“I’d just had a divorce, I had a story to tell.”
Her first, self-titled, album was released in 1997, peaked at a disappointing No.122 on the ARIA charts and her label at the time, Sony, decided not to pursue a second album.
Undeterred, she was picked up by ABC Country and her second album, Wild at Heart, peaked at No.4 on the country charts.
The juggernaut had begun.
Over the next two decades she would release nine more albums, with six reaching the ARIA Top 10 Country Albums and Top 40 overall (not to mention the 11 Golden Guitars, which includes five for Female Artist of the Year). She also has more than a dozen No. 1 Australian country singles.
She built up strong performing relationships with Chambers, Adam Harvey, Cassar-Daley, Lee Kernaghan and more.
With her own shows going from strength to strength in the noughties, Cole landed support slots with country giants Tom T. Hall, The Bellamy Brothers and Willie Nelson, all the while building her own portfolio and heading her own tours.
In 2005 she accepted an invitation from Angry Anderson to play for Australian troops in Iraq.
Moving through war zones in military vehicles under guard, she gained deep respect for those serving abroad, was deeply moved by the experience and went on to write her most successful song, Poster Girl, about a soldier she spoke to separated from his wife and baby daughter.
“It’s ironic that song went on to be my most successful because it’s actually about playing that pin-up role I avoided for all those years,” Cole says.
Once home, despite performing the song at a multitude of events including the AFL Anzac Day match, she stopped short of playing the song for US President George W. Bush in 2007, fearing the song’s meaning would be misconstrued as advocacy for conflict.
She maintains it was written solely for Australian Diggers and their families.
Cole was watching an ABC documentary in 1999 about a female soccer teamwhen she had an epiphany: I am gay.
Suddenly everything – her divorce, her relationships, her inner struggles – made sense.
She came out to family and friends at first but it would be another 13 years before she worked up the courage to do so publicly.
In 2012, with a career booming and after much deliberation, she came out on the ABC’s Australian Story.
Nervously watching the program, she awaited the public response.
It was the opposite of what she had anticipated.
“I thought I’d lose these beautiful, seemingly conservative outback people,” she says.
“The relief was palpable, none of the things I feared came true or happened; what people appreciated was being honest.
“Some people say we’re striving for a time when you don’t have to come out, but you can’t be what you can’t see.
“Especially for regional Australia where gay people may be more isolated and it’s still quite difficult, I think it’s important to put yourself out there.”
The same year, Cole met and performed with cabaret singer Libby O’Donovan.
They fell in love and the couple moved back to Adelaide in 2015 and were married in 2018.
Earlier this year, she told this author that the relationship which, from the outside looking in, appeared so idyllic, had collapsed.
“It went from a beautiful life to a really unfortunate situation,” she said at the time.
“I felt so unworthy and didn’t feel worthy of my life. That is a horrible thing to say now because I feel so much more in front of it, but that’s the reality.”
She spoke at length about the range of therapies she underwent as her condition continued to decline.
“The mention of equine therapy made me a little bit cynical,” she says.
“But it was one of the most incredible things I have experienced, to be with horses who are so intuitive, they can feel what you’re going through.”
During regular sessions with a psychologist, Cole says she began to regain her voice. “Ultimately you have to be the one who pulls yourself out of the quicksand, the staff helped guide me, but you had to do the work,” she says.
“On my last day at the facility I brought my guitar to the horses and sang. This miniature horse named Sparkles came and put her head on my lap as I was singing. It was like she was saying, ‘You’re back, you’ve got your voice back’.”
In reply, O’Donovan said at the time she would cherish the nine years the pair spent together. “It is my hope always that our respect and love for each other continues as we navigate the next chapter,” O’Donovan said.
Today, Cole appears far more at ease, even poking fun at the equine therapy which she had assumed was a load of “crap” but obviously ended up being of great value.
“My humour has always been so self-deprecating too which is such a great Aussie tradition, I laugh at myself first,” she says.
Now it’s back to the music and Cole is midway through recording a second album with longtime friend and country colleague Adam Harvey. “While I was initially dealing with the separation Adam asked what he could do to help, and I said, ‘tour with me later this year’, knowing that it would be lucrative for both of us and help get me back on track,” Cole says.
“I’ve always loved touring with Adam, I think we’ve done about 12 national tours together. He’s my go to and I’m his.”
The duo will tour the country in support of the album from September this year.
“My psychologist always tells me to look at what the world is showing you,” Cole says.
“I was lucky enough to receive the highest honour a musician can be given in country music in this country and now an OAM; the contrast is laughable.
“It’s almost like you’re going to take that [the marriage] away from me, universe, and now give me this?”
Cole says the OAM was the cherry on the cake of a slow and steady rebuild. “Getting that says, ‘We recognise your years of work towards what you love’. I think that part of it is the most rewarding, it’s validation,” she says.
Beyond the new record she will also be looking to write and record new material in the near future.
“I’ll never forget that I was told from someone quite high up that I’m a female in the music industry so I have a use- by date,” she says.
“I have always wanted to prove that theory wrong.
“When you look at the way artists are revered in the US well into their 70s, I think it’s a great age for knowing who you are and what you want to say.”
Cole gets up and exits the pub. We head around the corner for a quick tour of her grandmother’s historic house in Thebarton. Then she’s off on her next adventure. Regardless of trends, expectations, stereotypes, one thing is for sure: Cole will ignore all of this and simply do it her way.
“I’ve always been with country. I was there when people hated it … but people tend to think it’s all right these days,” she says.
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