From Keith Urban to rodeo riding cowboy: Introducing country music’s next new rising stars

Wade Forster, who was this week crowned the 2024 Toyota Star Maker at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, is a real-life rodeo-riding Queensland cowboy.

He works as a station hand on the family 24,281-hectare cattle station near Winton, competes as a professional rodeo circuit rider all over the country, loves to sing, and taught himself guitar.

The Australia Day Live program on Friday will feature 2023 Toyota Star maker winner Loren Ryan performing ‘Flame Trees’ in language, accompanied by William Barton on didgeridoo and Rex Goh on guitar.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

“I worked in refrigeration in Mount Isa for about three years. Up there I didn’t have many friends, so I picked up a guitar off Facebook Marketplace for $50 and taught myself to play from YouTube and the rest is history,” said the 25-year-old, the freshly branded winner of the competition that launched Keith Urban’s career.

“I guess dad’s going to have to find a new ringer now,” he said after bursting into tears when he was declared winner on Sunday.

“I love country music, I grew up in the country I played in the mud when it was flooded, when it was dry, I worked to save cattle and horses. I can sing about the droughts, the floods and the fires ’cause I’ve lived through it all.”

A rodeo rider from a young age, Forster’s fearless and a natural entertainer. He wrote one of his winning songs, Rodeo Romeo, based on the love story of friends he met on the circuit. Rodeo riding is also the reason he ended up singing on stage with US country music singer-songwriters Cody Johnson and Luke Combs when they toured here last year.

Johnson put out a call to take part in an Australian rodeo, while on tour. Forster replied to him on TikTok asking him to join him in a competition in Queensland. They competed in steer wrestling and while they did not win, Johnson heard Forster sing and asked him to join the tour on stage at Rod Laver Arena.

Winner of the 2024 Toyota Star Maker talent quest at Tamworth, Wade Forster.

“We sang on stage in front of 25,000 people which is more than the pub gig I had the week before in Mount Isa at the golf club and a crowd of 50 ... so it was definitely a step-up.”

Winning the most prestigious talent quest for young Australian country music singers is also a step up, as it has been since the competition began in 1979.

As well as Urban, who won in 1990 and released his first album the following year, other winners include Lee Kernaghan, James Blundell, Travis Collins, and Samantha McClymont, who along with sisters Mollie and Brooke form the trio The McClymonts.

For the 2023 winner, Indigenous singer and Tamworth-raised Loren Ryan, it was life-changing and a chance to teach audiences around the country some of the Gamilaroi language she is so passionate about preserving.

“It’s propelled me onto a level that would have taken me years to get to on my own. I feel like a star when I walk down the street and people recognise me,” the 30-year-old singer said.

When she claimed the title in January 2023, she was the first Tamworth-born winner to do so at the festival that started in 1973. Since winning, she has sung at country music festivals across the nation, as a support act for hip-hop star Urthboy, (aka Tim Levinson of The Herd fame) and Fanny Lumsden, as well as opened for her hero, fellow country singer Troy Cassar-Daley. It also gave her the opportunity for her first overseas trip, to the United States to perform in Nashville.

“No one in my family has ever travelled internationally I felt like I carried the love and the spirit of my family with me as the first to go overseas,” she said.

As a single mother of a six-year-old, after winning the 2023 competition she kept her daughter Charlie out of school this past year so they could tour together.

“I’m born and raised in Tamworth so I’ve always had a soft spot for country music. And growing up in an Indigenous community, any given Friday you can drive around with the windows down and hear all the country greats – Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson – coming out of the houses. It’s just something we love. At home the TV was quite often on the country music channel.”

Winner of the 2023 Toyota Tamworth Country Music Festival Star Maker Loren Ryan.

Her grandfather played guitar and sang country songs by the likes of Jimmy Little, but she always felt “playing guitar was something only for men”.

Her three older sisters – including one with Down syndrome – have been a huge influence on her musical tastes, from introducing her to Destiny’s Child to Carrie Underwood, and encouraging her to pick up a guitar and sing – the first female in the family to do so.

Her elder sisters have been key supporters – driving her to talent development projects – including the Schools Spectacular in Sydney.

As part of the Australia Day 2024 Program, country music singer Loren Ryan will perform ‘Flame Trees’ in language, accompanied by William Barton on didgeridoo and Rex Goh on guitar.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

“They took me seriously and all they wanted from me in return was to see me flourish,” she said.

“My sister closest in age to me – L’tisha – has Down syndrome and we grew up as best friends. We’d always do home concerts singing, but she was always in the spotlight – I was always very shy, but I looked at her with no inhibitions and thought I wanted that.”

Ryan’s parents are from Walgett but moved to Tamworth for access to medical resources for her sister, and there she learnt about her mother tongue at school.

“I grew up in a time when language wasn’t encouraged or respected. Mum taught me a handful of words, but I wanted to learn more. When I got into year 7 a group of us were handed Gamilaroi language dictionaries and told if we didn’t learn, the Gamilaroi language could die out in our generation.

“I felt a huge responsibility to learn it and to connect more deeply with my culture.

“As I was so shy I locked myself in my bedroom for a long time until I got my ‘brave up’ thanks to a karaoke competition at the police citizen youth club (PCYC) and sang in public for the first time.”

She did not know it at the time but Roger Knox, known as “Black Elvis” who sings in the Gamilaroi language, was in the audience. He became one of her first champions who encouraged her to sing.

Now she has a dozen or so songs she sings in language and has recorded a children’s album to help teach it.

On Friday as part of Australia Day Live, she will appear at the Sydney Opera House singing the chorus of Cold Chisel classic Flame Trees in Gamilaroi language.

“While I still feel mixed emotions around the day I feel like it’s better to not be hidden or silent and my presence is better than none,” she said.

“When you think of the history of the language and how they tried to stop us from singing it, it is important to remember this is a language that has survived, despite everything, for thousands of years. I’ve often stopped in gigs and waited for the room to fall silent, so the language gets the respect it deserves.”

The writer travelled to Tamworth Country Music Festival as a guest of Toyota Australia.

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