The Wolfe Brothers: country music success built on friendship
Three childhood friends set out to conquer the local pub playing cover songs. A decade later Tasmania’s The Wolfe Brothers are one of Australia’s biggest acts in country music
Backstage at the Golden Guitar awards in Tamworth on Australia Day 2019, a Tasmanian band named The Wolfe Brothers can’t quite believe what has just transpired. After previously clocking up 13 nominations at the annual celebration of excellence in country music, the musicians had started to become sadly used to walking away with nothing.
“I won’t lie — we’ve had some pretty rough Sundays leaving this town,” singer-guitarist Nick Wolfe tells Review, shaking his head at those memories. “Whilst at the time it feels almost devastating, you go away, dust yourself off, write better songs and play better — and then eventually, this happens.”
This is the night where that drought broke in a rather dramatic fashion. Across the course of the evening, the trio — brothers Nick and Tom Wolfe, and childhood mate Brodie Rainbird — was called to the stage on four occasions, to accept awards for song of the year, album of the year, contemporary country album of the year and group of the year.
The 2019 Golden Guitars might as well have been renamed Year of the Wolfe, then. Significantly, the group’s fourth album, Country Heart, was written and recorded with an overarching theme in mind: home, which for the Wolfe family is in Neika, 13km southwest of Hobart.
The album’s memorable opening track — and song of the year, according to the Golden Guitars judges — is Ain’t Seen It Yet, whose stunning music video was filmed at the Wolfe berry farm, Fairy Glen, which has been in the family since 1899. Its opening lines are taken from the pages of Nick and Tom’s lives:
Everybody ’round here knows my last name
It’s written on the road sign and written on the gate
Right around six there’s a red sunset
If there’s anything better, man I ain’t seen it yet
Even while cradling a couple of the biggest awards in Australian country music, Rainbird is looking to the future. “We always want to push ourselves,” says the lead guitarist. “After making an album that we were so passionate about, and happy with — how do we get up again, to the next thing?”
Before they head out into the hot Tamworth night to toast their success, Tom Wolfe says: “We’ve started writing another album, but this one’s been so well embraced, there’s a mixture of nerves and excitement. We tried new things on this album, and we really pushed ourselves — and to see that pay off the way it has paid off … I’m excited about where we’re going to go, and where the songs are going to go. Who knows what the next album’s going to hold?”
In June, Review visits Fairy Glen on a rare Saturday evening when the band members happen to be at home and not performing in some far-flung corner of the country.
It’s wintertime, so the berry vines are bare but the grounds are fertile with unseen creativity: the three musicians are excited and a little nervous about an upcoming writing trip to Nashville.
While offering a tour around a small slice of the 16ha property, they exhibit a blend of confidence and uncertainty familiar to many artists, where they think they’ve got something potentially great — but there’s no way of measuring that greatness until they get into the studio, lay down the parts and then put their newest art out into the world.
Besides those fresh songwriting shoots, the Wolfe Brothers have just recently begun a tour that will take them far and wide, as support act and backing band for singer-songwriter Lee Kernaghan and his 15th album, Backroad Nation. By the time the tour is done, they’ll have ticked off nearly 50 gigs, and in effect almost 100 performances, since each concert demands that they play twice.
In a sense, the roads, venues and airports of regional Australia have become almost as familiar as the family farm, as the band has worked alongside Kernaghan since 2013, while nurturing its own career in tandem.
Kernaghan first saw the group on TV on Australia’s Got Talent. In the kitchen, over fresh-baked scones and berry jam, the trio reflects on what it experienced that night in Tamworth at the start of the year.
“It’s really fired us up,” says Tom. “And now we’re thinking things like what Lee (Kernaghan) does; maybe it’s from years of watching him do it. At our gigs, it’s ‘how can we make this better? how can we play this better?’. For me, that’s not work at all. I love thinking about that. Doing gigs, man — that’s the easiest friggin’ job in the world.”
The bassist points outside, through the darkness, to where some of the farming equipment is kept. “There’s a push rotary hoe in that shed,” he says. “If you ever get any ego — or anything develops on the road — I encourage anyone to come and push that thing for an hour. It’s such a prick of a thing that it’ll bring you down to earth pretty quick.”
More than a decade ago, the biggest dream on their shared list of career goals was to become a premium cover band at a pub called Irish Murphy’s, in Hobart’s Salamanca Place. After successfully landing that 11pm gig, the goalposts have been steadily pushed further and further back with each passing year.
As matriarch and No 1 Wolfe Brothers fan, what has it been like for the Wolfemother to watch it all unfold from up close?
“These boys have really gone from me being the roadie, and playing tin sheds, and at a B&S (ball), and excited that they’ve got their first gig in Hobart, to doing what they’re doing now,” Lee Wolfe replies with abundant pride. “It’s ‘pinch yourself’ stuff.”
Backstage again, but this time in a much less salubrious locale than the Golden Guitar awards: when Review reconnects with The Wolfe Brothers in early September, the trio — plus touring drummer Casey Kostiuk — is squeezed into a small dressing room at a venue in the northern suburbs of Queensland’s capital.
The Kedron-Wavell Services Club is rather far removed from the trendier music venues of Brisbane’s inner city. Sitting on the bar is an ageing example of the $20 cheese platter available for purchase; posters lining the walls advertise upcoming tribute shows for artists such as Elton John, Doris Day and ABBA, while downstairs, directly under the live room, a battalion of poker machines is being busily poked and prodded.
Yet on this Sunday night, there are about 300 people gathered here, keen to take in some rock ’n’ roll-flavoured country music. After the band plays a tidy and well-received half-hour support slot, Lee Kernaghan drops by the tiny dressing room to greet the musicians, and Review asks the headliner about his backing band.
“It’s not like they’re behind me — it’s like we’re side by side,” he says. “Brothers in arms, really. It’s just been phenomenal. I’ve always said, from the day I saw them on TV: they are the hottest band in the land. Now they’ve got the Golden Guitars to prove it. When it rains Golden Guitars, you know something pretty special is going on.”
To break the awkwardness of listening in as the veteran country singer-songwriter — and, in effect, their touring boss — pays the Tasmanian musicians a massive compliment, Tom Wolfe pretends to reach for his wallet. “I’ll give you that fifty, mate …” he begins, and the room dissolves into laughter. As the clock ticks down toward the night’s closing act, Review is welcomed into Kernaghan’s dressing room for a touring tradition.
“When I first started working with the Wolfe Brothers, it was a baptism of fire because our first show was the Deni Ute Muster with about 20,000 people,” he explains. “We were completely untested. It started on that night: the boys said, ‘Lee, come on in, this is something that we always do’. They brought me into their huddle — and now, before every single show that we’ve done, there’s always the huddle and then the Fireball. So here’s to a great one, fellas — take no prisoners.”
Every member of the touring party group gives a cheer and downs a Fireball whisky shot, then takes a few moments to retreat into whatever personal headspace they require before taking to the stage. If there’s an element of fatigue associated with pulling double duty each night of this extensive national tour, then the Wolfe Brothers hide it well: in the midst of a well-oiled machine, each musician is a reliable, talented foil to the main man in the black hat, who works and charms the crowd like the seasoned pro he is.
So many things have gone their way in 2019 that the three musicians know the Year of the Wolfe will be hard to top. Yet not too long ago, they held no bigger dreams than building the reputation, chops and repertoire to fill a near-midnight cover band slot in a Hobart pub. Unafraid of hard work, they know there’s no point in simply waiting around for things to happen to them.
Which is why, in the spirit of striking while the iron’s hot, the group recently announced an inaugural two-day, self-produced event named Wolfefest, for which it has booked some artists to play on a bill it is headlining. The idea is that the event will become a regular outdoor festival, held in a different location each summer, that draws in country music fans from near and far.
And the very first Wolfefest will be held — where else? — in Tasmania.
The Wolfe Brothers perform at Wolfefest 2020 at Forth Pub and St Helens RSL, Tasmania on January 4 and 5, followed by national tour dates including Tamworth (January 24) through to March.
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