It has been 25 years since Aussie country music icon Lee Kernaghan released his hit album The Outback Club, and it went “in a flash” of rural towns, country pubs and yarns with the locals.
“Every song is like a memory and for me another sort of chapter in my life and the thing that is really gratifying is the way that a lot of those songs have touched people’s lives and hearts and families and it’s become a big part of their life too,” Kernaghan said.
“I’d say that probably 90 per cent of the good song ideas I come up with – there’s a lot of bad ones – the good ones come from the people I met and shared a drink with … when I’m out there on the road.”
He said there was no such thing as a bad country pub, yet entering the business as a publican himself was not his best idea.
“There was a time in my life, there was a rush of blood and a mate of mine, we dived in, probably into water much deeper than we thought we were diving into,” Kernaghan said.
Kernaghan said he bought the only pub in Australia with an indoor bull-riding arena.
“[We] turned that into an entertainment mecca and, well, it kind of took over my life,” he said.
Among managing staff finances, insurance, sell-out shows with Keith Urban and not to mention, cattle, it became “too big to handle”.
“I’ve got some great memories of that. Many of them were in the cloud of some pretty big hangovers,” Kernaghan said.
The The Outback Club album was his first big break at 27 years old.
He went from riding horses, motorbikes and shooting slug guns in the Riverina in “a fairly kind of normal kind of country kid upbringing” to having about 36 number one hits.
“Dad was driving trucks and singing the odd song. My grandfather, Pat, was a drover of sheep and cattle for 50 years,” the musician said, now based in south-east Queensland.
A significant change in 25 years for Kernaghan has been the size of the crowds.
“I think I had 12 people to my first show and that included three people from the record company so it’s been great to see things take off,” he said.
Kernaghan is inviting “all members of the outback club” to his Boys from the Bush concert at Kernot Hall, Morwell on Friday, June 1 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Outback Club.
For tickets phone the box office on 5176 3333.
