For many years I’ve dreamed about recording an album of original songs, and I’d always imagined doing that at the Lindsay Butler Studios (LBS). Until recently, I believed it would only ever be a dream, but then the most remarkable series of events in 2012 saw me make it through to the top 10 of Channel 7’s the X Factor. It changed my life. It gave me the confidence to pick up the phone and call Lindsay Butler, OAM. After meeting with the LBS team late last year, I was pleasantly surprised that they were happy to take me on board as one of their artists.

The most significant thing to happen from my time on the X Factor was the reconnection with my beautiful children, who had been unfairly taken and hidden from me for many years. Now that I have my children back in my life, I’ve been flooded with musical inspiration to write and sing. Consequently, most of the material that we’ve chosen for the album is family orientated. We didn’t set out for it to be a Family album, but it started steamrolling down that path when the LBS team asked me to write a song for the album about the reconnection with my daughters. That night I wrote A Father’s Love Will Do, and from that point on, it set the theme and tone for the rest of the album.

All the songs I’ve written for the album are about family relationships, dynamics and stories: the exceptions being Ochre Man (an Indigenous song about ancestors and Dreaming) and Christmas Cowboy (which is about missing your family). We included these songs because they are still related to family and blood ties, but also because these two songs won me the Queensland Champion of Champions Song Writers Award in 2012 (first and second place). Like Christmas Cowboy, two other songs, From the Mountain Top (a yodelling song) and Come On Home (an uptempo Latin number) are songs about longing for missing loved ones.

We’ve earmarked a couple of cover songs for the album, and Shaza Leigh has co-written a beautiful song with Manfred Vijars, which also has an Indigenous and familial theme, which I’m hopeful will end up as one of the duets on the album. It’s a stunning piece of music: it gave me goosebumps when I first heard it.

All in all, I couldn’t be more excited and pleased about how my first album is shaping up. I wasn’t able to show my true musical colours on the X Factor, but I’m hopeful this album will demonstrate that I can write and sing good Australian country material.

                                                                                                                                                                        Hugs,
           
                                                                           Justin.