Telstra Road to Tamworth is a national competition which has been providing an outlet for aspiring country music stars since it began in 2004. The competition traverses the nation with twenty heats in various regional locations throughout the year, coming to a close with the grand final series at the annual Tamworth Country Music Festival with the finals held at at the Toyota Country Theatre.
I first took notice of this competition yesterday when I saw a brief advertisement searching for competitors. Seeing as we have been researching Country Music I thought I would take a look at it. On the website where entry details are submitted is a video of a young man singing a song. He was the winner of last years competition and I instantly loved the song. I definatley want listen to some more of his music!!
It turns out the guy singing the song is Morgan Evans and he is from Newcastle! Out of 700 entrants he was the winner. As part of his prize Morgan gets to record a single, perform in Nashville and produce a video clip.
Newcastle generally seems to be a very patriotic town. The radio stations, for example NXfm, are always talking about locals on television shows such as the Biggest Loser, Big Brother and Australian Idol and they will always try to get the towns support behind them. I’m sure that when Morgan won the competition it was on the local news channels and papers, but why haven’t we heard of him since?? Why aren’t the local radios getting behind him and playing his music? I really enjoyed his song and I think many other people will as well.
Click on the link and have a listen.
By Rachelle Fenning
I totally agree with you. Why don’t we know about him. Its bad enough that the mainstream doesn’t know about country music, but its really bad that in Newcastle we don’t even know that one of our own is hitting the big time. Novocastrians should know about this guy! If he was on Idol or something we would know about him, so why should it be any different just because he is in the country genre?