TRIPLE Toyota Country Music Award winner Adam Brand is making his way through the Hunter in March for four shows as part of a national tour.
The tour will take in the Muswellbrook RSL on March 7, Hexham Bowling Club on March 8, East Cessnock Bowling Club on March 9 and Belmont 16 Footers Sailing Club on March 10.
At the awards in Tamworth Brand took out Song Of The Year for Good Things In Life, and scored Male Artist Of The Year and Album Of The Year for Good Friends. Since his three awards sales of his latest album Good Friends have steadily increased.
It was already gold and inching towards platinum before the awards.
After the chart topping success of Good Friends and Beating Around The Bush, Good Things In Life is the third single from Adam Brand's second album Good Friends. Over the two brief years since Brand burst onto the Australian country music scene the public have come to know him as a congenial, fresh-faced and cheeky lad from Western Australia with a love of friends, family and anything with wheels and a motor.
Only now with the release of Good Things In Life does the public learn he was married at a very young age and that it didn't work out.
It was with this song that Brand found his highlight of the 2001 festival, aside from bagging a handful of awards.
Co-written with country great Graeme Connors, Brand was given the opportunity to perform with the same man he had looked up to - and still does - in the earlier days of his music career.
At a separate songwriters awards also in Tamworth, Brand and Connors donned an acoustic guitar and a stool each, and played the song that tells the story of a couple whose marriage at a young age did not work, but through the pain of the separation are able to wish each other well, just the way they wrote it.
It was not the first time that Brand had worked with Connors.
Soon after Brand signed a publishing deal with Rondor music Graeme Connors joined the youngster to collaborate on what became Here and There. Though much of Brand's material to date has been biographical, Good Things In Life is the first time we've had a deep look into his personal life.
It's no surprise to learn that he is able to reflect on it with a positive point of view.
'We all make mistakes but we should be able to look at them as lessons and move on,' Brand said.
With Good Times he has also taken a leap in rejecting the cliche that country songs 'make you cry in your beer'.
'I don't want to sing about heart break or things dying, I want my music to be uplifting.'
On the album Brand also did some writing with country music larrikin Colin Buchanan. Brand's obsession with motor sport has recently earned him a lucrative sponsorship deal with Ford Australia, who have enlisted him to help promote the popular XR8 ute and the F Series ute due in July this year.
After over 100 shows last year and not many less planned for 2001, therein lies his secret to success.
'I subscribe to the theory that the harder I work the luckier I get and I've been pretty lucky,' the 31-year-old said.
'I'm not really a studio junkie, I get my buzz from being in front of people.'
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