With four CMAA Golden Guitar nominations, international acclaim, and a plethora of chart-topping singles, Sarah Grace Buckley has spent a little over a decade as a member of sibling group The Buckleys.
Fast forward to now, and she’s making an exciting solo step into the spotlight with debut track Tequila & Mexico arriving today.
"It's kind of a surreal feeling,’ Buckley admits. “I honestly never thought I would be doing a solo project.
“It all kind of came about toward the end of last year, and it's just been a bit of a rapid snowball since then."
Noting that the project wasn’t really ever on the cards, Buckley explains that it came to life during a songwriting session in Brisbane, a time where she’d usually write songs for other artists.
“It was an APRA AMCOS Songhub, and it was around the time of BIGSOUND, and some of the writing scenarios were like, ‘Oh, this is probably too pop for The Buckleys, this isn’t creatively the right fit,” she explains. “So I was kind of sneakily just writing as if I was writing for myself as the artist."
What came out, she says, are "some of my favourite songs I've ever written"
“I wrote these songs, and they're honestly some of my favorite songs that I've ever written, and just so me. These songs were kind of much more personal and felt a bit more authentic, so I kind of started mentioning the idea to a few different people in the industry.
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“My agent, Raechel [Whitchurch], had actually said that previously as well. ‘It'd be interesting to hear you do a solo thing as well’, then Raechel introduced me to Matt [Walters] at UNIFIED, and then yeah, we just hit it off.
“Everything is kind of just aligned at the perfect time, I think,” she adds. “And for where The Buckleys are as well. It just all came together really nicely, and feels really positive.”
Writing for herself changed the way that Buckley approached the songs. Her younger siblings, Lachlan and Molly, aren’t facing the same experiences and inspirations as she is.
“When you’re in a band, you have to have those considerations, this time it’s literally just me pouring my heart out,” she explains. “That was a really nice and refreshing thing to do.”
Buckley’s debut track, Tequila & Mexico, first came to life a few years back. It was written in Nashville with two icons of the country music world, Troy Verges and Matt McVaney, who have been behind records for Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan, Kane Brown, and Lauren Alaina.
Nashville, Sarah notes, is all it seems when it comes to country music. Fittingly, she describes the Tennessee capital as "the most inspiring place for a country artist to be”.
“There’s so much music happening all around you, it’s a community of songwriters and musicians,” she explains. "Most of the people you meet, even your Uber driver, or someone working at a cafe, are also songwriters or musos.”
As a performer, Buckley has built some strong connections in the Nashville industry as well. “I was really lucky to have been embraced by that songwriting community, and taken under the wing of some really incredible songwriters that I had grown up listening to,” she explains.
“Relationships with those kinds of people have changed my life and really steered me in the right direction. It feels like home in a lot of ways musically.”
Tequila & Mexico was a song that came to life during an early Nashville session, and was revisited during a recent trip.
“I had that song, and we re-recorded it, but there was something in the demo Matt produced all that time ago that was just magic,” Buckley recalls. “So we ended up not using the re-recording and just finishing the demo.
“It was pretty much already there, Matt polished it up a bit. So that’s a song I’ve had in my back pocket for like five years,” she adds with a laugh.
With music in the pipeline, Sarah now starts to look at the live stage, and with a gig in Tamworth on the cards, there’s a lot of excitement in the air about it all.
“The live show has been one of the things I've been most excited about across this whole project,” she admits. “I feel across the board with everything, and it’s like being a new artist in the sense that it’s a blank slate.
“The Buckleys’ (live show) is super fun, but it’s a very well oiled machine, we’re all in each other's pockets and know exactly what’s going on. Whereas this is all new, and that’s a really interesting place to be.
“I'm so excited to take the songs out onto the road,” she adds. “I've got an incredible band, they’re all absolute stars and like amazing musicians.”
With the journey falling into Sarah’s world a little unexpectedly, she’s had time to look to the future and where this solo journey may lead.
“The music and the creative was the impetus for this whole project, to keep exploring where that takes me, and really connecting with being really authentic and honest in my songwriting and storytelling,” she explains.
I want to keep growing as a writer and a musician, and just hoping if it connects with people, and if it does, that's awesome. And if it doesn't, then I've had an amazing time doing it anyway. But I feel in a really good place.
Fifteen years in, and fast approaching her first solo release, Buckley’s an artist who's arrived somewhere new, and we’re all glad she did.
Sarah Grace Buckley’s Tequila & Mexico is out now.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
