This Album Changed My Life: Tammy Moxon on ‘Live’ by Alison Krauss & Union Station

At five-years old, Tammy Moxon first appeared on stage singing alongside her father at their local Country Music Club Social. Her childhood years saw her succeed at festivals throughout North Queensland, Brisbane, Tamworth and Mildura. After attending the Academy of Country Music in 2015, she opened for acts like Felicity Urquhart, The Buckwackers and Drew McAlister.

She released her debut album, Fall In Time in 2018, featuring her first single, Home Ground. After being a named a Toyota Star Maker competition finalist, she teamed up with Shane Nicholson for her second album, Drive Me Sane which contains the tracks, Drives Me So Sane, Rocky Ride, Wyangala ain’t Wyangala, Survive and her latest release, Mama Is.

To get to know Tammy a little better, we asked her to tell us about an album that changed her life.

I bought this album from the CD shop at the Tamworth Country Music Festival when I was 14. It’s a wonder I didn’t wear that CD out. It changed my direction in music, the way I sang and the way I wrote.

The exciting chord progressions, and the crazy, unexpected time signatures throughout some of the songs made me want to write. From that point on, I found myself opting to write songs with the more folk, bluegrass sound. It was what I did in my downtime, between school assignments. My guitar-playing definitely improved during those endless teenage writing sessions.

I loved Alison Krauss’ voice and wanted to have that haunting quality in mine. My father had voice teaching experience and was often helping me practice ‘breaking’ my voice from full to falsetto. It was from these vocal exercises that I learnt to strengthen my falsetto range.

The lilting sounds of the fast songs on this album just made me happy; and the haunting, sadness of the slow songs had the ability to break my heart just a little bit more.

I have so many favourite songs on this album: The Lucky One, Every Time You Say Goodbye, Oh Atlanta, Choctaw Hayride. I’d have Man of Constant Sorrow on repeat. I know these songs were on their previous studio albums, but the fact that Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Jerry Douglas, Ron Block and Barry Bales were playing these complicated songs live to an electric audience made me completely hooked. You could feel the musicians feeding off the crowd and vice versa.

I’ve seen the incredible dobro player from Union Station, Jerry Douglas, play live. Hopefully, someday, I can see Alison Krauss and Union Station play live, together. That would truly make my decade.

For more of our This Album Changed My Life series, go here.
Keep up to date with Tammy Moxon via her Facebook page here.

Image: via Facebook