VIDEO PREMIERE: Wesley Dean - 'Gunslinger'

Previous Australian Idol winner Wesley Dean (formerly known as the chart-topping Wes Carr) has shared an acoustic version of his song Gunslinger, filmed in The Substation in Newport, a western suburb of Melbourne. Countrytown proudly premieres the video today.

Gunslinger is already a powerful song, but the new version of the song is even better at capturing the raw, road-ready cowboy anthem. Played acoustically, Dean’s guitar-playing abilities and effortlessly raspy vocals shine through. Not to mention the song’s stunning melodies!

The music video is intimate, starring just Dean playing the guitar in The Substation. He conjures a blues soul that’s ancient and genuine, a spirit you don’t hear in singers all that often anymore. In Gunslinger, Dean embodies a man deeply affected by intergenerational trauma and hopes to open an essential conversation among men.

You can watch the video for the acoustic version of Gunslinger below.

Since winning the sixth season of Australian Idol in 2008, Dean has released a string of albums - including 2022’s Unknown, where single Never Thought Of You dominated the Countrytown chart - and relocated from Adelaide to Nashville in 2021.

Here’s what Dean had to say about Gunslinger:

Gunslinger is an exploration of what it means to be a man struggling with the masculine identity passed down from father to son. The opening lyric, ‘Dead man walkin’ before his life begun, since his daddy taught him how to shoot a gun’, refers to the stoic mindset a man can be born into that’s perfectly portrayed by the outlaw archetype. On the one hand, I identify with being an outsider and doing things my own way with all guns blazing, but on the other, the emotional isolation of an outlaw who isn’t allowed to acknowledge their vulnerability and ultimately ends up being ‘hung by the same rope that took his daddy’s life’ is something I wanted to highlight in this song.

“I believe isolating patterns of behaviour can be broken when we become conscious of them, but sometimes we have to go through a dark night of the soul to wake up to our personal power. And I don’t mean macho, egoic power; I mean the empowerment that comes from having the ability to make a new choice when faced with old ways of being.

“Some men repeatedly surrender to what they know, which is where the line, ‘And there ain’t no turning back/ he was born in these bones’ comes from, but I hope the discussion around Gunslinger will inspire men to take a deeper look at the intergenerational trauma impacting their lives and initiate a self-awareness that gives them the freedom to have more connected relationships with themselves and others.