Amber Rae Slade, Brad Butcher & More: The Highlights From This Week’s ‘Grass Roots’

Every week, ABC Country's Grass Roots program shines a light on the best independently released Australian country content. Selected from the hundreds of new tracks submitted, the one-hour program is now available on demand as well as premiering each Monday at 9pm on ABC Country, showing the health of Aussie country music across all its sub-genres. Here are five of this week's tracks you should have on your radar. 

Head here to have a listen to this week’s full episode of Grass Roots.

Mikhail Laxton – Four String Cowboy

Hailing from the KuKu Yalanji Tribe in Mossman, Far North Queensland, the now Canadian resident Mikhail Laxton is riding high on the back of his impressive debut album, released in August. Weaving together his past, present and future selves, encapsulating the very essence of who he is, who he has been, and who he is becoming. Mikhail Laxton seamlessly flows between Americana, country, folk rock, blues and more, as indefinable as Laxton himself, and ranges in topic from loss and longing, to the nostalgia for home, to moments of love. 

Amber Rae Slade – Everything’s More Beautiful Because We’re Doomed

Amber Rae Slade’s brand of unabashed eclectic country is the kind of feminine outlaw that is resonating across genre boundaries.

Caitlin Harnett & The Pony Boys – I’ll Get By

Following the recent popular radio single Even Cowgirls Cry, Caitlin Harnett & The Pony Boys are offering another glimpse of their forthcoming second LP, All Night Long, due out this October. I’ll Get By features Harnett and her barroom tight Pony Boys in a reflective yet determined frame of mind as their sum parts come together to deliver another radio friendly slice of Americana melancholy. Harnett considers I’ll Get By to be “a big middle finger to those people who have tried to hold me back and shaken my belief in myself. I wrote this song as a reminder to always go my own way.”

Brad Butcher – People Get Old (featuring Busby Marou)

When Brad Butcher got together with good friends Tom and Jeremy, from Busby Marou, to decide which song they would like to collaborate on, all three of them were in different phases of fatherhood. People Get Old is a song written by Lori McKenna which had been on high rotations for some time in the Butcher household, Brad continues, “when I threw that song on the table I remember Tom was instantly connected and after some discussion it was really an easy decision.”

People Get Old is one of those songs that is instantly relatable and cuts deep to the core of the human condition.  A voice of velvet, a songwriters songwriter and an everyman Australian with lyrical content that few possess, Brad Butcher is an artist, a producer and a songwriter with a simple goal… to create music that matters.

Archie Pines – On My Own

Introducing the captivating raw debut single On My Own by Australian alt country artist Archie Pines. This heartfelt record was produced by Archie Pines and mixed by the talented Andrija Tokic (Margo Price, Alabama Shakes and Luke Bell) and was crafted at Nashville's renowned Bomb Shelter Studios. Get ready to be swept away by the authentic sound and emotion of On My Own.