Brendon Walmsley, TC Cassidy & Kevin Sullivan: 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 9 pm on ABC Country, showing the health of Aussie country music across all its sub-genres. Here are four 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.

Brendon Walmsley - Road To Riverleigh

One of Australia’s most accomplished country artists, Brendon Walmsley, is back with a new tune, Road To Riverleigh.

Making his return to country music, Walmsley makes a point: this is why he’s won three Golden Guitar Awards and was named Star Maker in 1999. It’s a beautiful song with a soothing melody, with Walmsley’s comforting vocals backed by impressive acoustic guitar playing.

Walmsley recorded Road To Riverleigh with acclaimed producer and musician Rod McCormack. In it, he captures a nostalgic feeling of his earliest memories of staying at his grandparents’ dairy farm in the Burnett region of Queensland. His first new release since 2004’s Bottletree Lane, Walmsley is preparing for an epic comeback in 2025.

TC Cassidy - Room For A Stranger

With Room For A Stranger, TC Cassidy remains authentically herself (and country). The perfect vehicle to showcase her love of retro country, Cassidy said of the new track: “It’s fun, flirty and fresh, and takes you back to the days when you’d get your 90’s country groove on!”

In 2022, TC Cassidy made her return to country music after nearly 30 years away from the genre with her album Travelling Heart. With her new single, she teamed up with famous ‘90s singer-songwriter Phil Vassar, who knows a hit when he hears one: he’s responsible for smash hits by acts including Tim McGrew, Alan Jackson, and Jo De Messina. Get ready to groove with TC on this one.

Kevin Sullivan - Get Your Affairs In Order

Get Your Affairs In Order isn’t exactly a fun song. It's a track about Kevin Sullivan’s good friend Leanne, a proud Barkindji woman from Bourke, New South Wales, who was diagnosed with aggressive cancer in late 2016. Sullivan delivers a powerful song that will move us all.

Displaying his emotional depth and lyrical complexity as a songwriter, as well as his musicianship, Get Your Affairs In Order is quietly devastating as it tracks the advice many cancer patients are given by medical practitioners towards the end of their lives.

Sullivan said of the song, “We have lost family and friends to cancer and sadly it is a terrible club to belong to, however, almost everyone we come into contact with has a story about someone they know who is battling cancer or has sadly lost their fight to this terrible disease.”

You can listen to the latest full episode of ABC Country’s Grass Roots here.