Cutting through the vivid hues of yellow and pink neon set against wild, cartoonish desert murals that adorn Mo’s Desert Clubhouse stands Australian Idol winner of 2024: Dylan Wright.
He’s armed only with an acoustic guitar and an ocean-green shirt, set against a bare stage, for what becomes an intimate show detailing the very songs and stories his tour promises in the title of each poster. The stories of a life cracked open, taken to its edge and then thrust into a spotlight that can often flatten the details that form the braille that is Wright’s incising vulnerability.
Unflinchingly, he doesn’t cushion his truth but delivers it plainly: a son watching his mother wither from illness and battling with her mind as she comes to terms with her own mortality, only to have to reckon with his own dark thoughts as he faced down fatherhood and the Crossroads that lay ahead.
The evening begins with a sultry cover of Edge of Seventeen by the young and charismatic power vocalist, Lily-Grace Grant, another Australian Idol top 12 finalist from this year’s iteration of the hit reality television show.
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Grant has a gravelly quality to her voice that speaks to her own sense of painstaking vulnerability, delivering originals such as Ramblin’ Man, in which she details the loss of a loved one to a gambling addiction that cost a life.
The pain is present, but it never dulls her charismatic and joyful wit that she soon pivots upon by launching the audience into laughter with Permanent Scar, another original that reminds us that young love can sometimes be too fast and leave us with a regrettable decision, but a good story to tell, or sing.
Such are the tales great country music is revered, and sometimes mocked, for telling time and again, but Wright’s sincerity bleeds from the stage and into the Crossroads record itself, giving earnest performance whilst avoiding the bravado that pop production sometimes muddies in modern Australian country music.
Instead, Wright’s disciplined and powerful voice is left to move the audience through his own grief and how it informs who he chooses to be today.
“It’s a collection of songs about times I nearly broke, it’s me reflecting on the past and looking inwardly, but overall it’s about how I didn’t give up on myself,” Wright comments about the record. Crooked Road stands out as one of those earnest moments where the grappling of one’s sense of self comes into question.
It’s this vulnerability that sits at the heart of the Songs & Stories Tour, spanning 21 dates across the nation. But if audiences fear that the brutal honesty might weigh too heavily on them, they needn’t concern themselves for long, as with all grief, it is often punctuated with joy, triumph and hope, and often a deeper appreciation for those moments thereafter.
Songs such as Little Lost remind us of the bliss one can experience when “we’re young and free but got nowhere to be but on the road”. Those Nights, as heard on Australian Idol, is also a feature on the record and tour that plays tenderly on the dance of how our past can be littered both with moments of melancholy but also unadulterated nostalgia for our youthful freedom.
The anthemic Mess of a Man stirs the audience from reflective to empowered through the great hook and familiarity, and All My Love reminds us that despite the challenges that come with fatherhood, a daughter’s presence can reshape the unspent love of grief and channel it into new life.
Wright’s vocals collide with Grant’s when he invites her back onstage to duet with a cover of the iconic stomp-clap-holler hit Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Vulnerability can be found both in our depths and in our unabashedly brave expressions of love and affection. Collaboration isn’t an unfamiliar terrain for Wright, having just won his first Golden Guitar for Bluegrass Recording of the Year at this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival with brother-duo, Sons of Atticus. He will also be touring Ukraine later this year with the Australian dance outfit Breathe.
Ever sentimental, reflective and deeply rooted in the sheer acceptance that life is not always easy, Wright is sure to continue to enrapture and delight audiences with the Songs & Stories Tour and on the Crossroads record, out 10th July, reminding audiences it is never weak to speak and that even bright stars must contend with the dark night skies in which they exist.
If you, or someone you know, is struggling with mental health or a crisis immediate, free and confidential help is available 24 hours a day at Lifeline 13 11 14.
