FIVE gigs a week to support a young family, four album releases and a 21,000 kilometre around Australia tour -Bob Corbett is no newcomer to the music business.
In fact, he’s been making a living from music for 20 years.
Yet he is this year’s winner of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious talent search, the Toyota Star Maker run at the Tamworth Country Music Festival. It’s the competition that kicked off the careers of the likes of Lee Kernaghan, Gina Jeffreys, Keith Urban, Beccy Cole and James Blundell.
The other thing about Bob is that his music is heavily influenced by the old-time sounds of the banjo, the fiddle and mandolin - his influences go way back to the likes of American folk music group the Carter family and Bill Munroe.
What his win shows is that the Star Maker competition, and Australian country music on the whole, puts forward no definitive mould - it’s as diverse and as accommodating as the personalities it attracts.
Newcastle born and bred, Bob Corbett describes his music as folk country, and it started with his grandfather, who was a choir conductor.
Bob first hit Tamworth in a rock ‘n’ roll band 18 years ago.
“When I saw Alby Pool at Tamworth, I was a country convert,” he said.
“I write contemporary but my instrumentation goes way back.”
The Newcastle region, where he lives with wife Kirrily and children Marley, 6, and Matilda, 3, is his bread and butter but he has played around the country and at all the big country or folk festivals, sometimes solo and sometimes with The Roo Grass Band.
“This has been my life since I was old enough to get into pubs and I’ve seen the good and the bad side of the industry,” he said.
“I’m here for the long haul but I was at a point where I’d done all I could by myself.
“I’m established but I’m budget-limited - I’m on first name basis with all the NRMA roadside assistance guys.
“I want to take my music to all the nooks and crannies and I know there is still so much more for me to learn.”
That’s where Star Maker comes in.
With a prize package that includes an album recording contract, a big budget recording session and use of a brand new Toyota for a year, Bob says it will give him opportunities he never would have had access to - and that was why, at 39, he entered a talent quest.
“What I’m shooting for is that when somebody turns on the radio in the middle of a song they know it’s me - that signature sound,” he said.
And while he said he was “buzzing” after taking out the competition on Sunday night ahead of 19 other very talented acts, he said he didn’t feel overwhelmed but rather confident of what the year ahead holds.
Star Maker organiser and judge Cheryl Byrnes said Bob was representative of the evolving competition.
“There were a lot of artists who entered this year who are established but missing the crack they need,” she said.
“Star Maker puts them in front of people - we want a winner able to use this fantastic prize package to go out there and sell themselves, sell Star Maker and sell country music.
“Bob clearly loves what he does and that shows on stage.”
While he has a swag of songs ready to record, Bob says he would like to hook up with other artists and co-write for his Star Maker album.
And that also seems to be a developing aspect of the competition.
The last two winners, Luke Dickens and Luke Austen, joined up last year and did an across-the-country tour, raising money for charity along the way.
“We were able to get to small places that don’t usually get entertainers passing through, to the people who are 500km from a Woolies,” said last year’s winner Luke Dickens.
“There was a lot of personal satisfaction along the way.”
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