Decades after Keith Urban After leaving Queensland for Nashville, a new generation of Australians is settling into Music City.
What began as a handful of success stories – Urban’s Grammy-winning career, Tommy Emmanuel’s mentor-student relationship with Chet Atkins, Morgan Evans’ platinum hit “Kiss Somebody” – has evolved into a trans-Pacific pipeline. Australia is Nashville’s second-largest overseas market, sending more tourists and temporary residents to the city than any other country except the United Kingdom. Every year the city’s population continues to grow with Australians showing up with O-1 visas and acoustic guitars looking to make their mark in a city where songs still matter.
Jedd Hughes moved to the city in 2002. He grew up on the edge of the Australian outback, in an area where civilization was becoming sparse and rugged, barren landscapes dominated the landscape. It was the kind of terrain Marty Robbins could have sung about – a Western world of dry soil and train tracks – but what drew Hughes to America was not a similarity of landscapes. It was the promise of possibility.
Long distances, big dreams
“Making a living as a musician in Australia is hard,” says the Nashville transplant, who spent years playing for artists like Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell while juggling a solo career. “The opportunities to tour are limited. There are huge distances between cities and you can only visit the big markets once or twice a year.”
Emma Swift sees it the same way. The former Australian Broadcasting Corporation DJ left her Sydney radio station in 2013 to pursue an indie folk career in Tennessee. She continues to perform regularly, both solo and with her husband, British songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, and considers Nashville an ideal hub for touring musicians. “There are 28 million people living in Australia,” she says. “In America you can play 100 shows a year, but that’s simply not feasible in Australia. And then there’s the proximity to Europe: it’s a seven-hour flight from Nashville to London, and 24 from Sydney.”
Logistics aside, Swift enjoys the opportunity to be an “obsessive music fan” in Nashville — a city that hosts literally hundreds of shows a week. “Tuesday night I was at Brown’s Diner listening to Lilly Winwood,” she says. “Thursday I went to the American Legion and saw Neely’s band. And on Saturday I went to the Brooklyn Bowl to see Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. Part of me knows I could exist as a professional musician in Australia – but I’m staying in Nashville because there’s nothing like it. The music scene is incredibly accessible as a fan.”
Nashville’s Australian scene
She’s not the only one diligently collecting airline miles. Already an established solo artist in her hometown of Melbourne, Katie Bates spent most of 2025 touring as a sidewoman, playing a variety of international shows – including UK dates with Americana great Sam Outlaw and a Scandinavian tour with fellow Australian band The Pleasures – before heading to Nashville to record her latest single, “Tunnel Vision.” Despite the globetrotting, she still sees Nashville as the first port of call for roots musicians who want to get serious.
“Melbourne is our Music City,” says Bates. “Like Nashville, you can experience live music every night of the week. But if you’re targeting Americana and country, you’re dealing with a smaller audience and a smaller scale. There’s less work and the opportunities for artistic growth are limited. Why not go to Nashville instead?”
Bex Chilcott, who performs under the name Ruby Boots, has done just that: she swapped the isolation of Perth – the most isolated city in the world, more than 21,000 kilometers from the nearest urban center – for the open arms of a community that has room for everyone. “I was looking for a place where I could fit in,” says Chilcott. “I had a record deal in Australia, but I couldn’t find a really rooted alternative country scene. That scene was healthier in America, with acts like the Deslondes, Nikki Lane and Emily Nenni. I wanted to find the people who were in between.”
Music Row and the Mainstream
That’s exactly what drew Jeremy Dylan to Tennessee. For years, Sydney-raised Dylan has brought some of Nashville’s biggest names – including Taylor Swift, Luke Combs and Kacey Musgraves – to Queensland to play at CMC Rocks QLD, the biggest country music festival in the southern hemisphere. Moving to Nashville in the 2010s gave him the chance to support the industry’s underdogs. “A middle-class artistic existence is actually achievable here,” says Dylan. “Nashville supports people who work in niche subgenres, like esoteric folk music or Americana variations. You can make that kind of music here. Finding someone like Steve Poltz or John Craigie in Australia is very hard.”
When Sydney native Phil Barton came to town, he didn’t intend to establish himself on the fringes. Instead, he headed straight for the heart of the country machine – Music Row, where many of the genre’s hits are written – and launched his career with Lee Brice’s number one single “A Woman Like You.” “I got my first publishing deal and couldn’t believe that something I’d done back home in Australia – songwriting – could be a real job in America,” he says. “Nashville felt like a magical place where I could write and actually get a salary.”
When his publishing company celebrated the chart success of “A Woman Like You” with a party, Barton was pleased to see dozens of Australians in the crowd. “It was exactly the same at Morgan Evans’ number one party,” he says. “And Lindsay Rimes’ first number one. There’s a great Australian community here and we all stick together.”
Tall Poppy Syndrome
This kind of mutual support doesn’t necessarily thrive in Australia, where “tall poppy syndrome” – a cultural mentality that discourages open ambition in favor of modesty, rooted in the egalitarian notion that the tallest poppies in a field are the first to be beheaded – is the unspoken law of the land. “Tall Poppy Syndrome is part of our national identity,” says Jordie Lane, who grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury. “You’re taught to be content with what you have, to take what you’re given, and to not ask for more. We see that as a noble attitude, and we use humor to put each other down, because laughter is the best medicine. But over time, it erodes your self-confidence. It punishes you for dreaming big. And to be a musician, you need those big dreams – maybe even a certain hubris – to keep you going.”
Australians like Swift and Josh Rennie-Hynes traded songs at Breaking Bread, Lane’s concert series at the Urban Cowboy Hotel in East Nashville. Even more played at Aussie BBQ, a showcase that has become a staple of the annual AmericanaFest program. Hearing the Australian accents buzzing through the same venue, it’s easy to assume that a camaraderie born from distance – from a shared understanding of what it means to leave not just a culture, but an entire continent – has bonded these musicians together. Lane acknowledges that his compatriots are connected by their heritage, but is quick to emphasize that they do not let it define them.
“We leave our homeland to see the world and integrate into other cultures,” he says. “I don’t want to focus on being part of the Australian scene in Nashville. That’s not the goal. I just want to be part of Nashville.”
Be part of Nashville
“As Australians who have moved to Nashville, there is something we all understand about each other,” adds Imogen Clark, an ARIA-nominated solo artist who also performs as a member of Jim Lauderdale’s touring band. “But I didn’t come to Nashville just to do Australian things. I moved to Nashville to be part of what’s happening here.”
As Nashville’s sound evolves, it will be those willing to do something a little different – like cross half the globe – who will be in the driver’s seat. Getting an O-1 visa is not a walk in the park. It requires time, money and usually an immigration lawyer, and that hassle weeds out all those musicians who would be just as comfortable at home. For Australian artists who actually make it to Nashville, their own drive crystallizes – a reminder that there’s no drifting when you’ve put so much into your music.
“We live in a city of immigrants,” says Dylan. “So many people in Nashville aren’t from here, so it’s a place of our own choosing. People live in Nashville because they have some creative dream or a certain way of life. This city is a place where that’s possible – and that’s as true for Australians as it is for anyone else.”
