When I heard country singer-songwriter Sara Storer perform with her brother on their recent Calling Me Home tour, I walked away with Sara’s new CD and one single piece of essential advice for anyone contemplating a career as a country muso: have talented relatives. It worked for Kasey Chambers, and for Johnny Cash. And it’s certainly working for Sara Storer, who has won eleven Golden Guitar Awards at Tamworth, more than any woman in Australian country music history.
Sara Storer honed her song writing while teaching kindy at an Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory, later touring with Troy Cassar-Daley. Calling Me Home includes her duets with Paul Kelly on Hell of a Party, and Children of the Gurindji with Kev Carmody as well as the Storer classic Raining on the Plains. I like any kind of music that has a story to tell. And Sara Storer is a storyteller par excellence. Her songs paint a vividly real and realistic portrait of life in the Australian outback in the 21st Century.
Almost all of the 31 tunes in this 2 CD ‘greatest hits’ collection are familiar favourites from Sara Storer’s four albums of the past decade, with the title track being one of two exceptions. The poetic lyrics of Calling Me Home, in which she personifies an outback homestead, reminded me of US country songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter at her best.
Anyone familiar with Sara Storer might wonder why she is releasing a ‘greatest hits’ album at this early stage in her career. I suspect it may have something to do with her baby Harry, born last year. I hope this is just a breather and that we’ll be hearing more from this singer who, like the legendary Slim dusty before her, has used her music to bring people together.
Sara and Greg Storer’s Calling Me Home tour is on nationally through 14th November: http://www.sarastorer.com.au/dates.html
