Emma Donovan on reconnecting with country music – “Country music is massive in Blackfulla communities”

by Billy Burgess | Tuesday Apr 01, 2025 | Features

Emma Donovan, Photograph: Ian Laidlaw

On her 2024 solo album, Til My Song is Done, Emma Donovan reconnected with her first love: country music.

Donovan, a Gumbaynggirr and Yamatji woman, started singing country songs as a kid. “I was listening to heaps of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton,” Donovan told me. “I was singing all of that shit when I was like six.”

Donovan travelled the country with her family’s band, The Donovans, performing at regional festivals and community events with her mother Agnes, her five uncles, and her grandparents, Micko and Aileen. But when she became old enough to step out on her own, Donovan wanted to free herself of the country music baggage.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore, mum. It makes me ashamed,'” Donovan said.

But after recording three albums of funk and neo-soul music with backing band The Putbacks – including 2014’s Dawn and the AIR Award-winning Crossover (2020) and Under These Streets (2021) – Donovan felt compelled to return country music and to pay homage to her family’s musical history.

“I just wanted to go, ‘What songs can I write to impress the Uncs and get all the street cred from all the fam?’” Donovan said.

Til My Song is Done was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2024 National Indigenous Music Awards and the ARIA Awards for Best Solo Artist and Best Adult Contemporary Album. Donovan will perform with Paul Grabowsky at Melbourne Recital Centre on Wednesday 2 April.

I spoke to Emma Donovan about her country music childhood and the path that led to Til My Song is Done.

Check Check: What made you decide to do a solo album? And how did you find your way back to country music?

Emma Donovan: Cooking Vinyl mob, they offered a solo album and so I thought, “Wow, yeah, what an opportunity,” and I started writing Til My Song Is Done.

I always knew I wanted to get back into country music. It’s been close to nine, ten years I’ve been in that funk, soul outfit with The Putbacks. I’ve always wanted to pay homage and acknowledge my family’s country music styles and I just thought this is a good opportunity to do it.

Can you tell me more about your family’s history with country music and your early experiences singing country songs in public?

Both my parents come from the missions. Nan come from Burnt Bridge Mission on the other side of Kempsie and Pop come from Bowraville Mission. And when they met, they both sang.

There was this old gum leaf band that the community used to sing in and Pop had become a bit of a multi-instrumentalist – he played piano and guitar and he’d write all these gospel songs.

So, when I was growing up, mum had her five brothers and there was Nan and Pop and all the mob would sing. We would always be known as the funeral family singers. I was a little girl and we’d go to community funerals and we’d sing at them.

That’s why it’s pretty easy for me to write that style of music because that’s what I know.

What was it like going to the Tamworth Country Music Festival as a kid?

We’d meet up with all the Williams mob – Uncle Warren Williams from Arrernte mob from central desert – and we’d all connect. In Tamworth, you’ve got the Knox family, Uncle Roger Knox and all them mob, and they’re the same; they have their kids and their grandkids singing.

My mum, she started up this Aboriginal showcase for mob in the festival to come and share Blackfulla country music. We were part of that over the years. Country music is massive in Blackfulla communities. That is what connected all of us, that style of music.

Was that another thing that made you want to make this album, the fact that country music is so significant in Indigenous communities?

I just wanted to go, “What songs can I write to impress the Uncs and get all the street cred from all the fam?” It’s just owning this style, or almost finding out what my style is. It’s the start of me just finding things.

You worked on the album with Putbacks bass player Mick Meagher. What’s that relationship like?

Micky Meagher and Rory McDougall from the Putbacks, I met them when I first stepped on the Black Arm Band stage in 2006. Me and Micky Meagher are that tight and close, he’s the backbone of a lot of the things that I do and I always look to him for that reassurance. He’s a good collaborator.

A lot of the songs too, because they came off a lot of these older ideas of country, I was like, “Mick, what do you think of that? Does it pass or is it too much?” He’s like, “Emma, it is cheesy, but it’s good cheese.”

We made a few demos and ideas and then when we were getting ready to go into the studio, I buckled a bit and I was like, “I don’t know about that. That’s too cheesy.” And he’d be like, “Just relax. Own it.”

Has that been a feature of this whole process – reminding yourself to just embrace it, celebrate your past, and not overthink it?

Yeah. When I was singing country when I was younger, I had that little teenage moment too and I stopped because I was like, “It’s too cheesy, I’m getting teased.” This was when Video Hits and Christine Anu and “Ex-Factor” [by] Lauryn Hill and all them albums were out, and I just didn’t want to do country.

Mum used to call me her little Black Tammy Wynette. She’d take me up to Tamworth and she’d make me all these big country music silk outfits. Matching hats and boots and that. And I was like, “I don’t want to do it anymore mum. It makes me ashamed.” And then I stopped singing country.

And now when I think of it, I’m so proud of it now. I want to put that out now. There’s no argument in my head now. Mum would be proud. I’m just like, This is who you are now at 42. You’re definitely your mother’s daughter.