By NOEL MURPHY
TEXAS swing has a way of getting under your skin, under your guard, if you’re not a country music fan. If you are a fan, well, you might think of it as a lifelong formative influence.
It certainly was with country star Doug Bruce, who was brought up touring the US and overseas with his dad, Dale Bruce, who played with, among others, western swing legend Red Steagall.
It brought the 44-year-old to Australia in the late 1970s, creating a solid impression, one not forgotten by the kangaroo hides and boomerangs and other Aussie souvenirs he returned home with.
Smitten early in life by the performance bug – he was on stage as an eight-year-old doing his best Boxcar Willie train whistle at Fort Worth’s mighty Coliseum venue – Bruce learned his way around all manner of musical instruments, drums, guitar, bass, piano.
With other relatives also playing and writing songs, and rubbing shoulders with the likes of George Jones, Minnie Pearl and Red Sovine, music was a natural career choice for the young Bruce.
By the mid-1980s, he was working as a drummer and backing singer with various bands, doing session work and opening for acts such as Travis Tritt, Jerry Jeff Walker and Rascal Flatts.His band Cheyenne won various awards, he picked up a couple of drummer of the year nominations, moved to Nashville playing with Brit Stokes and fell victim to the writing bug.
He played the Grand Ole Opry, the Midnight Jamboree at the Texas Troubadour Theatre and opened for George Jones in Joplin before falling for an Australian girl, Jodie, he met in Nashville, crossing the Pacific to now live in Bendigo.
Doug Bruce and The Tailgaters will be part of the serious country groove at this year’s Motor City Music Festival over the Labor Day weekend, 6 to 8 March, at the Geelong Showgrounds.
He says country music’s appeal is universal across the US but still growing in Australia, where it seems to suffer a kind of stigma. Even so, it regularly surprises newcomers, young people especially.
“I don’t know how many times we’ve done shows where kids from say 13 to 18 are standing there with their arms folded but who end up laughing and smiling,” he says.
“They say ‘I hate country music but I like your music’.
“Thing is, so long as we’re having a good time on stage that’s all that matters – the audience picks up on that and enjoys it too.”
With a catalogue of industry awards to his name, Bruce is one of Australia’s foremost country artists. He’s played all the major country music festivals and events in Oz, including CMC Rocks the Hunter, CMC Rocks Nth QLD, Gympie Music Muster, Deni Ute Muster, Mud Bulls and Music Festival, Broadbeach Country Music Festival, the Urban Country Music Festival and the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
