Take 5 with Ramblerman: The Canberra Singer-Songwriter Behind “Lemonade” Shares His Top Australian Songwriting Picks
Fresh off the release of his stirring new single Lemonade, Canberra singer-songwriter Ramblerman is stepping into the spotlight once again — this time to champion some of the finest songwriting talent Australia has to offer. Known for blending indie folk warmth with soulful rock textures and raw lyrical honesty, Ramblerman has quickly become one of Canberra’s most compelling emerging voices. In this edition of Take 5, he shares five songs by Australian artists that showcase the power, diversity, and craft of homegrown songwriting — from poetic country ballads to timeless surf-rock meditations.
“If even for a moment you have doubted the quality of songwriting coming out of Australia here’s 5 songs that I believe will change your mind”:
- Richmond County Line by Wade Forster
You don’t have to be a fan of country music to respect Wade Forster’s incredible songwriting skills. I don’t consider myself a huge fan of Country Music but when I happened to find myself lying on the grass at Riverside Stage at Tamworth Country Music Festival last January and heard this song I thought- yep….that’s it!
This song is poetic, detailed, and delivered with a voice that has, over the last couple of years, cemented Wade as one of Australia’s most exciting new songwriters and artists.
I teach songwriting from my home studio in Canberra so I’m someone who cares perhaps sometimes too much about songcraft and song structure. I use ‘Richmond County Line’ (as well as ‘Strange Tourist’ by Gareth Liddiard) to explain ideas about Strophic song form. A ‘Strophic’ song is a song where the weight is upon the verses and, though it likely will contain some kind of refrain, repeating motif or other method to apply structure and hold things together, it doesn’t have a clear and separate repeating ‘Chorus’ or ‘B’ section. Strophic songs are about continued flow and storytelling, not contrast.. Whereas I use Garreth Liddiard’s ‘Strange Tourist’ as an example of extended Strophic form, rolling verses with occasional refrains, I use Wade’s ‘Richmond County Line’ as my go-to example of ‘Book-Ended’ or ‘Framed’ Strophic Form which is where the first verse repeats at the end of the song to create a feeling of completion and resolve. You sometimes see this method used in Verse-Chorus songs but its in Strophic songs is where the simple brilliance of this structure really shines. It’s a beautifully simple way to complete a story arc within a song that otherwise has no other repeating sections and this song is my favourate example of it!.
There’s lot of other subtle structure within this song besides just its ‘Book-ending’. In verse one Wade immediately establishes character-‘I’ and ‘place’-‘Roanoke’’, establishing the ‘home-base’ of the song and asks the question that becomes the ‘’Why’-“When I get back from Roanoke will you tell me what I missed?” When you listen to the song you might also notice how the first verse ends on the title line “And I’ll be packing all my things and heading for the Richmond County Line” which later allows it to be landed back on (repeated twice) in the final return of this verse. In the three middle verses that follow verse 1 the listener is taken on a journey through time, place and memory – building a world with specific details and poetic imagery, “I’ll never forget my first chance in a nickle-rusted town”\. The song finally resolves by circling back to its opening verse, though slightly altered, because by now both the listener and the character have learned something and are not quite the same people that they were when the song started. This is what good storytelling looks like!.. And, because it’s done in just 3 and a half minutes over music, this is what good songwriting looks like!
Wade won the Toyota Starmaker award in 2024 and has since gone on tour showcasing Australian songwriting to the world. Regardless of your genre of preference, if you are an Australian songwriter but you don’t already know who Wade Forster is you should listen to his songs right now!
- Alive Again by TC Cassidy
This track from Australia’s TC Cassidy, recorded after she returned to music after a long break, hit me hard. It’s an anthem! I honestly believe this song (or the Philip Larsen remix of it) should be blasting out of the speakers at Stonewall. Co-written by Alan Mackey, Angus Gill, Rivers Rutherford and Tim James, and delivered with the beautiful and unique power of TC’s voice, it nails the emotional uplift and energy of a true pop-country crossover. It’s strong, empowering, and exceptionally well-written. It could just as easily live on a Pride playlist as it could on any country chart.
Favourite line:
“I’m alive again, I can love again, finally rising above again!”
- Simple Ben by John J. Francis
‘Simple Ben’ found its way into my ears and life exactly at a time when my soul needed it the most. IT was written and sung by John J Francis and best known for it’s inclusion on the soundtrack to the classic 1970’s Australian surf film ‘ Morning of the Earth’, an album which, for me, sits right there next to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks as two albums that have enough human spirit in them to replace the Bible.
‘Simple Ben’ rocks back and forth between just C and F for nearly eight minutes, and yet somehow I never tire of it and can never skip it. It’s an example of how, when the melody and lyrics work, just using a simple I-IV progression can be all a good songwriter needs to create continual forward motion. It’s hypnotic, meditative, and, if your heart is open to it, a complete philosophy for life. The music and rolling structure perfectly match the story, giving the sense that the song and it’s story could just keep rolling on forever, and I hope that it does!
Favourite lines:
A ‘barrow pushed by a little man, came rollin’ from the west
He sang this song as he stepped along until we drew abreast
“Well, hello there, my friend, I see you’re on the road here just like me
Why don’t we stop and rest a while, and I’ll boil a pot of tea?”
- In This Song by Lynchburg
I’m a very long way from admitting to myself that I’m fan of “country music” (even if this list of songs is beginning to maybe suggest otherwise) I’m just a really big fan of great songwriting! However one thing I know I can say with complete certainty and honesty is that I’ve found the Australian country music community to be champions for the songwriting craft and incredibly welcoming and supportive of new songwriters. It was at a weekend workshop in the Blue Mountains, organised by SongsAlive! Australia and the Tamworth Songwriters Association that I first met the ‘Grumpy old picker’ Allan Caswell.
‘Grumpy Old Picker’,by the way, is how Allan describes himself!- and he’ll enjoy letting you believe it if you let him…but I’m easily fooled- Allan has a huge heart! If ever Allan could be accused of ‘not suffering fools’ it’s only because he cares so deeply about the craft and wants people to write the best songs that they can. He’s helped me numerous times to take my hooks and incomplete song ideas and help me shape them into finished songs. His belief that “the two most important lines in a song are the first line and the hook” is something I’ve come to now take as Gospel, and his productive top-to-bottom, line-by-line method is something I find myself coming back to, again and again, every time my other methods fail me.
I could have chosen any of Allan’s songs for this article but if Spotify had a needle I would have scratched a deep groove through the vinyl on this particular song for the number of times I’ve listened to it,
Co-written with Lindsay Waddington, the other half of the duo ‘Lynchburg’, “In This Song” is classic Caswell and is both a beautifully produced song (in Lindsay’s expert hands) as well as a lesson in song structure, vocal delivery and efficient lyric storytelling.
In my opinion, eight Golden Guitars and a (more than well deserved) plaque on a rock don’t even come close to reflecting the extent of Allan’s contribution to the quality of songwriting in Australia.
Favourite line:
“They don’t tell you after every gig is over, there’s a motel room of loneliness to fight.” — Ouch! …God damn it Allan!…that hit!
- Like Hank Would by Melody Moko
I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve used Melody Moko’s ‘Like Hank Would’ as an example of strong songwriting in my studio. There are so many elements in this song that most listeners will miss, and that’s fine, because, if you’re a songwriter, you don’t actually want people to understand all the tricks and things you do, whether applied deliberately or by intuition, to make a song work.
‘Like Hank Would’ is one of the best examples I’ve found of a simple verse-chorus structure done right. The first verse uses detail to immediately pull the listener into an intimate scene- I feel myself ‘in the bar’ alongside her and ‘pulling someone in’ is the only real job of a first verse. The chorus is loftier and broader, using reference to Hank Williams to help describe the broader emotions of the song, so then the listener is in this broader, elevated state and you need to bring them back again to something tangible. The opening line of verse two: “Remember in December, we were gonna leave” uses quick multisyllabic rhyme to draw you right back in (because repetition can do that!) and then does exactly what a second verse should do—takes the listener on a journey. Suddenly, we’re somewhere else- on an American road trip, chasing a Californian sunset. And then, back to the chorus again – it’s bookended/framed top and bottom line gives structure to this section and the repetition of “cold, cold heart” sets up the final resolution to the title line.
‘Like Hank Would’ is a complete lesson in songcraft.
Song structure is one thing, (and if you read this Melody I really hope you don’t mind my using your songs as examples so often) but being honest is something there aren’t really easy lesson plans for. Melody Moko tells heartfelt and personal stories about real suburban Australian life. As a songwriter, beyond the structures, anyone could learn a lot about writing with fearless honesty by listening to any of her songs! Start here!
Favourite line:
“Twenty cigarettes to a pack, I’ll never get that breath back.”
“I’ll tear apart your cold cold heart, like Hank would.”
