Australian Country Music Storyteller

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, singer-songwriter Ronnie Joudo has developed a distinctive sound inspired by country music and Americana, with a fresh modern twist. He has connected with audiences and seen success with four top 40 hits on Australian independent charts. He was also an Australian Songwriter Association Finalist in 2020, for his song, “Falling in Love in Galveston.” He has released his debut, a six-song EP, Damn This Town, despite the limitations of the pandemic. “We wanted to release it a little bit earlier…but we’ve been hit pretty hard with Covid, and we’ve got a lot of restrictions in place. Instead of taking your normal six months to get it all down and out, it took us nearly two years.”

Growing up listening to Americans like Merle Haggard and George Strait, as well as Australians like Slim Dusty and Jade Hurley, it’s not surprising that Ronnie gravitated toward making country music. After previously performing as drummer, he picked up the guitar just before the turn of the century, and immediately began developing as a songwriter. “The writing came,” he recalls, “when I hooked up with a gentleman named Ace Fender…an amazing songwriter who wrote for some of those legends. He taught me a lot…”

About his process, Ronnie says, “For me it’s like a mini-movie that plays inside my head, and once I get it going I just seem to blow it out.” His inspiration comes from his own life and also stories he hears from others. “Falling in Love in Galveston,” grew out of a good friend’s difficult search for new love after a divorce, while “Roadside Angels” has a family connection. “That was a story from my brother, who lives in western Australia,” Ronnie says. “He was working in a mine and he would travel to work one-and-a-half hours each way, and he would see all these crosses and monuments and flowers on the side of the road…He was thinking about who these people were and where they were going, and he said ‘I call them roadside angels’…”

Check out Ronnie Joudo’s website here. Listen to the full interview here.

By Dan Walsh