The Melbourne musician is part of the band Small Town Romance, along with his wife Flora Smith, which is nominated for New Talent of the Year at the Golden Guitars.

“I’ve been coming here a lot of years to support family members who have been nominated, so it’s lovely to have the reverse this year, and there’s a lot of family here to support us,” Arneman said.

Those family members include his mother Anne Kirkpatrick and grandmother Joy McKean, who are both multi Golden Guitars winners, while his late grandfather Slim Dusty still holds the record for having won the most Golden Guitars.

Small Town Romance formed after Jim and Flora had met in Melbourne and bonded over a love of classic country music and roots music.

While Arneman’s family was from Sydney, the move to Melbourne meant a lot of time travelling the Hume Highway between the cities, and the song they have received the Golden Guitar nomination with, Halfway Up The Hume, was written about the journey.

It follows the family tradition of being on the road, and writing songs about that lifestyle.

“If you look at the family catalogue, especially Anne’s there’s a lot of songs about driving,” Smith laughed.

“Pretty much every song is about that in mum’s catalogue,” Arneman added.

He explained that was recently listening to some Joy McKean songs and was listening to another travelling song, which reminded him of the new song.

“I was digging back into things I hadn’t heard in ages, and I came across a song called Sundown that Joy McKean wrote. It’s the same song, it’s Halfway Up The Hume, in terms of the essence and the message. It’s a very similar song. It’s much better though,” he laughed.

The song was co-written by Arneman and Smith.

“It was one of the first songs we wrote together actually,” Smith said. “We had written independently before that, but it was one of the ones we really collaborated on and thought we could do this and not argue.”

Small Town Romance played their first gig for the festival at The Tamworth Hotel on Wednesday.

On Thursday, they play at the Balladeers Homestead at 9am, supporting Anne Kirkpatrick, then at 2.30pm they are back at The Tamworth Hotel, before playing at the Cake & Cordial Sessions at St Paul’s Anglican Church at 4pm. On Thursday evening the band is supporting The Davidson Brothers at The Pub.

On both Friday and Saturday they are playing the 2.30pm timeslot again at The Tamworth Hotel, while they will also be playing at Late Night Alt on Friday evening.