LIGHT from the campfire flickered across Kasey Chambers’ face.
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On the flat, arid country of the Nullarbor Plain – her father hunted foxes and her mother cooked over the open fire.
It’s that earthly atmosphere that inspired her album Campfire, Chambers said, now nominated for seven Golden Guitar awards.
“That album for me was a lot about going back to the roots of music I grew up listening to,” Chambers said.
“You only hear instruments on the record you would around the campfire.”
Chambers surprised Keith Urban fans on Tuesday with a moving rendition of one of her most well known songs Not Pretty Enough.
Now grown into herself, the song doesn’t have the same meaning it once did – but still pulls Chambers back into the head space she was in when she wrote it.
A fledgling artist, Chambers was dropped into the world of industry, beauty and expectation.
“It was a weird time because I was just starting to get some success in the industry I hadn’t grown up in,” she said.
“I was just discovering this superficial world of what the industry was about and it freaked me out a bit, I didn’t know how to be a part of it.”
Her warbling, soulful voice is hard to miss – whatever happens in her life she shares unconditionally through her music.
Before her album Campfire came out and the multiple Golden Guitar nominations that followed, it was already a success in Chambers’ mind.
“It meant a lot to me and I put a lot into it,” she said.
“I don’t look at records that don’t sell as well as unsuccessful records because that’s not why I make them.
“I don’t sit in my room and play my records to myself – that would be boring – I want to share them with people and have them connect.”
And she's come a long way since her days with the Dead Ringer Band playing out the front of the Central Hotel a quarter of a century ago.
Back in those days nobody would give her a gig, and so she protest performed with her family in a time where busking permits didn’t exist.
Inducted into the Roll of Renown last year, the highest accolade the country music industry can bestow on an artist, Chambers’ career has gone from strength to strength.
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But it’s the small moments at Tamworth Country Music Festival that make it all worthwhile.
“Earlier I walked into the town hall... this little girl got up and she played Ain’t No Little Girl, things like that make my festival.
“As much as I don’t trivialise playing with Keith Urban as a massive awesome moment, it’s the little moments that are unreal, I love it.”