If you’re a country music fan in Canada the name The Wolfe Brothers might not be on your radar yet but it should be.
The revered country duo, comprised of brothers Nick and Tom Wolfe, have become renowned over the past few years for their jaw-dropping live shows and slow-but-steady ascent to Australian country music’s upper echelon.
It’s been seven years of success for the Tasmanian natives; the band have had 12 consecutive #1 radio airplay singles in Australia, all four studio albums have debut at #2 on the ARIA chart and #1 on the Australian Country Music Album Chart, and the band have been nominated for 19 CMAAs, winning ‘Group Of The Year’ in 2015, 2016 and 2019, Album of the Year, and Song of The Year in 2019.
2020 marks the release of their single “No Brakes” and their first official entry into the Canadian country music market through their new global recording deal with BMG.
“We are beyond excited to release ‘No Brakes’ in Canada!” said the brothers, “last year, we had the chance to play at the Calgary Stampede and had the best time. We felt right at home and can’t wait to get back!”
Part of their rise has been due to talent, and a lot of it due to hard work. But the truth is that music is in The Wolfe Brothers’ blood. “We come from four generations of farmers and musicians,” Nick explains. Their father, the man who encouraged them to start playing and helped facilitate their first shows in their early teens, was a rock drummer. His father played saxophone, touring around the brothers’ home state of Tasmania with a family band. And his father — Nick and Tom’s great-grandfather — was a fiddle player. So to say that The Wolfe Brothers’ story begins anywhere except four generations ago would be disingenuous; it would be ignoring the tides of history.
If the musical gene was already in Nick and Tom’s DNA, it was their parents who brought it to full bloom. Their father guided Nick to the guitar and Tom to the piano, perhaps with “the intention of starting a band with us,” as Tom says. And their mother filled the family home with music, exposing her children to 90s country staples like Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus. It was almost an inevitability that the Wolfe family home would produce two of Australia’s finest country musicians.
A song about going full-steam ahead in a relationship, “No Brakes” also works as an accurate metaphor for where The Wolfe Brothers are in their career. “This represents the last few years of our journey,” Tom says. It also represents where he and his brother want to go. “It’s been quite a long time since there’s been an Australian country act who’s been a huge, huge crossover,” adds Nick, signaling, in part, where he and Tom’s ambitions lie. Humility is as baked into The Wolfe Brothers’ DNA as music is, but it’s clear that, at this point in their career, it’s time for something bigger: radio crossover, stardom, the massive American market. Tom and Nick Wolfe will always remember where they came from, but “No Brakes” feels like the song that could take them a step further. It may be far cry from their roots, but as Tom says: “We’ve never been the kind of band that stays in one lane.”.
Here’s hoping that someday soon The Wolfe Brothers will return to Canada, but until then get to know their music because you’ll be singing along when the do return.
To learn more about the Wolfe Brothers check them out online:
