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Tough as Ruby Boots

Before she became Perth’s country queen Ruby Boots, Bex Chilcott was a wild child scraping by in Balga and listening to grunge-era icons Nirvana and Silverchair. At, 33, she describes her teenage grunge years “with Suicidal Dream off Frogstomp on repeat” as a time she’d rather forget.

“I was caught up in some really bad stuff,” the flame- haired singer-songwriter says during a chinwag at the Rosemount Hotel, one of the stops on her national tour to launch debut album Solitude.

“I was living out of home, I was a teenager, I was very easily influenced.”

The grunge years began to subside when Chilcott — who wore a black Tony Joe White T-shirt, a souvenir from her recent east-coast dates supporting the Louisiana Swamp Fox, at the interview — discovered classic vinyl records in a Girrawheen share house.

“When I was 15 coming out of Year 10, I listened to a ton of Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan but I didn’t realise who I was listening to at the time. I had no idea of their history. I didn’t realise the impact someone like Joan Baez had on society,” the WA Music Award winner adds. “All I had was two of her records and I was in love with her music.”

The folk icon led her to other favourite singers — Joplin, Patty Griffin and Linda Ronstadt — but the “bad company” she kept discouraged Chilcott from following her muse.

The breakthrough came at age 20 when she “took off up to Broome and started listening to the Waifs”.

The shift up north to work long, hard hours on a pearl boat was “the perfect escape” for Chilcott, who says “it really snapped me out of some pretty heavy stuff”.

“I wasn’t doing myself any favours. I needed to get out of Perth and forget about, you from, from (age) 14 to 19,” she says. “I was earning money. I’ve always been a really hard worker, so I was in love with being out there slogging it out 10 hours a day,” Chilcott says. “It was cool. I was getting fed and I couldn’t get into any mischief.”

That’s not entirely true. After a stint working in Broome and Exmouth, the future Ruby Boots tried her luck on charter boats in the south of France. She didn’t last long, got fired after one too many boozy escapades and found herself broke in Newquay in the south of England.

“I started busking because I got fired and had no money,” Chilcott laughs. “I literally sang Waifs and Joan Baez songs that I’d been learning. I made £75 for a few hours busking a couple of times a week. I went ‘This is great’.”

Once she’d earned enough money, Chilcott returned home and finally found her voice as a country singer. She jokes that, even as a 16-year-old living in Girraween, the highway to country was inevitable.

“I picked up a guitar — and I was really discouraged by the company that I was keeping at that time — I was listening to Janis (Joplin) and I remember thinking ‘I really want to sing like Janis’,” she laughs. “But I’ve got too much of a country voice. When I first started writing, I just wrote country songs. There was no choice in it.”

From walking on shaky ground, Chilcott found comfort in country music. A regular visitor to Nashville and now signed to Universal’s Lost Highway Australia imprint, she admits to being “obsessed with the culture and everything that it delivers through the music”.

“I feel like I belong,” she adds. “Before I started playing it, I never felt like I belonged anywhere.”





Often described as alt-country for the rock’n’roll energy she brings to her music, Chilcott prefers to call her style Americana. “Americana can be blues, rock, roots, country, alt-country,” she says.

Recorded in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, Solitude features fine Americana tunes written with Melbourne singer-songwriter Jordie Lane, Perth muso Steve Parkin, producer/bassist Tony Buchen and Ruby Boots guitarist Lee Jones. Chilcott also travelled to Utah to write four tracks with Vikki Thorn from her heroes, the Waifs.

And testament to the fact you can take the girl out of Balga but you can’t take Balga out of the girl, Ruby Boots drops an F-bomb in upbeat opener, Cola and Wine.

“I did that because I think it’s my job to be human in my songs,” she laughs. “I swear a lot. A f.....’ ton.”

Solitude is released today.Ruby Boots plays the Rosemount Hotel on May 15, Maker and Co., Bunbury, on May 16 and Clancy’s Fish Pub, Dunsborough, on May 17. See the venues for tickets.