EXCLUSIVE: Ruby Boots Signs To Lost Highway, Streams New Single

Americana alt-country songwriter Ruby Boots has signed with the burgeoning Lost Highway label ahead of her next album Solitude.

Launched just 12 months ago, the Australian arm of Lost Highway – an imprint of Universal Music Australia – has amassed one of the most enviable rosters in Australian alt-country and Boots, real name Bex Chilcott, joins Shane Nicholson, Catherine Britt and Mustered Courage.

The deal is understood to have emerged from a strong BIGSOUND showcase last year and Solitude will be released in April 2015. The first single from the record, Middle Of Nowhere, is streaming exclusively on theMusic.com.au below ahead of its release tomorrow. It was co-written by, and features guest vocals from, The Waifs’ Vikki Thorn, who Chilcott met in Utah.

“I was tired, jetlagged, emotionally drained, and scared out of my wits – the latter mainly because I had no idea what I was walking into,” Chilcott said. “I knew Vikki lived on an isolated farm in Utah somewhere, and that we were setting out to write a few songs, and that's where my knowledge ended. I hadn’t even bothered to find out an address and was nearly refused entry into the country at customs! After meeting my new, tiny-framed yet big-voiced friend Vikki in Salt Lake City, we drove to the farm, a drive that proved to be highly entertaining.

“In the final leg I succumbed to my jetlag daze and passed out, later waking up in the total darkness of the driveway on a very isolated property, about a twenty minute drive to the nearest sign of civilisation – a lonely petrol pump. ‘Welcome to the middle of nowhere,’ Vikki said.

“I quickly replied with all the false bravado I could muster, ‘That’s going to be the name of the first song we'll write tomorrow’.”

Before Ruby Boots performs at the upcoming Tamworth Country Music Festival's Americana In The Park event on Thursday 22 January (alongside Mustered Courage, Marlon Williams, Jenny Queen, Katie Brianna and more), stream the track below: