Ruby Boots Announces Debut Album & National Tour

Acclaimed country troubadour Ruby Boots, aka Bex Chilcott, has announced that she will release her debut album, Solitude, this month, and follow up its eagerly awaited unveiling with a solid run of shows around the country for good measure, kicking off mid-next month.

Boots' album will be unleashed on the world on Friday, 24 April, only a couple of days after her impending appearance at the first monthly Country & Inner Western event at The Basement, in Sydney, and just less than a month before she gets her accompanying national tour under way at Perth's Rosemount Hotel on Friday, 15 May.

From there, Boots and her trusty band will grace stages in Bunbury (16 May), Dunsborough (17 May), Sydney (21 May), Melbourne (22 May), Kyneton (23 May), San Remo (24 May) and Brisbane, where she brings the celebration to a close at the Black Bear Lodge on Saturday, 29 May.

Solitude may be Boots' first full-length effort, but she's no greenhorn when it comes to recorded output, having previously released a couple of eagerly received EPs on the way to LP territory, meaning, in many ways, Solitude is more an early destination point in Boots' career, rather than solely the start of a new journey.

"It can be hard to be teething in front of people," Boots said in a statement of her transitionary period. "You have to start somewhere and my start was a late one, stuck out at sea on a pearl boat working as a deckhand 12 hours a day, passing the time learning to play and writing at night.

"I've always drawn upon and gone back to that place where I started playing music, out at sea, emotionally speaking, feeling lonely as hell for the most part … since transitioning from a place of loneliness to solitude, where life stopped being about absences, I moved toward a place where I didn't need to fear the void. I now let solitude speak to me. I can listen to it clearly and that's where I write from.

"It's a safe, yet vulnerable and unstitched, place where I can shape stories from. This album is a peak of acceptance of that place."

Solitude features guest spots from The Waifs' Vicki Thorn (Middle Of Nowhere, No Stranger), You Am I's Davey Lane (Solitude), Jordie Lane (Lovin' In The Fall), Bill Chambers (Walk Away), and long-time collaborator Lee Jones of The Sleepy Jackson and Eskimo Joe rockin' the six-string and lap steel throughout the album's 10-track-strong set list. As well as co-writing tracks with Thorn, Ruby Boots turned to The Basement Birds' Steve Parkin and fellow artist Tony Buchen, while contributing producers included Buchen, Jordie Lane, Anna Laverty and Bill Chambers.

For more information about the forthcoming tour, see theGuide or check The Music App.

solitude track list

1. Cola And Wine
2. Ruby Blue
3. Middle Of Nowhere
4. Wrap Me In A Fever
5. Lovin’ In The Fall
6. No Stranger
7. Solitude
8. Baby Pull Over
9. Walk Away
10. Long Time Coming