Dan Brodie & The Broken Arrows: Bullet Boys.

Dan Brodie & The Broken Arrows play The Zoo on Thursday, the Troccadero, Surfers Paradise on Friday and Splendour In The Grass at the Belongil Fields, Byron Bay on Sunday. Empty Arms, Broken Heart is in stores now.

For an artist with an obvious country leaning, Dan Brodie puts on one hell of a rock show. His scorching set at The Healer a month back was so weighted with passion and intensity it’s little wonder the Melbourne based musician is drawing acclaim from pundits that would not previously have given more roots based country music a listen. Earlier in the day things were looking a little different. A heavily hung over Dan and his likewise encumbered brother (Broken Arrows guitarist) Chris sat playing Pacman, it was surprising they made it to the show at all.

“It’s a rock and roll show,” he affirms. “What we do’s not about just sitting back and chewin’ hay and having no teeth. I think people are pretty open minded to what we do.”

Empty Arms, Broken Hearts is the second full-length release from Dan Brodie and his band The Broken Arrows. The follow up to Big Black Guitar finds the songwriter covering a wealth of music territory, from the mournful gospel sounds of the album’s opener Jesus, Try & Save Me, the swagger of the discs first single Take A Bullet, or the delicate tenderness of You Fell From The Sky or For Me & You. Empty Arms, Broken Hearts is one hell of an album.

“Take A Bullet’s kind of got that get up and go to it, but it’s a pretty tender record, really,” Dan explains. “Even something like Take A Bullet is a love song in a sense. Perhaps a bit more twisted that most.”

While the tracks on Empty Arms are coming from a similar emotional perspective, their evolution finds them coming together at a differing pace.

“Some of the songs, like Highway Lovin’ Man have been around since before the first album. Often with song writing you’re not ready for a song to be finished, or it’s not ready for you. Some things just come up again, and it was the right time for it. I’ve had songs for sometimes five years, and I’ll just have a line going through my head wanting to be let out.”

“It’s just evolved over the years, really. Everyone that I admire musically tends to come through in my songs, but I’m not really influenced by what’s going on around me. I’m pretty insulated really. I’m just happy to roll along and release records.”

The album features several guest appearances through the course of it’s eleven tracks, including You Am I frontman Tim Rogers on Hope That We Get Home and Spencer P Jones on You Fell From The Sky. Country artist Sherry Rich shares the writing credits for Too Much Of You and newcomer Emah Fox joins Brodie on the album’s closing track.

“Most of the guests on the album… I knew most of the people involved before we made the record. We’ve toured with You Am I before, which is how I got to know Tim. Where I live is really inspiring. There are a lot of musicians around where I live. Within about a kilometre of where I live are people like Ian Rilen (Rose Tattoo, X), Spencer Jones lives up the road. Tim Rogers is really close. Everyone’s quite supportive of each other. Paul Kelly and Renee Geyer are around the area. You can all get together and bitch and moan about the music industry.”

While The Broken Arrows was originally a trio featuring the brothers Brodie and drummer Craig Williamson, the group has now grown to a five piece.

“It’s a new band. Ewan McCartney from Snout is playing drums, and we’ve got a bassist (Pete Cicciari) and a Hammond organ (Steve Hesketh) in there as well. We’re still in the infancy stage for it, and this tour that’s coming up is hopefully where it’s all going to come together. You can’t really gauge how it works until you get up on stage. You might fall on your face or you might not. You’ve just got to do it. You can rehearse until the cows come home, but you’ve got to play. It’s not for the faint hearted.”