Dust Never Settles

They were two blokes each trying to carve solo paths until the sum of Drew McAlister and Troy Kemp proved a winning combination. Together, as McAlister Kemp, they’ve topped the ARIA country charts, even managing to make a dent on the mainstream top 20, taken out a Golden Guitar at Tamworth and begun turning heads Stateside. In January they released their third album, Harder To Tame.

“We went to Nashville to make this one,” McAlister explains. “We made a sonically global sound, and that’s what we wanted. It’s different to both the last two albums – it’s where we wanted to go, and as an artist you’ve got to evolve and change but still maintain what it was that brought those fans to the party in the first place. We’ve got enough on this album for the party crowd through to the older demographic, and we have got a massive demographic from kids right through to grandparents.”

Many from McAlister Kemp’s loyal fanbase have been following the pair since first spotting them at Gympie as solo artists. “The Gympie Muster’s incredible. This year we’re gonna be doing the mainstage on Friday night, and then we’ll get to do the Crowbar on Saturday. We haven’t done the Crowbar for a few years – that was the stage that we cut our teeth on as a band. It’s great man, it’s gonna be such a raucous night.”

The Muster has been an integral part of the McAlister Kemp journey, and continues to offer up-and-coming artists a chance to gain valuable performance skills and recognition through its Talent Search program. This year a prize pool of over $40,000 is on offer. 

“That was my first foray into the big Gympie [Music] Muster!” says McAlister, who won the Talent Search over a decade ago. “It just put me on the map as far as being an emerging solo artist, and it got my name recognised and my songwriting ability recognised so that was really cool. I was not flush with money by any means and I got to perform in front of a big crowd and [I got] prize money, and I won a guitar. With the winnings of that money I actually bought my wife an engagement ring; I proposed to her the week after!”

The Muster has, of course, grown massively since its beginnings in 1982 as an APEX Club community fundraiser, incorporating sounds beyond its country roots and grown bigger, and so too have McAlister Kemp.

“When you’re doin’ those little stages [at the Muster] and it’s just Troy and I on acoustic guitars and there’s nothin’ to back us up, you’ve got to entertain an audience ‘cause there’s not much to work with. We did those little stages for such a long time, and then being able to move onto the next medium where we’ve got six of us on stage, we’ve got a guy doin’ lights, smoke machines and all sorts of stuff goin’ on – it’s a cool evolution.”