Colin Buchanan is one of Australia's most prolific songwriters, having released more than 30 albums in various genres and co-written hundreds of songs with the likes of Lee Kernaghan, Troy Cassar-Daley, Adam Harvey and others. He has won nine Golden Guitars at the Australian Country Music Awards and has been nominated for multiple ARIAs and other accolades.

But he laughs about the fact that, to this day, he is still more likely to be recognised as “Colin from Play School,” on which he was a presenter for seven years in the 1990s.

“I've been tracked through supermarkets, shadowed, I’ve jumped in the Ord River way out there in the Kimberley and a little face popped out of the water next to me and said, ‘You’re Colin, hey?’” he laughs.

“But I do love that it's made friends all over Australia…I think that playing a positive part in a child's life is a huge privilege and it's something very precious to that child and children grow up and continue to treasure those positive experiences. So I count that a great honour.”

This month, Colin is preparing to release his 8th country album, Memory Town, and he will be performing in Orange at the Canobolas Dance Hall on Sunday, August 11 as part of a launch tour that also includes Campbelltown, Katoomba and Dubbo.

Appropriately, the tour closely follows Colin’s own journey from Sydney out to western NSW in 1988 where he spent a year in Bourke and then another in Grenfell. It was those experiences that were the inspiration for his debut album in 1991 and they continue to bring life and colour to his music today, he says.

“I  didn't realise that I was embarking on a career in country music and music in general," Colin says.

So this tour follows those footsteps, which is really I think really appropriate because I do owe the Central West a great debt of gratitude because in a year living in Grenfell and heading up to Orange for shopping trips that was just the fabric of life. And so often now as I write and I'm looking for a place to set my mind, it will be the Cargo Road or heading around the back roads of Canobolas or Goolagong or Canowindra.

“So I'm very grateful that I got a chance to not just get inside the Central West, but let a little bit of the Central West get under my skin.”

Memory Town will be Colin’s first country album in more than ten years, but in that time he has produced 11 albums of children’s Christian music and continued to collaborate with longtime songwriting partners Lee Kernaghan and Troy Cassar-Daley.

“In fact, Lee’s just released a new single with James Johnston called 'Who I Am' and that song we wrote with James and Nick Wolfe…  so we've continued to collaborate and I've learnt an enormous amount working with Lee over the years and had just some great experiences,” Colin says.

“And I love that I can listen to Lee Kernaghan Live at the Deni Ute Muster and I'm a bit like a proud father… I've got this lovely stake in so many of those songs and just to hear them landing in a crowd, it's a real delight.”

Colin says he’s a bit of a compulsive songwriter, writing whenever inspiration strikes. But recently he thought it was time to ‘dig through the shoebox’ and bring these stories to light.

“I had probably 50 songs. My poor friends who had to listen to demos and sit there while I played tunes!

“But it was an interesting process to work out what songs belonged together and it took a long time too to decide what's the title. When I settled on Memory Town, it felt like that was a really nice theme that runs through so much of what the album's about. It's about people's lives and memories, the things that hold our memories and the loss of memory too. Of childhood and old age… it has those themes that people would come to expect in my country music.”

Memory Town has already produced two national top-ten singles, ‘The Bush Comes Back’ and ‘What I Love About Country’ — a song that sums up Colin’s love of storytelling in country music.

“One of the phrases I use is, ‘There's songs that you hear and you feel and you see’’.

So you don't simply hear them, but you see them… and so much of my country music was created out of the things I saw in the Central West. So, I think this album, it’s a collection of songs you can see.”

Join Colin at the Canobolas Dance Hall for a relaxed and soulful afternoon 3pm–5.15 pm on Sunday, August 11. The Memory Town launch tour  is part of the 2024 Fire Festival.

For more information and tickets, visit: colinbuchanan.com.au/blogs/shows