Ten years ago Morgan Evans was a young man with a guitar in his hands and stars in his eyes performing at pubs in and around Newcastle.
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He was talented, no doubt, but the labels weren't biting.
Today he's a household name in country music circles both at home in Australia and overseas, and his private life is now public property - whether he likes it or not.
Why? His five-year marriage to chart-topping US country-pop singer Kelsea Ballerini ended last August when she filed for divorce. The pair met in 2016 while co-hosting Australia's CMC Awards and married in Mexico one year later.
Music fans and the media have, rightly or wrongly, weighed in on the divorce (Team Kelsea versus Team Morgan) and both Evans and Ballerini have shared their experiences and emotions through song.
Having bared his soul in lyrically heavy songs like Over For You and an album titled Life Upside Down, though, Evans sounds eager to move on with his life and his music. He speaks to Weekender from his home in Nashville, Tennessee.
"I just had my first weekend at home in three months and it was wonderful," he says. Did he watch game one of the rugby league State of Origin played in Adelaide the previous night? "I watched the highlights and it wasn't a great one for us [NSW]. But the Knights had a win on the weekend so I'll take that."
Evans grew up in the leafy Lake Macquarie suburb of Tingira Heights (about half an hour south of Newcastle) and attended Eleebana Primary School. He formed his first band while a student at Warners Bay High School but his love for music developed at a much earlier age.
"As a kid you listen to your parents' records - you don't really have a choice - and I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Garth Brooks, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Twenty Years of Dirt, Glen Campbell, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Dire Straits," he says.
"I didn't know what was country and what was rock at the time, I just knew what songs I liked."
Evans had already learned how to play the piano when, at the age of 13, he was gifted something that changed his life. An electric guitar.
"It wasn't until I took up the electric guitar that I was like 'Ah, OK, this is something that I will do forever'."
As for becoming a singer, that was a process of elimination of sorts.
"I started a band with my brother Tom and my best mate Nick. We were 13 and we forced my brother to learn to play bass guitar and none of us could sing," he says, laughing.
"We auditioned everyone in school who wanted to be in our band and none of them could sing either so I was like 'I guess I'll just do it myself', and that's how it started.
"The band had a bunch of different names over the years and we just played anything and everything. The first song we ever played was a cover of a local punk band's song. We played heavy music, we played Metallica, we played some rap music, and obviously country music as well. That was a very experimental time, musically, and really fun."
Evans has done the hard yards as a musician over the years, gigging constantly and wondering if his "big break" would ever come. He released a self-titled album in 2014 with WM Music but the big break came in 2017 when he moved to the US, signed with Warner Music Nashville and released his second album Things That We Drink To.
"If there's a pub in Newcastle and the surrounding areas that I haven't played at, it's because it only opened in the last few years," he says, laughing again.
"I used to play at Pippi's at the Point (Speers Point) almost every second Sunday, I loved it out there.
"I've always loved playing music, whether there's 25 people there drinking beer or there's 22,000 people. It's still a chance to play music even though they are very different experiences."
When asked to pinpoint a turning point in his career, he nominates two.
"I actually feel super lucky to be this far into my music career and to have had what feels like a gradual build-up for as long as I've been doing it, which at times has been frustrating as I get impatient," Evans says.
"If I had to pick a moment though I'd have to say when Kiss Somebody went to number one on the radio in America, that was a big deal for me. And similarly with what Day Drunk did in Australia. Those two songs really were the moments when I went 'OK cool I'm gonna try to do this' to suddenly 'Oh, we're doing this, this is an amazing feeling'.
"I feel really lucky to be at the stage I'm at now and to be sharing playing music with some great people."
Evans is touring his latest EP, Life Upside Down, and returning to Australia in September. He was here late last year for an appearance at CMC Rocks QLD alongside Kane Brown and Brad Paisley, and then joined Paisley on his tour.
On that visit, Evans added a last-minute hometown Newcastle side gig at The Stag & Hunter which sold out in minutes. Being home and seeing friends and family late last year was a much-needed detox for Evans. He was given the privacy and space he needed to "reset" himself both personally and musically.
"Having lived overseas for eight years I can say with certainty there is something about Australia that is so laid-back, and the people are so relaxed," he says.
"I was there for Christmas last year and I was like 'Oh, that's right, you can do life at this speed'. There is just something about Australia that makes me slow down and calm down. I'll always miss it for that reason.
"We took the film crew on our tour with Brad Paisley and there's a bit in the documentary we filmed on the beach and I was like 'Guys stop, listen', and we were just standing there and all you could hear were the crickets, or maybe they were cicadas, and it was just the most Australian sound. I was like 'This right here, this is what I miss, we've got to just sit here for a bit'. They're just little things but they all add up, don't they?"
He may get homesick at times but Evans enjoys living in Nashville.
"It's a song town," he says. "Everything revolves around the songs and music and that's one of the things I've thrown myself into. Over the past six to eight months I've discovered that it's not about being the best songwriter in the world, it's about being able to articulate your perspective, and I think that's what I'm trying to aspire to do more and more as a songwriter. To write about the things that I feel and see in a better way and in the most honest way."
His 2023 Life Upside Down Tour will kick off at Auckland's Powerstation on September 7 before stopping off at Newcastle's Civic Theatre, The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane, the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne's Palais Theatre, Adelaide's Hindley Street Music Hall and Perth's The Astor Theatre. Details at frontiertouring.com.
Morgan will be joined on this tour by two-time Golden Guitar winner James Johnston from Wingham, on the mid-north coast of NSW about two hours from Newcastle. The pair met as teenagers performing at the annual StarStruck production in Newcastle.
"He's making some great music and when they asked me who I wanted to take on the road in Australia and they sent me this list of American artists I was like 'I'd rather take James'. So we asked him and thankfully he said yes," Evans says.
"He's a good fella.
"There are a lot of good things happening and I am grateful to have a lot of good people in my life. I have a lot to look forward to as well. I am definitely in a good place."
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