Josh Setterfield is a force to be reckoned with in the Australian country music scene, blazing his own trail with unmatched energy and uncharted creativity. Known for electrifying performances on global stages, Setterfield is set to push boundaries even further, leading the charge with his latest heavy country hit, ‘Burning Gas’.
Last year, the Queenslander made has UK debut at Buckle & Boots Festival before heading across the pond to the United States and Canada. He Returned to Australia from north America after a triumphant performance at the renowned Cavendish Beach Music Festival, he has just completed a run of highly successful headline shows in Australia in Brisbane, Newcastle & Melbourne and a main stage debut at CMC Rocks this year. Josh is slated to perform at upcoming Australian festivals including Groundwater Country Music Festival, Mandurah Country Music Festival, Wangaratta Country Music Festival, plus more international performances to be announced. We recently caught up with Josh over Zoom where he shared details about the new single, the music video, his time in Canada and what the new single is building towards.
On new single ‘Burning Gas’: “I’m really excited to have this song out, it was written with Adam Cousins and Craig Brooks out of Canada. They kind of started it and they brought it to me then of course I was head over heels for it but I kind of wanted to change it to make it more me so I brought in a bridge and went through all of the verses to make it more about stuff to do with me. It’s a pretty simple subject, kind of growing up, being proud of who you are and being addicted to spinning the tyres, going out for a drive and enjoying growing up. It’s about sticking to your guns and being who you are, I love that and I’m all about that so as soon as they came to me with the idea that they had, I was definitely jumping on this song. We’ve been holding onto it for a little while, about a year and the reason for that is that it is pretty rocky and heavy where at the end it does get pretty aggressive so we were kind of waiting to see when the right time for that would be and I don’t think there is a right time and we’re big risk takers so we just decided that we are going to go for it and release it. It’s exciting doing that kind of thing because I’m the kind of artist who loves to throw a spanner in the works and take risks when others aren’t. I know that artists like Hardy have already done this kind of heavy sound but this isn’t really his sort of heavy, it’s really my own brand, it’s really my own brand of the hardcore slash metalcore kind of thing that I grew up with that’s mixed in that way.”
Josh mentioned that ‘Burning Gas’ was a song that he had written with two guys from Canada, which is somewhere where he has now spent quite a bit of time so we talked about his experiences in North America. “We’ve kind of been across it for a little while as I actually have most of my team in Canada. This year was actually my second time there, last year when we came to see you guys we hit up Canada too for the first time. We had a big festival there with a bunch of artists which sadly fell through whilst we were in Nashville, which was very stressful, so we had to put on a headline show because it was the only show that we had there and it ended up selling out which was absolutely crazy. It is huge there and you don’t even realise but a lot of the people who you think are big north American artists are actually Canadian, where they are really killing it in the country scene right now and I didn’t realise but nearly fifty percent of artists who I listen to are Canadian. It’s great over there and it’s very good to know people there to help out with that kind of thing, whilst America is leading with country music and have been for a very long time, Australia and the UK are coming up closer underneath but Canada is definitely the closest thing that they’ve got and like I said they are killing it. It helps to have people you know there but also see some artists there have the same struggles that Australian and British artists have of not being in the States of trying to push it saying hey we make country music as well.”
We had been talking about various artists and playing venues of different sizes where we naturally came on to talking about the Australian country music artist that EVERYONE knows all about and how Keith Urban had been playing very small club shows in Australia which Josh himself had got to witness the day before we spoke in Brisbane. “It was absolutely incredible. He has done two in Australia, one in Sydney and one last night in Brisbane, I don’t know what the Sydney one was, but last night’s show was even smaller and probably four hundred people max. Keith Urban is pretty much a God to me and I know we are both Australian where it’s a bit cliché for an Aussie artist to say that but he’s pretty much the reason I picked up a guitar and not just to see him in a small venue like that but the coolest thing was that there was no backing screen and very little production so it was just lights, guitar amps and microphones. It was no backing tracks, just four musicians playing music and it was pretty special.”
On the story behind the really fun video to ‘Burning Gas’: “We shot that at Willowbank Raceway which is actually where they hold CMC Rocks but on the other side of the building that sits behind the stage is a drag strip and we shot it there. We hit up a local drag team called the Donnelly’s who we have known for a little while, DBS Motorsport is their thing and they let us come along to the Winter Nationals which is all broadcast on television and it was wild. I brought the camera and filmed their driver getting ready for the gig, you think you are a rockstar when you play at CMC Rocks but these guys are the real rockstars of WIllowbank Raceway, they go over four hundred and twenty five kilometres per hour over like five seconds or something like that which is absolutely crazy. They did that and I got to sit in the back of the Dodge RAM as it pulled the drag car out where if people saw it on tv, they would have seen me sat in the back holding the camera filming the car being dragged out to the track. When that thing takes off, you feel it through your whole body, I used to go to watch as a kid but being next to one as it takes off is pretty crazy. My manager Dayna came up with the idea for the clip because we knew these people before and that they have a lot of classic cars, they said if you ever need any classic cars hit us up and you can use them for a music video so when we were thinking of ideas, thought let’s hit them up but I was like I don’t want any of those classic cars, I want the crazy out of this world speed car! They let us come along to film on the day and I just stayed out of the way but had the camera on them at all times and then we went back to film our clips. Honestly, it’s probably my favourite music video that we have ever done because it’s very different to anything I have really seen, we just wanted to have some fun with it and get some shock value.”
Then lastly, we spoke about his plans for releases for going forward and what ‘Burning Gas’ is building towards: “This is actually going to be part of an EP, I’m not going to tell you what it’s called yet but we’re going to announce more details in the next couple of weeks. ‘Burning Gas’ is the start of it along with two other tracks that we have already released but there are three to four tracks still to come where we are literally about to start the roll out on that so I’m very, very excited. Just before I jumped on here we you, we finalised the album artwork so it’s coming together and I will say that it is kind of a continuation of the last EP but obviously completely different songs.” ‘Burning Gas’ is the new single from Josh Setterfield which is out now and available HERE. Josh is really hopeful to be able to return to the UK as soon as he can, but in the meantime you can find details of all of his upcoming Australian shows on his WEBSITE and everyone can keep up to date with him socially on FACEBOOKINSTAGRAMTIKTOK & TWITTER.