You're Only Going to Fail if You Quit

From the 3rd to 6th of September 2026, country and Americana band Rusty Pickups played four shows in four days across the New England North West of NSW, opening at the School of Arts in Tenterfield before moving on to the Roxy Theatre in Bingara, the Art & Craft Pavilion at Gunnedah Showground, and a free show at the Baan Baa Hotel. Close to 400 punters came through the door across the four nights.

A nasty flu had taken hold of the rest of the group, so the show went ahead as a three-piece: Michael, Lee and fiddle player Amily. The band is known for its 2026 single "California Widow", featuring five-time Golden Guitar winner Pete Denahy on fiddle, which climbed to number five on the AMRAP Regional Charts. Their debut album, ‘I Don't Think About You At All... Somedays’, has taken them to Gympie Muster, Legends of Country and the Tamworth Country Music Festival, Woodford Folk Festival and onto festival stages alongside Kasey Chambers and Troy Cassar-Daley.

After the interview in Tenterfield, for their opening show of the tour, Lee summed the last five years up more simply than anything caught on the recording. "You're only going to fail if you quit," he said. He was definitely talking about a lot more than the lead up to the New England North West tour

Ahead of opening night, with soundcheck done and over 100 tickets sold in Tenterfield alone, the band sat down for a drink at the Royal Hotel. "It is the best time of the day out here," Michael said, before admitting to a few nerves. "The reason you're doing it is to play music."

That line carries more weight once you know what both Michael and Lee do when they're not on stage. There's a day job, and then there's the creative one, and for most touring musicians the two run side by side rather than one after the other. Michael's was in agricultural publishing, first on cotton, grain and sugarcane magazines, then in business development for a fertiliser company, right up until earlier this year. Lee's was in the marketing department of a multinational seed company in Toowoomba, shooting television commercials and working daily with farmers, while the band was still forming around him. The two didn't meet through music at all: Michael was trying to get Lee's employer to advertise in his magazine when they connected. "We were both in ag," Lee said, "but we were both creatives in Toowoomba, so we were always going to meet."

The Rusty Pickups played Tamworth Country Music Festival every year for five years before this tour ever came up. "You've got to show up," Lee said. "If you love it, you show up, and then those people that you connect with, turns out they're part of Arts North West, and that's pretty much it." One of those connections was a performer they knew only as Goldheist, who sang a vocal part on the title track of their album and later invited the band to play the January 2026 Hootenanny High Tea, in a high-roofed chapel at the Tamworth Conservatorium with a grand piano front and centre. It was some time before they realised Goldheist was Hester, from Arts North West.

Local venues and councils, Michael said, are "exactly what's required to make an event, to make a tour like this possible and affordable for us to do." He sees Arts North West's role in that light too, not as a shortcut around the slog, but as what happens when persistence finally gets matched with support. "There is a means for everyone to have a win... a cultural shift towards let's make us all the winners," he said. "And this is a really great example of it, I think."

For Michael, playing the School of Arts carried a personal thread too. He grew up on musical theatre, he said, "and I grew up on Tenterfield Saddler and, you know, singing in musicals and all that sort of stuff. So I'm very aware of what these places are like."

Before the show, Amily was juggling an online university class of her own. "I've got a just an optional university class before the show starts. I'll try and fit that in," she said. She's partway through a Juris Doctor alongside touring, listening to lecture notes turned into podcasts on the road because, as she put it, "you can't read and write... all that stuff while we're on the road. I love listening." One bandmate joked that the arrangement solves a practical problem for the group too: "We can't afford a lawyer, so we're just getting one from within." Asked how she stays balanced between law and music, Amily rejected the premise outright. "I never, for me, wasn't really a question of how to balance. It was just, you had to. You just had to. I've got to. Music is so important to me, so I've got to do that. That's not disputable... They're both equally as important, and we'll find a way."

From Tenterfield, the tour continued to Bingara's Roxy Theatre on Friday 4 September, the Art & Craft Pavilion at Gunnedah Showground on Saturday 5 September, and a free show at the Baan Baa Hotel on Sunday 6 September, closing out four nights across four very different rooms and communities.

For a touring band, Michael said, that's the real return: not just ticket sales, but relationships that outlast the tour. "We don't really know anyone here, but we will. In a day, we'll know a heap of people. And that's what you do it for," he said. "We might only get 20 if we come back on our own, but 20 people would still be great. Because they remembered you from last time."

The tour was delivered through Arts North West's On Tour Program, supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, in partnership with North West Theatre Company, Gunnedah Conservatorium, Baan Baa Hall Committee, Tenterfield and School of Arts with support from their respective local governments Gwydir Shire, Gunnedah Shire, Narrabri Shire and Tenterfield Shire Councils.

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