There’s no place like home, right? We all know the saying, but for Morgan Evans, it’s never rung truer.
The Australian country star first came on the scene with his debut self-titled album in 2014, and across a string of EPs and singles, has amassed more than 800 million streams so far. As we said of the singer-songwriter in 2020, he has the “gravitational effect of a star in the sky”.
And for years, that trajectory only continued upward. But after more than a decade building a life and career in Nashville – and navigating a very public divorce – Evans stepped away, spending the better part of the past two years taking a break in the place it all began – his hometown of Newcastle.
Surrounded by the comfortable familiarities of Australian beaches, pubs, family, and friends, Evans began to reconnect with a version of himself that had been nearly forgotten. “It’s one of those things, when you go away from somewhere for so long, you sort of have a new perspective on it, a new appreciation for all the things about it,” he tells me from across the booth at Jolene’s, an iconic country bar in Sydney’s CBD.
“Like the way the beer tastes here,” he says, gesturing to the schooners we sat down with moments earlier. “Or like the the way the crazy hot tar feels on your feet when you’re walking to the beach.”
But going home wasn’t just for fun – it was a necessary reset. Following his split from fellow country singer Kelsea Ballerini, Evans found himself in a period of personal upheaval, one that unfolded under the glare of the public eye. Soon, the weight of it all became difficult to ignore.
“In Nashville, it felt like the whole sky was falling and the walls were imploding and it was the end of the world for me. I came back to Newcastle for Christmas, hung out at a pub with all my mates and they’re like, ‘You’re alright mate. You’re okay’. That was such a moment of perspective shift.”
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Back in Newcastle, the noise softened. The feeling of implosion dissipated, and was soon replaced with something entirely different: peace. Evans had space to process, to breathe, and eventually, to start writing music again – a period of time that ultimately culminated in Steel Town – his follow-up to his 2014 debut.
Released today (March 20th) via Virgin Music Group – which Evans signed with mid-last year – the album stands as his most personal work to date. A love letter to his hometown, Steel Town embodies both the place that shaped him and the version of himself he rediscovered there.
“I have such a fondness for it,” he says, when I ask what Newcastle offers that he can’t find elsewhere. “When I was growing up, it was a very beautiful place… just the culture of the love for the town, it was all I knew. But it was also a tough place to come up as a musician, you know, learning to work those bars and pubs – you had to have thick skin. There’s definitely a resilience that you get growing up there that I think has served me well throughout my travels in the music business and in life.”
Put simply, he says with a smile, Newcastle is “bullshit free” which is an attitude he’s carried since returning. “I really owed it to myself to tell my own story,” he continues, reflecting on how his divorce in particular came to be defined through someone else’s narrative.
“I don’t like to talk about that stuff, I’d rather express that through music. The whole album is not about Newcastle, but that’s where that perspective shift happened and led me to the other songs dealing with grief, or looking for peace in other parts of life.”
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Stripping things back and speaking plainly is a key theme of Steel Town, with Evans leaning into lived-in experiences and more grounded storytelling. It’s an exercise in accepting things the way they are – like relationships, identity, or starting over.
Evans’ sense of self and place is inherently central to the album – but not in the way country music has traditionally framed it. For decades, the genre has been closely tied to ideas of patriotism and national identity – particularly in the US where it often leans on flag-waving imagery and a romanticised vision of small-town life.
On Steel Town, he flips that idea. He says pride of place isn’t symbolic – it’s personal. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but have never been able to.” But with tracks like “Beer Back Home”, “Steel Town”, and “Land I Love”, he reimagines the tradition through an Australian lens.
I ask if the ‘Australian-ness’ of his music has ever presented any challenges when performing to crowds elsewhere, but he’s quick to assure me that – despite the nuances or subtleties – the emotion at the heart of the songs cuts through regardless.
“I really have felt sort of empowered to be my Aussie self like I have never felt before,” he smiles. “And making those records like that and having someone like William Barton come on and play didgeridoo and sing on it, it adds so much weight to it. But the great thing about music these days is it doesn’t have to fit in a box so much – it’s almost like, the less it fits in that box, the better it is.”
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Undoubtedly, the Australians – and of course our Kiwi friends across the Tasman – will love the new album – especially when he takes it on tour later this year. The seven-date run will kick off on May 21st at Perth’s ICF Warehouse, before shows at Melbourne’s Forum, Adelaide’s Thebarton Theatre, Sydney’s Enmore Theatre, Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall, Auckland’s Powerstation, and Christchurch’s Town Hall.
“I’m really looking forward to the tour,” Evans says. “This record was also made at the end of three years of nonstop touring, so I think while I was making it, I was very conscious of wanting to make every song something that when I was at the show, I would look down and see it on a set list and look forward to playing it, you know.”
Morgan Evans’ Steel Town is out now.
