Tamworth Country Music Festival 2022: Felicity Urquhart finds love and new musical partnership with The Waifs' Josh Cunningham

As a new musical partnership blossomed with The Waifs' Josh Cunningham, so too did love and eventually, The Song Club was born.

The artistic duo are now taking their debut album of duets on the road for the first time as partners in life and work.

"It's bliss, it's absolute heaven," Cunningham told the Leader.

"She's the person I most enjoy spending time with, so what better way to spend time than playing music too."

In January 2020, the pair were invited to join Song Club, a creative collective that tasked members with writing a song a week.

Urquhart said the relationship just flowed naturally.

"As the year of Song Club was progressing, there were these songs that Josh would play where I'd hear the second verse and think 'that sounds a little bit like my story'," she said.

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"I'd sort of quiz him a bit more as we were getting to know each other about how these lyrics were coming out, and I felt like 'you know I should be singing that song'."

The Song Club is the first album Urquhart has recorded since her late husband, respected musician and producer Glen Hannah, took his own life in May 2019.

The Tamworth-born artist says she found her strength again through music, and hopes the album can help others do the same.

"We recorded everything ourselves, we engineered it, produced it and played everything. So they're not only our songs, but we touched every part of it," she said.

"It was fun to get in the studio and just record, hit go. The kids would come in and bring lunch and just share in the joy.

"We didn't shy away from the story in any way, shape or form and we hope that this might make other people think that something good is out there for you if you've been through hard times because that's what happened for us. We were happy to share that joy for other people."

For Cunningham, the new relationship helped him find his voice.

"I've played with The Waifs for 30 years, and vocally the girls take care of things most of the time," he said.

"I sing a few songs here and there, and write a lot of the songs, but Fliss was very definite on this project that it was all going to be duets and I was going to be singing every single song.

"I've really loved that."

The spirit lifting collection of songs landed them four Golden Guitar nominations this year, including Duo of the Year, Alt Country Album of the Year, Toyota Album of the Year and Video Clip of the Year.

The pair bring their tour to Tamworth's Capitol Theatre tonight at 8pm.

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