Owen and Cody ready to strum along with country music stars at senior academy

When they finally met at the Country Music Assoication Australia (CMAA) senior academy of Country Music orientation, it was quite a memorable introduction.

"He (Mr Walker) had seen one of my ads and came up to say, 'Hello'," Mr Smith said.

"I had been at a gig the night before and seen somebody else play. My brain just went, 'Ah, it must be that guy from the gig last night!'"

It wasn't.

"I was having this whole conversation with Cody, it was something completely different. He must have thought I was a pork chop," Mr Smith said.

However, Mr Walker says he was "so nervous" to meet his fellow academy students the context of the conversation didn't even register.

"I was like in my own little world, just talking and trying to make conversation," he said.

"And as I walked away, I looked at my fiancé and said, 'I don't think he knows who I am'.

Soon after realising they had crossed wires, the duo re-introduced over text message and shared a good chuckle.

Through their conversations, they came to realise they have much in common.

Both artists are self-taught musicians and spent their childhoods moving around.

Mr Walker was born on the Central Coast near Wyong and spent his early life split between his family's properties on the coast and in Tamworth.

"We just went back and forth between properties every second weekend," he said.

"Then 10 years ago we made the permanent move up here."

On the other side of the coin, Mr Smith was born in Tamworth but his family relocated to the Snowy Mountains, and he only moved back in recent years.

But he says no matter where he was, there was music all around him.

"My dad would sit in the car and listen to the old classics on the radio. We would get Slim Dusty and Adam Brand on cassette tape and drive along," Mr Smith said.

These small yet impactful memories are what inspired Mr Smith to begin learning guitar.

"A couple times we did the road trip to Tamworth for the festival. I have some really good experiences busking at the festival," he said.

Despite his talents on the chords, the songwriting took a little bit of nurturing.

Mr Smith said the songs never resonated with him.

"I was kinda of writing something to write something, there wasn't a message I wanted to share," he said.

It was when he went through a rough patch at work that he found a release through songwriting. He decided to translate his firsthand experiences with the 2003 bushfires into song.

"We were out the back of Captains Flat when the bushfires came through - the big one that took out Canberra," he said.

"We knew the fire was up the valley just across the highway, and we knew if it jumped the highway, it was gonna come through our property. We spent the entire summer bracing for impact."

Mr Smith remembers the "smoke in the air, feeling the heat, and hearing the ABC radio siren over the radio."

Throughout the CMAA Senior Country Music Academy, they both will be mentored by some of the top artists within the industry, including Ashleigh Dallas, Max Jackson, Allan Caswell, and Melody Moko.

For Mr Walker, you could say music is in his blood.

"I have had music around me my whole life," he said.

"My dad was a singer in bands and a DJ through the '80s. I remember music was blaring around the house, and I was always singing."

Both his mum and sister sing, and his lyrical side comes from his bush poet grandfather. But Mr Walker says the exact moment his "obsession for music" truly began was when he found a cassette tape of the rock band, Deep Purple.

"When I was around 11 or 12 years old, my dad came into my room and gave me a briefcase full of cassettes. He was clearing out his music and told me to take out what I like and they would get rid of the rest," he said.

Mr Walker played it so often he burned out the tape.

In time, Mr Walker also began to learn the guitar, and he gravitated towards the country music genre.

During a brief conversation with a fellow songwriter at the Longyard Hotel he found out about the CMMA Senior Country Music Academy.

He initally thought he had lost out on his chance to be part of the 2024 cohort.

"I thought I missed it. I thought deadlines for application had passed. It turned out to be the junior academy and not the senior," he said.

"So, I thought it is a year from now, and I have a year to get involved."

But fate had other plans.

That evening, Mr Walker went to a songwriters night.

After getting peer-pressured by his fiance and sister into singing a song he composed in the bathroom only moments prior, a sliding doors moment happened.

"The academy got in contact with me and offered me the scholarship," Mr Walker said.

"From thinking I missed to cut off day to that happening, it was almost like it was meant to be."

Both talented musicians will be part of the 2024 senior country music academy that will kick off classes prior to the Tamworth Country Music Festival on January 8.