Tom Wolfe admits that calling The Wolfe Brothers’ seventh album Australian Made risks shutting the band off from “certain markets and from certain listeners.” Neither he nor his brother, guitarist/vocalist Nick, really care. “Nick and I are Australian made. We love this country, we love this scene,” the bass player tells Apple Music. “So, we may as well sing about it. Let’s embrace our Australianisms and do it in our way.” With the exception of their cover of the Bruce Woodley and Dobe Newton-penned classic “I Am Australian,” the brothers reference their heritage in more subtle, everyday ways, be it via name-checking the ATO and RBA in “Little by Little” or the slang references to Far North Queensland in “Country Is Coming to Town” (“From the FNQ to way down south”). Musically, they also draw on the proud legacy of ’80s Oz rock, incorporating influences such as James Reyne, Southern Sons, and Daryl Braithwaite into their ’90s-indebted country sound—they even got John Farnham’s harp and saxophone player Steve Williams to play on the song “Little by Little.” “We didn’t know when we were recording all this stuff that it was going to be called Australian Made, but we did make a conscious decision to use Australian [musicians],” explains Tom. “There’s a choir at the end [of the album]; they’re all local kids that Gina Jeffreys teaches. Quite often, you can email off parts and get guys from Nashville to do it, but we kept it as Australian and us as we possibly could.” Here, Tom and Nick take Apple Music through Australian Made, track by track. “Australian Made” Tom Wolfe: “We wrote it with Graeme [Connors] before I had kids. It’s a bit spooky. I was going through the songs we’d written over the years, and I listened to the third verse, and I was like, ‘That is my first daughter!’ She was early, she’s got stuff to do, but I know she’s gonna be all right because she’s here. It really felt like a special song when I found that and realized it had come true.” “Little by Little” Nick Wolfe: “I got a letter to say my mortgage was going up for the 12th time in a row or something. That set me off. I sent Tom a text: ‘I think I’ve got an idea for a song.’” TW: “He says, ‘I wrote this line: Between the RBA and the day-to-day, everybody wants a piece of the pot.’” NW: “Again, that’s a way we wanted to get an Australian-made flavor—saying things like the RBA, the ATO. It just comes from a real place. We’re all going to the grocery store and taking out a second mortgage just to pay. But the idea is there’s still hope, and we’re all in the same boat—let’s crack on with things.” “Beer in a Bar” (feat. Kaylee Bell) NW: “No good story ever started with a salad. Some pretty good yarns start with a beer in a bar. It’s just about getting out there and taking a chance, putting yourself out there. You never know what good things might happen when you do.” “You Need a Farmer” NW: “We wanted to write a song based off the famous ‘You need a farmer so many times a day’ saying.” TW: “You need a farmer three times a day—when you have breakfast, lunch, dinner. We’re generational farmers. We watched dad and our uncle work way too much for way too little, so we’re definitely big supporters of Aussie farmers.” NW: “There’s a lot of cowboy songs around in 2025. It seems to be a real flavor. So, what did we do? The opposite.” “How Many One More Times” [The Wolfe Brothers & Zac & George] NW: “It’s about those simple things in life that you never know when that last time is. The things you take for granted. And I was thinking about the last phone call I ever had with Mum. Didn’t talk about anything deep and meaningful. I don’t know what we talked about. And I wish I could go back and have that phone call again. It’s a reminder to make the most of every moment.” “Country Is Coming to Town” [The Wolfe Brothers & Lee Kernaghan] NW: “We wrote the song and went, wow, that really sounds like a Lee Kernaghan song. So, we reached out to Lee, and he was so on board. It was really nice to work with him again.” TW: “Some of those little Australianisms that came out in this song: ‘From the FNQ to way down south.’ I remember when we wrote that, I was doing a Lee Kernaghan impression singing that line. I was like, ‘We’ve got to get him.’” “No Sad Song” NW: “We had already released ‘No Sad Songs’ on the Country Heart album. But we were in a very different place musically back then. It was extremely pop. Over the years we thought, ‘This is not us anymore.’” TW: “To the point we couldn’t play it live.” NW: “If we were going to play this live, it was going to be something we feel authentic doing, which is ’90s country rock. It felt so good, we had to rerecord it. We wanted that incarnation to be out there.” “Hometown Like My Hometown” TW: “It’s an ode to my childhood. We grew up on a farm. I remember the summers with my dad and mum and uncle, and there’d be fruit being picked, and we’d be going out doing some hunting, and we’d be setting up music and playing in the shed. It was just the best upbringing. I really wish everyone got to have that upbringing, ’cause I’ve learned in my traveling that a lot of people don’t.” “Shoot It Straight” TW: “This, to me, is really back to our roots. There’s a song on our first album called ‘Bad Man Outta Me’ and it’s real country rock. Big guitars.” NW: “It’s about just going for it. Don’t get in your head too much. You may as well have a crack. You never know if you don’t ask, all those things.” “I Am Australian” TW: “It felt very appropriate to end the album with this. We got asked to perform at an NRL Anzac Day match, so we sang that, and it was a sold-out 45,000-people game. Incredible moment. We thought it would be nice to present a not-too-country, not-too-rock—just a great modern version of this song for the next generation of Australians. It is such a wonderful message. We want to make sure it goes on to the next generation.”