Tammy Moxon on her new single ‘What Am I To Do’

2024-12-06

Some songs arrive quickly; others take years to gestate, waiting for the songwriter to find the right moment to bring them fully to life. For her latest album, Fighting Chance, Townsville artist Tammy Moxon wrote several new songs, but in the case of her new single, ‘What Am I To Do’, she discovered a song she wrote a decade before, in the wake of her first break-up, in some old notebooks.As we discuss in this new interview, the song was quite different then. Under the stewardship of producer Shane Nicholson, how...

Some songs arrive quickly; others take years to gestate, waiting for the songwriter to find the right moment to bring them fully to life. For her latest album, Fighting Chance, Townsville artist Tammy Moxon wrote several new songs, but in the case of her new single, ‘What Am I To Do’, she discovered a song she wrote a decade before, in the wake of her first break-up, in some old notebooks.

As we discuss in this new interview, the song was quite different then. Under the stewardship of producer Shane Nicholson, however, it became an up-tempo number that embodies Moxon’s love of Patsy Cline, on whose music Moxon was raised, which gives it an old-school swing and turns what could be a song of disappointment and frustration into something far more hopeful.

In this way the song matches Moxon’s own outlook on life and music. While there is darkness on Fighting Chance, overall it is an album about finding out who you are and setting out to have the life you want and deserve. Moxon has put in the work to create that life and it is clear that music plays a huge role in that.

Moxon recorded the album around lockdowns – with Nicholson in New South Wales, this was not straightforward – and also around her full schedule as a performing artist in Townsville. She plays several gigs a week, often of several sets each, and that’s not only because she’s in demand but because Townsville has the venues to support that much live music. So we chatted about that as well – especially about the fact that her career as a live performer was in doubt for a while. Moxon had problems with her vocal cords, eventually diagnosed as reflux and granulomas. Happily she has learnt to manage these conditions now, and she’s back to full performing strength.

So if you’re in Townsville you’ll no doubt find her performing most weeks of the year – apart from one week in January next year when she will be playing at the Tamworth Country Music Festival on these dates:

20th January – Tamworth Services Club – Tamworth, NSW (w/ Midwest Molly & Cameron Cusack)

20th January – Tamworth Shopping World – Tamworth, NSW

21st January – The Welders Dog – Tamworth, NSW

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