23/02/07 - Morgan Evans Wins Telstra Road To Tamworth

By Tim Holland

Newcastle's Morgan Evans became the fourth winner of the Telstra Road To Tamworth competition on Tuesday night in front of a full house at the Tamworth Regional Entertainment Centre.

The judging team, which I was a part of along with CMC's Tim Daley, Country Update Magazine's Gayle Madill, Sony BMG's Jen Carmody and Rob Potts picked Evans after he was considered the most consistent and promising performer over the two day finals series. Evans is also a songwriter and performed his own material on Grand Final night. He will now head to Nashville in June to perform at the CMA Global Artist Showcase and the CMA Festival. During his stay, he'll also record a single, which will be released through Sony BMG.  Morgan got into country music after being introduced to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at age four and after seeing Keith Urban at a concert in Newcastle. In 2000 he decided that a career in country music was what he wanted to strive for.

Briana Lee took out the songwriters encouragement award and will also travel to Nashville in June as part of that prize. Briana has been in the competition three times now it's and it been great to see her improvement and development over that time. She's an incredibly focused young woman who
will benefit greatly from the opportunity to work with some of Nashville's best writers. Briana dedicated her win to her parents who drove eleven hours to see her perform on the night.

Interestingly, Kirsty Lee Akers (last year's songwriting winner) took out this year's Toyota Starmaker contest last Sunday. Kirsty performed songs she co-wrote during her Telstra prize winning trip to Nashville last year. She will now release an album through Compass Bros/Sony BMG.

Another promising performer on finals night was 16 year old Sinead Burgess who showed plenty of promise performing Sugarland's Something More. I look forward to seeing her develop over the next couple of years and there's no doubt that she has the potential to be a future winner of the competition.

I was also really impressed with Michelle Murphy from Alice Springs. She's a songwriter with a stack of promise.

Mike and Darren Carr hosted the final series and provided plenty of hilarity in between songs. The inaugural winner and Australian Idol runner up Jessica Mauboy also performed at the finals along with Adam Harvey, Kirsty Lee Akers and last year's winner Nick Kingswell.

The Country Music Channel will broadcast a finals highlights package next month.