Graham Rodger - Steering Wheel Drovers (2001)

Since resigning as a Queensland Ambulance Officer and becoming a fulltime professional entertainer, Graham has made a huge impact on the country music industry. His name has become synonymous with the writing and recording of high quality Australian ballads. Keeping Australia and Australians as the major themes for his ballads ensures that Graham will always uphold the traditions cemented into our culture by the late Slim Dusty. Slim was one of the many within the industry who acknowledged Graham's exceptional writing skills and was pleased on several occasions to record his material. One of the most notable was “You Can’t Take Australia From Me”. The message in this ballad so impressed Slim that the family requested Dick Smith to recite it as a poem at his funeral. Graham has always greatly appreciated this gesture and has never under-estimated this acknowledgement.

In 2012 on his eleventh album “Stronger For It All” Graham wrote and recorded the ballad “I Am”. There is a line in this ballad, which says ‘We are the artists, poets and the scribes who keep our heritage alive’. It is for this that we should be ever so grateful to Graham and his fellow balladeers because it is they, who are keeping our history and traditions alive. For centuries, right across the world, history has been handed down through the generations by story and song. Without these artists, as a nation, we lose our day to day contact with our past, and with no past we have no soul, and with no soul we have no future. In what he has penned, Graham has given us a window through which we can view the history of our people. He tells of monumental events and every day occurrences, all of which blend together to make us what we are today.

Graham is an incredibly gifted entertainer with a highly developed natural flow and as a result you only have to sit back and listen to one of his CDs or a live performance and you will fully appreciate the depth of this man’s talents. The quality of Graham's voice is reflected in the numerous “Male Vocalist of the Year” awards which he has won (these include numerous “People’s Choice Awards” from Tamworth). The conviction and the emotion with which he sings his ballads are some of the tools he uses to whisk you away into his world. Like any good storyteller he encapsulates you so you feel and live the story he is telling.

If you are not into country music you may be asking “Who is this Graham Rodger?” So let me tell you a little about the achievements of this incredibly talented Australian entertainer.

In 1998 as a full time entertainer Graham released his first album. In just over 20 years Graham has amassed 100 major country music awards, including the Hands of Fame and Golden Guitar.