The Brothers 3, those three farm boys who lit the X Factor with their beautiful voices, are on tour and will be at the Nambucca RSL this Saturday night for a free, family-friendly show.
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You may recall the back story to these boys from Mudgee, NSW … raised without electricity, running water or sewerage, just so that their mother could afford to buy them instruments and drive them across country to their shows.
Makirum, Tayzin and Shardyn Fahey-Leigh have clocked up six Tamworth Country Music Festivals already.
At their first, aged just 10, 11, and 12 years old respectively, Mak was so small that he could barely hold a guitar, but that didn’t stop the crowd going wild.
“There was one guy who was so drunk that he thought that if he lit himself on fire he could put it out with a whip,” recalls Mak.
“They had to throw buckets of water on him as we were playing.”
And if you can keep singing through that, you can handle a live TV performance to an X Factor audience of over 1.4 million.
Yep, there aren’t many kids who could tour arenas with Hugh Jackman in The Boy from Oz, like Shardyn, who’s the oldest brother at 20. And few kids would have the commitment to rehearse three hours a day with the Australian Opera’s Children’s Chorus, like Tayzin, now 19.
“It helped my ability to both drown the others out and shout at them from the other end of the farm,” Tay says of this.
Even the youngest and most vocal member of Brothers 3, Mak – now 18 – found fame as the kid with the bowl cut in the Macca’s ads, before progressing to film, TV and stage roles like his siblings.
Mak also joined Shar in the musical Quambadook, about the life of country star John Williamson, and it was this experience that sealed the brothers’ love of country music, spurring them to release four independent albums before they’d even hit our screens on The X Factor.
Their harmonious take on country-folk was the surprise hit of the sixth season. Brothers 3 auditioned with a daring cover of ‘Safe & Sound’ by Taylor Swift and were voted in by all four judges – Redfoo, Ronan Keating, Natalie Bassingthwaighte and their eventual mentor, Dannii Minogue – before battling on to the grand final.
After an exhilarating battle, Brothers 3 placed third. Free from the schedule of TV, they hit the road, touring extensively before they inked a record deal with Warner Music Australia.
