When your first recording makes it to the Top 5 of the Country charts while you're just in your teens, it might be an accident. But when you follow this with your first album and many of the songs on it written by you reaching the Top 5 to rave reviews around the world, then that's talent. And that's precisely what Catherine Britt has, and lot's of it.

Born in Newcastle, Australia in 1984, her father was a music buff who sidelined in amateur radio and confesses to listening to Hank Williams music while all his buddies were deep into Led Zeppelin. It must have really influenced her because Catherine has a tattoo of Hank Williams on her leg. She started singing before an audience when she was 11 years old and the success led to a string of accomplishments hard to imagine for any artist so young.

Encouraged by her parents, she asked Bill Chambers if she could join him and his ‘The Dead Ringer Band’ in singing an old Jimmie Rodgers song. Her singing knocked Chambers out and since then, he and his daughter, country star Kasey Chambers, have been Britt's guiding lights. Chambers produced Britt's album and Kasey co-wrote some songs and took her on tour.

In 2002, Elton John during his tour of Australia was so impressed with Britt's album that he invited her to his concert in Sydney. They later on, in the USA, recorded a duet of one of the songs she had written. In the same year, Chris Isaak asked her to perform as a special guest on the Australian phase of his tour. In the Toyota Country Music Awards at Tamworth, she reached the Top 10 in every category in which she qualified, and a Top 5 in the New Talent section.

Britt moved to Nashville to further her career. There she became the youngest Australian performer at the Grand Ole Opry, and wrote songs with some of Nashville's top songwriters. She lived in Nashville for six years before deciding to return to Australia.

Back home, Britt won the 2009 Female Artist of the Year title at the CMAA Awards. She has embarked on a new phase of her career by making a new album, this time with Bill Chambers and Shane Nicholson as co-producer. The album, called ‘Catherine Britt’ harnesses all of her musical and songwriting talents to produce a biography in music and capture a whole range of experiences in her life. ‘Sweet Emmylou’, one of the songs in the album has just won for her Second Place in the 2011 Vanda and Young Songwriting Competition.

This month (August) Britt is scheduled to perform in ‘Dueting It for the Kids’ in Sydney, together in the company of a long list of Australia's country stars. It is a concert of duets with the proceeds going to the Australian Children's Music Foundation. The ACMF conducts music programs for disadvantaged and Indigenous Australian youth across the country.

Check out the Event Calendar Events Calendar to see where Catherine is playing next