Abbie Ferris is the definition of a true-blue country girl. She grew up on a 90-acre farm in the South Australian town of Mallala. From an early age, music and the great outdoors were mainstays in Abbie’s world. Her father worked the sale yards and Abbie was on horseback by the time she could walk. Soon after, she fell in love with music, picked up a guitar and started honing her craft as a singer-songwriter.
Fast forward to 2020 and Abbie Ferris has arrived. She was awarded the Market the Music ‘Emerging Artist Scholarship’ in 2017. This led to an appearance on the Country Music Channel (CMC) Awards red carpet wearing a custom made RACY & LUCKY gown (Lady Gaga, Regurgitator & Emily Wurramara) and a festival debut at the Groundwater Country Music Festival. Having cracked into the festival circuit in her debut year, Ferris followed up with performances at Country at the Camp and Australian Music Week later in 2018, she also got her first taste of life on the road, touring with Australian Idol star Hayley Jensen. In late 2019 Abbie was earmarked to support Golden Guitar winner Kirsty Lee Akers on her ‘Small Town, Big Hearts’ tour, until COVID-19 killed the 31-date tour. This will be revisited in 2021-22 once the pandemic has abated.
Ferris has now released four singles to radio, ‘For A Moment’ in 2018, ‘Beat You At Your Own Game’ in 2019, and now two tracks in 2020 ‘Love Up On Me’ and ‘Bad Boy Crush’. Each release has seen Ferris improve her chart position, with the most recent release reaching #21 on the Official Airplay Chart and #3 on the Kix Country Hottest 20. Quite a feat for a youngster from regional South Australia, paving her way as an independent artist.
Her music video impact was identified by CMC (Now CMT) who have charted all her videos to date. Ferris was also featured in The Music Network’s annual interview with CMC Program Director Tim Daley. Daley named her as one of four artists to watch in 2019, a wonderful vote of confidence in her early career traction. Her music videos have now achieved more than 300,000 views online. In the streaming arena, her tracks have been added to Spotify’s ‘Fresh Country’ and Apple Music’s ‘Aussie Country’ playlists. To date her releases have clocked up nearly 550,000 streams combined.
December 2019 saw a brief departure from original music as with the release of a concept EP ‘The Five – My Teens’ based on a re-imagining of the five songs that have influenced Abbie’s journey as an artist through her teens. After the success of that release, Ferris will turn her focus to her debut original EP to be released in 2021. Over the COVID-19 period, Abbie has written via video conference with some of the finest Australian, American and Canadian songwriters, with a load of songs ready to record over the coming years.