If you ever wondered what good Australian Country Rock music sounds like, your chance arrives this Sunday night when the Sawridge Inn and Conference Centre plays host to the Re-mains - direct from down under.

Escaping the beginning of an Australian winter, the Aussie band is in Canada on the festival circuit touring with Canada’s own Joey Only.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, the Re-Mains’ last album was hailed as “rootsy twang with inner-city smarts and genuine affecting for rollicking, tumbling hillbilly sounds. Authentic enough to be endearing, they keep a respectful tongue in their cheek with songs like ‘You look Like Keith Richards.’”

According to Joey Only, The Re-Mains “are a dancing band ... it’s a lot of rocking out ... stuff that makes you want to tap your foot.”

Joey Only, dubbed an activist by some, said his music was more “old roots/rockabilly kind of stuff.”

“We’re more like a train engine attached to a bass guitar... a train flying down the tracks with a little boom chick a boom.”

A passionate folk musician, Joey said the two shared a common attitude towards music and were on the same side of the picture, with his focus on making art that “gets used for something meaningful... [and] forces you to reflect on something.”

According to the Canadian artist, whose storytelling songs reflect the history surrounding him, a true folk musician has “a responsibility to know the land you live on... know what goes on in these places and not just be a superficial songwriter.”

“Folk music is rooted in community,” he said, adding that he always tries to sing about issues that are easily related to by his audience: “what happened in your town 100 years ago?”

Dubbing himself a “punk rocker folk singer,” Joey said his focus was playing music for the people who turn up, rather than those who turn their nose at an old roots/folk musician.

“If I keep doing this for long enough, those nay sayers will eventually be turned,” he said, “you can’t change everybody’s mind... over time you have to make little gains here and there... that’s fine.”

Obviously discontent with the categorizing and genres of modern music, Joey asked the question, “why shouldn’t punks go to a folk show?”

During his time in the area, Joey Only will also be running a one-and-a-half-hour workshop at the Hinton Library at 6:30p.m. on Mon, June 15.

His workshop focuses on “the history of radical folk music”, looking back at what people were singing 100 years ago and how it relates to the history of Canada - in an effort to re-attach people with the history of music.

“Folk music didn’t begin with Bob Dylan,” he said, “and radical ideas didn’t start in the 60s.”