Morgan Evans Goes Deeper Into His Roots on Steel Town Deluxe

For Morgan Evans, Steel Town was always about coming home.

Now, with four new songs, a viral Garth Brooks cover, a tribute to his mum and even a Newcastle Knights version of the title track, Evans is digging a little deeper into exactly what “home” means.

The Newcastle-born, Nashville-based country star has released Steel Town Deluxe, expanding his #1 Australian country album at a pretty good moment in its story. After spending 26 weeks inside the ARIA Australian Country Albums Chart Top 20, Steel Town has now picked up an ARIA Award nomination for Best Country Album. 

But the deluxe edition feels like more than a victory lap.

Its four additions — 'Ain’t Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up)', 'Song For Mum', a reimagining of Forgiving You For Me featuring Danish Weissenborn guitarist Jacob Raagaard, and 'Steel Town (Knights Version)' — each connect back to a different piece of Evans’ life.

“The Deluxe Version of Steel Town dives deeper into what this record means to me,” Evans explains. “My roots, in our version of Garth’s Ain’t Going Down. My home in Steel Town (Knights Version), my family in Song For Mum, and my obsession, Forgiving You For Me ft. Jacob Raagaard, the version I heard in my head and couldn’t let go of.”

Of the four, it’s Evans’ take on Garth Brooks’ 'Ain’t Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up)' that has already taken on a life of its own.

The Brooks classic was a childhood favourite for Evans and one of the songs that helped fuel his early love of country music. Years later, a performance of it on the God’s Country podcast exploded online, clocking up more than 10 million social media views and attracting attention across the US country scene.

Eventually, it reached Garth himself; “I can't sing that song without going into cardiac arrest and you guys make it look easy!!!!” Brooks joked on Instagram. “QUIT doing Garth stuff better than Garth!” After seeing another live performance, Brooks was equally enthusiastic. “That’s AWESOME!!! Morgan and that whole freakin' band is smokin!!!! And whoever is doing the harmony is wailing!!!!! Toooooooo good!! love, g”

For an Australian kid who grew up listening to Brooks, that’s a pretty remarkable full-circle moment.

The connection between where Evans started and where he finds himself now runs right through Steel Town.

Before making the album, Evans had spent close to three years without releasing new music. Much of that time was spent back in Newcastle, the steel city where he first started writing songs and where his connection to country music began.

Raised by blue-collar parents on Australia’s east coast before eventually building a career thousands of kilometres away in Nashville, Evans has always carried a little bit of Australia into his version of modern country. On Steel Town, he brought that part of himself right to the front.

The deluxe edition pushes it even further.

'Song For Mum' turns the focus towards family, while the new version of 'Forgiving You For Me' allows Evans to revisit a song he clearly wasn’t finished with, this time alongside Jacob Raagaard.

Then there’s Newcastle.

'Steel Town (Knights Version)' transforms the album’s title track into a tribute to Evans’ beloved Newcastle Knights, who have embraced the song as part of their game-day soundtrack. It’s another link between an artist who now calls Nashville home and the city that continues to sit at the centre of his musical identity.

Those additions join an album already packed with personal territory, including 'Beer Back Home', 'Letting You Go', 'The Farm', 'Land I Love' and the Laci Kaye Booth duet 'Two Broken Hearts'.

There’s a sense throughout Steel Town that Evans has stopped trying to separate the different worlds he belongs to.

Newcastle and Nashville can coexist. So can Australian pub culture and American country radio, hometown football and international touring, family memories and the strange realities of building a career on the other side of the world.

It’s a career that has become increasingly international since Evans released his debut album 'Things That We Drink To' in 2018. 'Kiss Somebody' delivered his first country radio #1, while 'Day Drunk' became one of his defining songs and has since reached 4x Platinum status in Australia. 'Kiss Somebody' is 3x Platinum, with 'Diamonds' and 'Young Again' both certified Platinum.

His catalogue has now passed one billion streams globally.

There have been plenty of big stages along the way, too. Evans headlined CMC Rocks in 2022, toured extensively across North America and Europe and reached another career milestone with two sold-out performances at the Sydney Opera House, later captured on the 17-track Live at the Sydney Opera House album.

Those shows followed the rawness of 'Over For You', a song that marked something of a reset for Evans. Steel Town, however, feels like the chapter that came after the reset — looking backwards not to stay there, but to work out which pieces were worth carrying forward.

And there’s plenty more happening around him.

Evans is set to step into Australian television as a new judge on Australian Idol, will take part in Perth’s Telethon in October, and is heading back to where this deluxe chapter unexpectedly began, with a pop-up performance at Garth Brooks’ Nashville bar.

It makes the inclusion of 'Ain’t Going Down' feel even more fitting.

A song that once helped introduce a young Morgan Evans to country music has now followed him from Newcastle to Nashville, gone viral, earned the approval of the man who made it famous and found a permanent home on an album built around Evans rediscovering his own roots.

Steel Town Deluxe may add four songs to the original record, but its real purpose seems to be filling in the spaces around it.

The family. The hometown. The footy team. The musical heroes.

All the things that made Morgan Evans long before the rest of the world knew his name.

Steel Town Deluxe is out now via Solrise Records / Virgin Music Group.