Riding this Road: My life – making music and travelling this wide land with Slim Dusty

by Joy McKean

Australia's Queen of country music, Joy McKean, takes us on the road of her life.This is the story of Joy's career as a performer and song writer, her decades of touring around Australia and her marriage of more than fifty years to Slim Dusty.Award-winning songwriter and musician Joy McKean wrote many of her husband Slim Dusty's most famous songs and won the first Golden Guitar awarded at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.Now, for the first time, Joy explores her own life from childhood to the present, fifty years of marriage to Slim, songwriting, recording and touring, while raising their children Anne and David. Joy reveals an Australia that has long gone, when she and Slim and their band would load up trucks and caravans and drive across the country, putting on a show in every town, then moving on to do it all again the next night, and winning legions of fans along the way.Inspiring and entertaining, Joy takes us into the heart and soul of her life of music and memories.The companion CD, Riding This Road (the Record Collection) from EMI Music, a collection of Joy's songs from over the decades, is available now.Joy McKean is also the author for bestselling Slim Dusty biography, I'VE BEEN THERE AND BACK AGAIN.

423 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 29, 2014

About the author

Mildred Geraldine Joy Kirkpatrick OAM, known by her stage name of Joy McKean, was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and wife and manager of Slim Dusty.

McKean wrote many of her husband Slim Dusty's most famous songs and won the first Golden Guitar award at the Tamworth Country Music Festival for the song 'Lights on the Hill'.

Her musical partnership with Slim, in which she was his manager, produced over 100 albums, sold over eight million albums and earned 45 Golden Guitars.

She has previously been described by Paul Kelly as "one of our greatest songwriters", while Troy Cassar-Daley called her "a national treasure".

Her daughter is country singer and musician Anne Kirkpatrick. - Wikipedia