Singer-songwriter hire in Australia: the complete guide

Booking a singer-songwriter is the one hire where you are paying partly for somebody else's material. That changes the conversation. You are not ordering a set of familiar songs performed accurately, you are inviting a writer with their own catalogue into your event and deciding how much of it you want to hear.

Get that balance right and you have the most human sounding music money can buy for one fee. Get it wrong and you have a room of people politely waiting for a song they recognise. Prices below are live from the writers listed here, and the number rarely tells you which situation you are in.

Almost every working singer-songwriter in Australia does both, because that is how you make a living playing music here. A typical function set is mostly recognisable songs with three or four originals threaded through it, and most audiences never notice the switch.

Decide the ratio in the enquiry rather than on the night. Some writers will happily play an all covers set and treat it as a day job. Others will not, and they will say so, which is a good sign rather than a difficult one. Both answers are workable. Being surprised is not.

A singer-songwriter is at their best where the audience is seated and facing forward. Small house concerts, gallery openings, winery lawns, cafe evenings, book launches, funerals and quiet wedding ceremonies all suit the format exactly. So do long afternoon sets where the job is atmosphere rather than volume.

Put the same performer into a loud 21st and it gets awkward for everybody. If your night ends with dancing, book this act for the earlier half and hand over to something with a beat. Plenty of writers will tell you that themselves when you describe the event.

The pool tilts noticeably towards Queensland. Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Cairns all carry more solo writers per head than you would guess, largely because the year-round outdoor venue trade there keeps them working. Sydney and Melbourne are strong too, but the southern states thin out fast once you leave the capitals.

In practice that means a Queensland event has real choice and a Tasmanian or Territory one has a handful of names. If you are outside the big cities, start searching earlier and be generous about travel.

Most singer-songwriters carry a compact PA that suits a hundred people in a soft room. That is genuinely all this music needs. But a hard-surfaced warehouse or an outdoor lawn with wind will flatten a small rig, and a voice and an acoustic guitar have nowhere to hide when the sound is thin.

Say what the space is like in your first message. If it needs a bigger system the performer will either bring one, hire one at cost, or tell you to book a room that works. All three answers save you a disappointing night.

How much of the set is your own material, and are you comfortable adjusting that? Can you cover a specific request, and by when do you need it? What size room does your PA handle? Do you play seated or standing? And is your set list different for an afternoon than an evening?

If somebody is being recorded or filmed, mention it. Writers own their songs and some care a great deal about where the footage ends up. A sentence in the enquiry avoids an argument later.