Wesley Dean is hot off the back of the Crazy Hearts Across America Summer tour where he and his family drove over 5000 miles from Nashville to Los Angeles in an RV via towns steeped in musical history, from Memphis to New Orleans, and Luckenbach to Las Vegas. With a director and cameraperson in tow, the tour was recorded as part of the upcoming documentary feature Crazy Hearts, where “Don’t Look Back” and the other nine tracks complement the soundscape to Wes’s own story of breaking the industry mold to carve out his name independently. As a precursor to the documentary, the “Don’t Look Back” music video is a scrapbook of the tour, evoking the varying rhythms of life on the road during this uniquely crafted tour.
For more than a dozen years, Wesley’s been one of Australia’s best-known artists, armed with a larger-than-life voice that catapulted his songs to the top of the charts. Relocating from Australia to Nashville in early 2021, Wesley Dean, previously known downunder as Wes Carr, felt his arrival in the country/Americana roots rock scene required a new signature to herald the maturation of his musical identity. Under his previous moniker, he was a celebrated Australian Idol winner in 2008 with a platinum selling Aria number 1 single, “You”, and a gold selling album, The Way The World Looks.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the video for “Don’t Look Back,” which features Sarah Buxton on vocals. The song is a harmonica-driven work of quiet folk that showcases Dean’s rich songwriting alongside his harmonies with Buxton, quickly building into a gorgeous work of country-laced Americana that resonates with all of us. Dean’s easygoing and soothing vocals match the visuals of a rambling life on the road as he seeks to connect with listeners in the kind of universal folk artist way that once propelled artists like Dylan and Springsteen.
Dean describes the inspiration behind the song:
“‘Don’t Look Back (feat. Sarah Buxton)’ has many layers for me. It was originally written about my wife, kids and I moving from Australia to Nashville during the pandemic, selling our home, leaving friends and family behind, and putting everything on the line to build our lives all over again in a new country at arguably one of the most strange and uncertain times in modern history. It crystallizes the wins, the losses, and the wrestle between grown up problems and childhood dreams, the relentless pursuit of something unseen, and the every day strains and expectations of this complicated and maddening society.
We’re settled into Nashville now, and every time I play the song I’m reminded of how, at the time I wrote it, I was dancing between fear and excitement, slowly breaking up with a version of myself and what I knew, and I was about to embark on what would be the most challenging, intense but rewarding adventure of my young family’s life…But most of all, it’s a love song, it’s a call of the heart to follow your dreams no matter what, and to trust that it will all work out. Sarah Buxton’s vocal brings an intrinsic fragility that lingers over the melody, and gives my words more depth. I always write from my soul and this song came to me in the most pure and honest form. I’m proud of what it represents and I hope it empowers someone else to follow their dreams.”
WATCH:
