By Leonie Fuge
Local Stanthorpe Pop Folk band, Nine Year Sister, has won top artist for 2022, with international radio station Radio TFSC in a massive countdown that took seven days to complete.
Radio TFSC is based in Germany and had 1876 artists and bands from around the world nominated for the Artist of the Year 2022 competition, making this win a big deal for the small town band.
The online radio station has a focus on Indie music and plays over 10,000 artists from around the globe. Artists were rated on how often they had made the top 24 daily listening ranks over the year, and how many votes they had received from fans and the listening audience.
“It’s the biggest competition the station has held and this is the first Australian band to make it,“ Radio TFSC station manager Ollie Roll said.
After a marathon week of airing a huge mix of Indie music, featuring artists from Europe, the United States and Canada, the countdown culminated with Stanthorpe band, Nine Year Sister.
“I have to say I am very happy for them,” said Ollie. “Their music for me personally is simply magic. They know how to get the listeners to a magical dreamland. You forget everything around you thanks to this music.”
Nine Year Sister’s music sits in the Indie soft rock genre and was founded four years ago by two sisters Jenny and Emma Wardle, who are nine years apart in age hence the bands name.
Jenny said they and their family had been following the last of the countdown on New Year’s Day after Radio TFSC gave a heads up that they had made the top 10.
“Winning Artist of the Year was incredible,” said Jenny. “We were all together and just cracked up laughing. There were high fives all round.
“We thought we might be in the top ten as the leaderboard had positioned us at number three two months earlier.”
Jenny and Emma believed that part of their success was attributed to the support of the Stanthorpe community.
“We had help from Granite Belt Music Council who were spreading the word for us to vote for Nine Year Sister,” said Jenny. “We got a lot of support.”
After finding out they had won, the sisters put a story reel on Instagram and said it had the most reactions they had ever received.
What has most surprised Jenny with their newest accolade, is the sisters have only recently joined the performing musical world four years prior.
“We don’t come from a musical background, we have no family members in the industry,” said Jenny.
With no childhood music lessons or musical interests, Jenny said music came a lot later for her.
“I was in my early 20’s when I started to play an old guitar that was just sitting around at home.”
The sisters also picked up an old keyboard from a relative and “started messing around with music and writing songs.”
There must be something in the water in Stanthorpe for within four years, the self taught musicians have gone from a nervous open mic night performance to international award winners.
“Four years ago we went to an open mic night at Stanthorpe’s Little Theatre. We were so shy and had never performed before. We were so nervous we told our family they weren’t welcome to come,” said Jenny.
Nine Year Sister now plays confidently at local events around the Southern Downs and is being booked for festivals and events more broadly.
“Stanthorpe is a nice place to get into music,” said Jenny.
Nine Year Sister will be performing at the Killarney Australia Day Breakfast on 26 January and on 28 January are in Tenterfield performing at Bad Manners.
