A Brisbane teenager plucked from a concert crowd to sing with Keith Urban is now supporting a The Voice US winner on his Australian tour, following the release of her new single.
Briana Dinsdale was 13 when she joined the Caboolture country music legend Urban on stage to sing in front of 13,000 people at one of his Brisbane concerts in 2016.
Now the 20-year-old QUT music student is riding the Gen Z resurgence of the country genre, with August one of the biggest months of her career so far.
Briana performed at the Gympie Music Muster last week and will support former The Voice US winner Craig Wayne Boyd on his Australian tour this week.
This is all hot on the heels of her releasing a new single, Real Time Love, which she co-wrote and recorded in Nashville during her summer university holidays.
The music video also dropped last week and was directed by fellow QUT student Sean O’Brien, who also directed the video for her single Whiskey Worked that Way, released in April. (See clips below)
Briana’s country music passion runs deep.
“My mum Lisa is from America and when I was 11 years old we went to Nashville for two days,” she said.
“It was at that point that I realised that I wanted to be a country singer and Nashville was going to be home in the future.”
Briana said she was fortunate to be making music at a time when country music was finding renewed popularity.
“Everyone my age is obsessed with it now,” she said.
“In high school I was teased for liking country music and people thought it was weird.”
New country music stars who feature heavily on Briana’s own playlists include Megan Moroney, Morgan Wallen and Lainey Wilson.
She also loves country royalty like Urban and Carrie Underwood, both of whom she saw with her family at a sold-out concert at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre at Boondall back in 2016.
Her ticket to the concert was a present for her 13th birthday and a sign she made saying that caught Urban’s eye while he was chatting to the crowd.
He invited her up on stage, found out she was a singer-songwriter and asked her to play the keyboard and sing a few bars.
The family’s video of her getting up on stage has been watched more than 250,000 times on YouTube, with another fan video of the encounter racking up 360,000 views.
Music is definitely in the Dinsdale family’s DNA.
Briana’s dad Ken and sister Ashlyn run a music management company, GoldSpur Entertainment, which books artists for live country music venues and festivals around South East Queensland.
“My dad got me into songwriting. He always wrote songs when he was a teenager and he taught my sister and I the guitar,” Briana said.
In addition to co-managing the agency, Ashlyn plays bass guitar in Briana’s band and is a first-year student at QUT, where she is studying a double degree in business and music.
Briana is in her third year of a double degree, involving a Bachelor of Fine Arts (music) and a Bachelor of Education (secondary school teaching) and combines her flexible online and in-person studies with writing, recording and performing her music.
She said she was enjoying both the music and teaching sides equally.
“I’ve always been passionate about working with kids,” she said.
“I had such incredible music teachers growing up. I really wanted to stay loyal to that and become a great music teacher for kids to look up to.”
People can follow Briana on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok (@brianadinsdalemusic), and YouTube.
The Briana Dinsdale Band’s upcoming gigs include three shows supporting Craig Wayne Boyd at Twin Towns on August 30, the Distillery Road Market on August 31 and the Kings Beach Tavern on September 1.
