Not all the southern sounds of country hail from the USA’s Deep South, as Tim Hughes finds out

Reports that yet another country music duo have made it big in the US is really no news at all. Neither is the fact their record has gone down a storm with Texas and Tennessee’s legions of Stetson and rhinestone-clad country fans.

What makes The Shires special, though, is that they hail not from the Deep South of America, but the genteel south of England.

Yes, they may sound like they have stepped out of an Appalachian juke joint, but Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes come from Herts and Beds – and would probably be more at home in a cosy pub in the Chilterns.

Proving 2015 is their year, they have become the first British country band to reach the Top 10 in the UK album chart with their debut Brave, while continuing to conquer the States.

It’s quite an achievement for a girl singer on the local covers scene.

“I was singing ‘9 To 5’ just as a fun song for people to dance to,” says Crissie, of her time before The Shires.

“There were a lot of people coming up to me saying ‘You sing that song really well, you really suit country’. I didn’t realise how much I listened to it.”

Ben, meanwhile, had been making a name for himself as a singer-songwriter.

But while he had supported KT Tunstall on tour, he was still waiting for a breakthrough.

“I’d been writing for nine, 10 years, with a bit of minor success,” he says.

“I’d reached the point where I was literally broke, and I put a thing on Facebook saying ‘There must be a country singer somewhere’.

“But then a friend of a friend mentioned Crissie. She came around the next day, we recorded some songs and it’s been so easy since then.”

Crissie, a music school graduate, recalls, she needed little convincing.

She says “I was like ‘Yeah, send me some stuff, I really like country music’. He saw my videos that I’d put up online of me singing just generic country songs, Faith Hill, Martina McBride.

“Ben was so quick sending songs, I literally listened to half of one of them, and emailed straight back. I was sold straight away.”

They started small, with what they had. “We played this little local festival, and we only had five or six songs,” remembers Ben.

“So we did them all, and everyone was like ‘More, more’. We were like, ‘We haven’t got any more!’ So we played one again, and it went on. We literally played the whole set twice and a half.”

But they rapidly grabbed the attention of tastemakers at home and across the Atlantic. Embraced by country fans such as Steventon’s influential ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, and the Country Music Association, they also became the first UK signing to the iconic Decca Nashville – a label originally launched 80 years ago, and home to such country greats as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton.

Inevitably, they ended up writing their album in the home of country, coming up with debut single Nashville Grey Skies. The tune is a perfect distillation of US country through a very British sensibility – intertwining harmonies but with very homegrown lyrics, an ear for a good anthem and a refreshing lack of twang. Likewise their celebration of Britishness – Made In England.

“We don’t want to be known as just springing out of nowhere because behind the scenes we’ve worked really hard,” says Crissie.

“We’ve done our legwork, and the two of us finding each other has just worked.”

Ben addes: “I hate this word, but it was just serendipity.”

Certainly, few would have dared to predict a British country act would be sitting comfortably alongside such mainstream pop acts such as Kelly Clarkson, Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith; a thought echoed by Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot, who said: “This is a fantastic feat by a young British country duo. No country act has ever made this kind of impact on the chart before.”

But then neither really knew exactly what they were getting into.

“When I was growing up, I loved big songs,” says Ben. “Generally ballads, but structured and with a big pay-off line at the end of the chorus. I never really realised that was country.”

The Shires
O2 Academy, Oxford
April 18
Tickets: ticketweb.co.uk