The accomplished alternative country star and triple ARIA award-winning musician has made the step from performer to producer in recent years, a move he believes is a natural progression for any artist who puts creation at the top of their to-do list.

The former husband of Australian megastar country artist Kasey Chambers, Nicholson said becoming a producer meant he was able to make records more often.

“It’s been kind of natural for me. I like making records...the most enjoyable part for me is making something come to life and going to sleep that day with something that didn’t exist the previous day,” he said.

“Making a record pulls something out of the ether and makes it exist in a real way.

“I also find that working with and for other people for a while gets me out of my own head for a while.”

Nicholson is headlining a touring mini-festival of Americana music, which will stop in to Ballarat on September 1.

The Road To AmericanaFest will feature Nicholson alongside Lachlan Bryan and special guests The Weeping Willows, Gretta Ziller and Andrew Swift.

The festival is an initiative of the Americana Music Association in support of artists appearing at the 17th annual Americana Music Festival and Conference, which runs September 20-25 in Nashville.

Nicholson will perform in Nashville and is known as a leading proponent of Americana music in Australia and for his solo album Hell Breaks Loose and previously for his duet albums with Chambers – Rattlin’ Bones and Wreck & Ruin.

“I think that Americana music has been around a long time in Australia, it just didn’t have an umbrella term that people used to describe it,” he said.

“Americana, even though it has a connotation of all things American, it’s a bit broader than that. It’s a catch phrase for all different sorts of music – bluegrass, rockabilly, folk, all those kinds of things that are loosely country-related, but it’s wider than that.”

The Road To AmericanaFest will be held at Suttons House of Music on Thursday, September 1.