Shoestring Records Singer/songwriter Karen Lynne has taken out the Top Award for “Female Vocalist” at the 7th Telstra Country Wide Southern Stars – Australian Independent Country Music Awards at Mildura last weekend.

These awards, held annually in Mildura, are considered the most prestigious awards in Australian Country Music of Independent Artists – being those artists not signed to major recording labels. These artists of whom it must be noted take total responsibility for all their recording, promotions, sales and bookings etc and without management or such assistance, this can be a formidable task.

In additions to 4 finalist nominations in previous years, Karen was also named as a finalist this year in both the “Single of the Year” and “Heritage Track of the Year” categories, giving her a total of 3 finalist nominations in all, and came hot on the heels of the award win earlier this year at the Victorian Country Music Awards for “Best Independent Release” for her previous collaborative effort – a bluegrass album with Sydney band “Acoustic Shock”. Whilst strikingly different, her new album, with it’s mainstream country sound, has been well received and has gained rave reviews to date.

Her winning song “This Man I Love” was the first single released from her latest album titled “Second Wind”. This single also recently achieved Top 5 status on the Australian National Country Music Chart and following the song’s release in UK and Europe, the song remained in the UK/Europe DJ voted Top 10 most played songs chart for nearly two months.

The album contains a healthy share of Australian penned songs including a choice few from Karen’s own hand – co written with previous collaborator Heather Field and also with Mark Selby, Ashley Gorley and Keith Anderson. Produced by Herm Kovac, the album has a beautifully warm and polished sound with compliments but does not overpower the gentle vulnerability of Karen’s superb vocals and extra richness has been added by some great duets with well known Australian Country artists, Bill Chambers and Grant Richardson, with an equally pleasing result.

This album is set to expand and consolidate her fanbase enormously, it’s a great Australian Country Music recording and is already proving to be one of the major country albums of 2003.