She has released ten studio albums, with six reaching the ARIA Albums Chart top 40, Little Victories (January 2003), Preloved (September 2010), Songs & Pictures (September 2011), Great Women of Country (with Melinda Schneider, November 2014), Sweet Rebecca (April 2015) and The Great Country Songbook Volume 2 (with Adam Harvey, April 2017).
[1][2][3] Her mother is a country music singer, Carole Sturtzel, and her father, Jeff Thompson, was saxophonist for the Strangers.
[4][6] Cole and Chambers performed as a duo at the Port Pirie Country Music Festival,[8] and by 1991 they had busked together on the streets of Tamworth.
[4] As a member of Dead Ringer Band, Cole provided rhythm guitar, lead and backing vocals and occasional drums.
[9] As a result of winning the Star Maker award, she had to perform at a special concert opening for Gina Jeffreys.
She was advised by studio owners Deniese and Martin Cass that her self-penned tracks were not good enough, so she recorded "Fooling' Around", which was written by Perth songwriter Mark Donahoe.
[1] At the 1994 Country Music Awards of Australia, Cole won the Golden Guitar trophy for Best New Talent.
[13] Cole supplied backing vocals for an album, The Circle Game, by country music duo Rod McCormack and Mick Albeck; another guest vocalist was Gina Jeffreys.
The latter single's B-side, "Big Girls", was co-written with Chambers;[15] it was promoted by a music video which featured Albeck as Cole's love interest.
On 11 July 1997 her debut album, Beccy Cole, was released[16] and peaked at number 122 on the ARIA Charts in November.
[18] In 2000 at the Gympie Music Muster the four artists recorded their live cover version of Dolly Parton's "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind".
[18] Cole's second album, Wild at Heart, was issued on 15 January 2001 by ABC Country and distributed by Universal Music Australia, which peaked at No.
[18][19] Rosie Adsett at Country Update felt "[she's] never been in finer voice, and the enjoyment of finally recording just shines through this one".
[18] While The Sydney Morning Herald's Katrina Lobley noted that Cole "unashamedly examines every corner of a recently broken heart.
[20] It was again produced by McCormack, who also provided banjo, dobro, guitars (acoustic and electric), mandola, mandolin and percussion as well as mixing and engineering.
[36] Anderson later recalled that "[Cole] struck me from the beginning, I mean she's a born entertainer, and I thought, this chick is as funny as hell.
[4] Upon her return to Australia, Cole received a letter from a disgruntled former fan who objected to her Tour de Force appearances and declared "I've taken your poster off of my wall and I won't be listening to your music any more.
"[37] In May 2006 she issued a single, "Poster Girl (Wrong Side of the World)" in response, she declared her support for the Australian diggers but not the Iraq War.
[12] On 17 March 2007, Cole appeared on celebrity music quiz show RocKwiz, performing "Rockabilly Fever" and a duet with Mark Lizotte on "A Good Year for the Roses".
[44] Susan Jarvis of Capital News noted that the "friendship between the three girls is very much in evidence" where each "performs some of their songs solo, but the three come and go in a wonderfully fluid and organic way, providing a feeling of warmth and spontaneity".
[20] Included are her renditions of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", Deborah Conway's "It's Only the Beginning" and Leiber and Stoller's "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care".
[20] Cole's version of Parton's "Here You Come Again" was released as the lead single, she told Anita Beaumont of The Newcastle Herald that "[it] is the least covered song of Dolly's, and I believed the lyrics stand the test of time".
[46][47] She promoted the album with an Australian tour and invited aspiring artists to perform a song on stage, via the Beccy's Search for a Shiny Star competition.
The show has a history of retaining its hosts for long time periods with Cole having only two predecessors, John Nutting and Felicity Urquhart.
[21] Cole's second album, Wild at Heart, dealt with her divorce;[7] the track "Lazy Bones" was written about Albeck and their short marriage.
[4] By August 2004, Cole was living in the Central Coast region with other country musicians nearby including Kasey Chambers, Jeffreys and McCormack, Lyn Bowtell and Adam Harvey: the artists call the local area, Hillbilly Heaven.
[4][5] In October 2013, Cole was the inaugural ambassador for the Adelaide-based Feast Festival, and in the following month, she presented her show The Queer of Country.
[1][57] Cole and O'Donovan were married on 2 February 2018 with fellow country musician Tania Kernaghan officiating.