The 24-year-old got his first real opportunity after claiming the top spot at the second annual Reg Lindsay Memorial Talent Quest, where he trotted out Morgan Evans’ Kiss Somebody and blew the crowd away.

The cover – coupled with an earlier performance of Lynyrd Skynrd’s Sweet Home Alabama – earned Burt a two-tracking recording, produced by Roy Cooper at Sound Lab Studio on the Central Coast, and 500 CDs to boot. 

Burt added a third track to the planned EP, and is now preparing for his very first release of original music.

“I should be recording in late July or early August, and I’m trying to get to a slight country theme, but more upbeat,” Burt explained.

The three-track EP, currently untitled, is the first time Newcastle’s country muso has “ever released music”.

“It’s all really exciting, hopefully it will be a bit of a hit,” he said. “That talent quest was the first time I’ve ever really put my music in front of anyone, especially a judge, and had someone say ‘you’re not too bad’, so the EP was the next step after that.”

“I’ve been playing a lot of cover music around the place, but I haven’t performed any of my own music yet,” Burt said. “Maybe because I’m still in the process of writing it.”

“It’s going to be really cool taking my music around and showing people, I’ll have a lot of the CDs that I got [from the talent quest victory] and hopefully a few people will want to take some.”

Burt, who described his music as a “Keith Urban, Morgan Evans style”, said he wanted to take a quality over quantity route for his first original offerings, and settled on the three tracks because it would “give a lot of freedom to really flesh them out”.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun taking these ideas, stories and themes that I’ve been mucking around with and put it into three strong tracks,” he said.

Burt also revealed he would have a backing band in all three songs, which is also a step up after playing acoustic covers at his gigs in recent months.

“At the moment I’ll stick with the acoustic versions when I take them around for gigs though, it’s really how it’s played a lot,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the big sound with the band too though.”

Burt will next play at The Albion Hotel on Saturday, August 4. He will also preform at the Remembering Reg concert at next year's Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Follow Louis Burt on social media: facebook.com/louisburtmusic.