The Sit Down with Fanny Lumsden
If you were to choose somewhere for your first ever UK show, Worthy Farm in the Somerset village of Pilton is probably very high on a lot of people’s lists. Fanny Lumsden did just that last month, as alongside her backing band “The Prawn Stars” she played the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury Festival on the same bill as the likes of: Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, Lizzo, Arctic Monkeys, The Chicks and Lana Del Rey.
The ARIA Award, eight time Golden Guitar and AIR Award winning Australian artist is about to release her much anticipated fourth studio album titled “Hey Dawn” on August 4th (available for pre-order/save HERE) and during her recent visit to the United Kingdom, she spent some time hanging out with Jamie talking about Glastonbury, the new record, where the name for her band came from and pretty much everything they randomly could do about the land down under.
The ARIA Award, eight time Golden Guitar and AIR Award winning Australian artist is about to release her much anticipated fourth studio album titled “Hey Dawn” on August 4th (available for pre-order/save HERE) and during her recent visit to the United Kingdom, she spent some time hanging out with Jamie talking about Glastonbury, the new record, where the name for her band came from and pretty much everything they randomly could do about the land down under.
Let’s start off with talking about Glasto, I suppose it’s a pretty cool place to get to play your first show over here.
“I feel like I started at the peak and now it’s all downhill. It was amazing, I can’t really believe that it was our first gig and it was a packed out tent where I was on stage at Glastonbury. I have been a very DIY, ground up kind of artist forever and have always hustled everything that happens so, to have that as your first gig in the UK just seems so strange to me. I’m so grateful, the crowd were amazing, they were so generous, they did all of the dance moves, sang the songs and were right there with us so felt super supported.”
Even to us here compared to other events, that is a HUGE festival. I read somewhere that when it is on, the festival effectively becomes the seventh largest city in the south of England which is insane.
“INSANE! The scale of it is just mind-blowing. I had been told that it was big and even on the first day when we walked through a bit of it and went on to the top of the hill thinking yeah, it’s huge but every single day we would find an entire new field with a huge stage. We did like forty thousand steps a day so it’s bonkers.”
The reputation here of it is that it is THE greatest music festival on the planet, does it have the same appeal and prestige on the other side of the world?
“Oh yeah, I feel like it might be even more coveted from Australia, just because it seems so out of reach and so few Australians get to play it but everybody knows about it. It was a pretty amazing day when we got to announce it because I don’t think anybody expected me to announce that and it was very satisfying. I love the ethos in general in how they are about community and making a stance on the things that you believe in which aligns with how we do things as well so it was a really special moment and if that is the only time that I get to play Glasto, I’ll be happy.”
The thing about Glasto compared to other festivals here, apart from the size obviously is that most festivals are pitched more within a niche of a genre or couple of similar genres but there is so much variety. The Sunday alone on The Pyramid you go from The Chicks to Cat Stevens then Lil Nas X before Elton John plays his last ever UK show.
“I agree. One thing that I have really found here is that people just love music and this might sound obvious to you but culturally, music really is part of what you do and that is amazing. People are really generous and I have found that everybody is so open to new things which is the best thing.”
Looking at the country genre, we don’t come across that many Australian artists really. Obviously, there is Keith (Urban) and Morgan Evans, Seaforth have been over here a couple of times and Clare Bowen with the Nashville tv show connection really would be the only ones I expect most country fans would know here. Even from my perspective where I am being introduced to more artists when I am covering the genre, there are only a small amount I have come across that may have been working with a UK publicist or Nikita Karmen who is a friend of a friend that is living in Nashville and Josh Setterfield who we met when he was over here last month. Part of you kind of thinks in your head that because Keith Urban is this absolute megastar, we would come across more Aussie artists but what I have picked up from people is that Australian country is generally quite different to the more commercial Nashville sort of feel.
“I think that side of it is really growing at the moment and it is really strong. There are a huge amount of artists that are really embracing that commercial Nashville sound and especially right now because it is blowing up. I think If I went to Nashville, I might not fall directly under the country banner as outside of Australia I might be somewhere in the middle of Americana, folk music and country but it’s definitely under the country banner in Australia.”
Anyway, we have got a new record on the way so we should probably chat about that a little bit. That is obviously very exciting and it is the first record that you have put out in three and a half years, where we have had a new track out today which is the fourth song that you have shared. Do you find that it is the same back home as it is here and the States, where as you build up to releasing an album you have to focus on getting songs out early to hit the playlists on the DSP’s like we have here in that tedious part of the industry?
“Totally, like the frantic kind of workload that comes up to the release, it’s almost like schools over when it gets there and everyone stops working. It’s fun, I really love the process of putting out a record, I really love the creation, building a world around it and I love all levels of the industry from the business and strategy side. When I’m creating a record, I’m definitely working on all of the world around it and how the stories are all relating, especially on this record. The opening track “Hey Dawn” is already out as like the front cover of the record but the back cover of the record which is a song called “Stories” kind of brings all of those together so it’s like what are we other than the stories that we tell? It’s all wound around that stories theme.”
When you were working on the record, did you write it all in one go where you were working specifically towards the project or were there some songs that you had for a while that just felt like a fit for “Hey Dawn”?
“I wrote it over the last couple of years, I don’t go into writing rooms and stuff, I let all the songs come and figure out after I have got them what the theme of the record is and think oh, this is what this is about, here I am! This one took a little bit longer because the last record came at such a big time with the bush fires and it came out at the start of COVID then was unexpectedly so successful and I just hadn’t seen that coming. Coming to these songs took a little longer, I was on the west coast and got stuck over there actually after COVID, it’s a long story where we lost our caravan door on the way and we ended up in Darwin, we had fifty six shows that all got cancelled except for two, then we got stuck in a three day lockdown at our campsite in Northern Territory and the last one was cancelled. Anyway, we had been there long enough to get into WA and it was like you have to go if you could get in so we went down the west coast and were super isolated so I wrote a lot of the record out there.”
“I feel like I started at the peak and now it’s all downhill. It was amazing, I can’t really believe that it was our first gig and it was a packed out tent where I was on stage at Glastonbury. I have been a very DIY, ground up kind of artist forever and have always hustled everything that happens so, to have that as your first gig in the UK just seems so strange to me. I’m so grateful, the crowd were amazing, they were so generous, they did all of the dance moves, sang the songs and were right there with us so felt super supported.”
Even to us here compared to other events, that is a HUGE festival. I read somewhere that when it is on, the festival effectively becomes the seventh largest city in the south of England which is insane.
“INSANE! The scale of it is just mind-blowing. I had been told that it was big and even on the first day when we walked through a bit of it and went on to the top of the hill thinking yeah, it’s huge but every single day we would find an entire new field with a huge stage. We did like forty thousand steps a day so it’s bonkers.”
The reputation here of it is that it is THE greatest music festival on the planet, does it have the same appeal and prestige on the other side of the world?
“Oh yeah, I feel like it might be even more coveted from Australia, just because it seems so out of reach and so few Australians get to play it but everybody knows about it. It was a pretty amazing day when we got to announce it because I don’t think anybody expected me to announce that and it was very satisfying. I love the ethos in general in how they are about community and making a stance on the things that you believe in which aligns with how we do things as well so it was a really special moment and if that is the only time that I get to play Glasto, I’ll be happy.”
The thing about Glasto compared to other festivals here, apart from the size obviously is that most festivals are pitched more within a niche of a genre or couple of similar genres but there is so much variety. The Sunday alone on The Pyramid you go from The Chicks to Cat Stevens then Lil Nas X before Elton John plays his last ever UK show.
“I agree. One thing that I have really found here is that people just love music and this might sound obvious to you but culturally, music really is part of what you do and that is amazing. People are really generous and I have found that everybody is so open to new things which is the best thing.”
Looking at the country genre, we don’t come across that many Australian artists really. Obviously, there is Keith (Urban) and Morgan Evans, Seaforth have been over here a couple of times and Clare Bowen with the Nashville tv show connection really would be the only ones I expect most country fans would know here. Even from my perspective where I am being introduced to more artists when I am covering the genre, there are only a small amount I have come across that may have been working with a UK publicist or Nikita Karmen who is a friend of a friend that is living in Nashville and Josh Setterfield who we met when he was over here last month. Part of you kind of thinks in your head that because Keith Urban is this absolute megastar, we would come across more Aussie artists but what I have picked up from people is that Australian country is generally quite different to the more commercial Nashville sort of feel.
“I think that side of it is really growing at the moment and it is really strong. There are a huge amount of artists that are really embracing that commercial Nashville sound and especially right now because it is blowing up. I think If I went to Nashville, I might not fall directly under the country banner as outside of Australia I might be somewhere in the middle of Americana, folk music and country but it’s definitely under the country banner in Australia.”
Anyway, we have got a new record on the way so we should probably chat about that a little bit. That is obviously very exciting and it is the first record that you have put out in three and a half years, where we have had a new track out today which is the fourth song that you have shared. Do you find that it is the same back home as it is here and the States, where as you build up to releasing an album you have to focus on getting songs out early to hit the playlists on the DSP’s like we have here in that tedious part of the industry?
“Totally, like the frantic kind of workload that comes up to the release, it’s almost like schools over when it gets there and everyone stops working. It’s fun, I really love the process of putting out a record, I really love the creation, building a world around it and I love all levels of the industry from the business and strategy side. When I’m creating a record, I’m definitely working on all of the world around it and how the stories are all relating, especially on this record. The opening track “Hey Dawn” is already out as like the front cover of the record but the back cover of the record which is a song called “Stories” kind of brings all of those together so it’s like what are we other than the stories that we tell? It’s all wound around that stories theme.”
When you were working on the record, did you write it all in one go where you were working specifically towards the project or were there some songs that you had for a while that just felt like a fit for “Hey Dawn”?
“I wrote it over the last couple of years, I don’t go into writing rooms and stuff, I let all the songs come and figure out after I have got them what the theme of the record is and think oh, this is what this is about, here I am! This one took a little bit longer because the last record came at such a big time with the bush fires and it came out at the start of COVID then was unexpectedly so successful and I just hadn’t seen that coming. Coming to these songs took a little longer, I was on the west coast and got stuck over there actually after COVID, it’s a long story where we lost our caravan door on the way and we ended up in Darwin, we had fifty six shows that all got cancelled except for two, then we got stuck in a three day lockdown at our campsite in Northern Territory and the last one was cancelled. Anyway, we had been there long enough to get into WA and it was like you have to go if you could get in so we went down the west coast and were super isolated so I wrote a lot of the record out there.”
“So, I kind of wrote all of that stuff there and coming back, then recorded the album in Tasmania. We were in the studio and there was this massive storm, thousands of these massive Tasmanian trees came down and we had no power so we had to move studios to the coast. I was really struggling to find the essence of the record then I got up one morning and saw the sun pop up over the water where I literally said to it “Hey Dawn” which was this moment like where I just had to be here and tell these stories right now. The other thing was that the only thing that I had in my mind when I was going in to make this record sonically was that I could just hear this piano in a hall, like an out of tune piano and that was it. On our way back we stopped off at these little markets in the bush and when I went inside there was this little man who was sitting there with a red beanie on who was playing the piano in the hall. I sat down watching him and he basically has a DJ set in his little notebook of matched songs for key signatures in time like DJ’s do so he could just constantly play the piano. It was just amazing and I went back to this log cabin where we were staying and wrote “Hey Dawn” that night which is the opening track and that kind of brought everything together. When I was singing it, I could really see where I grew up which was these huge, big plains, these massive skies and that hall that I kept hearing is this, the clip of the song is filmed out there and the front cover is out there too.”
From what you have said, in terms of the sound of this record compared to your previous ones it has kind of “evolved” to use one of those buzz words.
“I want to evolve, I don’t want to create the same record, I want to send myself out of business ha ha. I feel like I want to move with the stories that I’m trying to sell and I always just run with things sonically, I just try to serve that story and that song in that moment, then whatever it feels like it needs to lift it is what we do. I wanted this album to feel good too, I didn’t want to get caught up in the weeds after “Fallow” because that one I was trying to make something beautiful and I had a lot of raw emotion where this one is more observational, I suppose and I wanted it to be fun.”
Apart from the experience at Glastonbury, which is really difficult to top, what would you say is the biggest thing that you are going to take away from this trip?
“The takeaway is that we’re going to come back! I feel so excited by it and I think what we do can connect with the audiences. For us the live thing is really where we connect with people and our live shows are very energetic even though I’m not making music that is like high octane pop or anything but the shows are really interactive, family friendly, very fun and all about having a great time. I have just felt like the few shows that I have done here and in Ireland, people have really got that and I’m excited to come back.”
From what you have said, in terms of the sound of this record compared to your previous ones it has kind of “evolved” to use one of those buzz words.
“I want to evolve, I don’t want to create the same record, I want to send myself out of business ha ha. I feel like I want to move with the stories that I’m trying to sell and I always just run with things sonically, I just try to serve that story and that song in that moment, then whatever it feels like it needs to lift it is what we do. I wanted this album to feel good too, I didn’t want to get caught up in the weeds after “Fallow” because that one I was trying to make something beautiful and I had a lot of raw emotion where this one is more observational, I suppose and I wanted it to be fun.”
Apart from the experience at Glastonbury, which is really difficult to top, what would you say is the biggest thing that you are going to take away from this trip?
“The takeaway is that we’re going to come back! I feel so excited by it and I think what we do can connect with the audiences. For us the live thing is really where we connect with people and our live shows are very energetic even though I’m not making music that is like high octane pop or anything but the shows are really interactive, family friendly, very fun and all about having a great time. I have just felt like the few shows that I have done here and in Ireland, people have really got that and I’m excited to come back.”
Let’s finish up talking about when you perform live as you do have probably the best named backing bands in the entire business. Fanny Lumsden and the Prawn Stars, is that just from being a really cool and funny play on words?
“Yes, they have always evolved their name live. Actually, the first band name was the Glorious Whores but they wouldn’t say it on ABC radio and we get a lot of play on ABC, so they kept saying “and band” so we had to change it. Then, it was the Thrill Seekers for a while, they’ve been the Fanny Pack too. It was funny when I was introducing my merch over here, someone commented online saying “do you know what that means over here?” Yeah, it’s the same as it does in Australia! You know, you’ve got to get them in somehow and the hat has not changed design since 2015 which has literally kept me on the road, it keeps my children fed ha ha.”
Exactly, people will see it and ask what is all that about?
“They take notice. I remember when I first did the t-shirts, one of my ex-band members said you can’t do that and I said yes, I can! You just wait! I think they had an “I Love New York” t-shirt on and I thought Oh. My God! I’ve got to do that! It’s been amazing and we did a whole run of t-shirts for over here and they have sold out so fast.”
HEY DAWN TRACKLISTING:
1. Hey Dawn
2. Great Divide
3. You'll Be Fine
4. Ugly Flowers
5. When I Die
6. Lucky
7. Soar
8. Millionaire
9. Enjoy The Ride
10. Stories
“Hey Dawn” the fourth studio album from Fanny Lumsden will be released on August 4th and is available for pre-order/save HERE. In support of the release of the album, Fanny is about to head out on tour in Australia where she will be playing shows in Victoria, Canberra, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania where you can find full dates listed below with ticket information available on her WEBSITE. You can also keep up to date with Fanny wherever you are in the world by checking out her socials on INSTAGRAM TIKTOK FACEBOOK or TWITTER.
28th July - Bendigo, VA
29th July – Ballarat, VA
30th July – Anglesea, VA
4th August – Canberra, ACT
5th August – Wagga Wagga, NSW
6th August – Benalla, VIC
9th August – Brunswick Heads, NSW
10th August – Pomona, QLD
11th August – Maryborough, QLD
12th August – Toowoomba, QLD
13th August – Brisbane, QLD
25th August – Melbourne, VIC
26th August – Meeniyan, VIC
27th August – Bundalaguah, VIC
1st September – Milton, NSW
2nd September – Sydney, NSW
3rd September – Newcastle, NSW
14th September – Lilydale, TAS
15th September – Gowrie Park, TAS
16th September – Queenstown, TAS
17th September – Franklin, TAS
“Yes, they have always evolved their name live. Actually, the first band name was the Glorious Whores but they wouldn’t say it on ABC radio and we get a lot of play on ABC, so they kept saying “and band” so we had to change it. Then, it was the Thrill Seekers for a while, they’ve been the Fanny Pack too. It was funny when I was introducing my merch over here, someone commented online saying “do you know what that means over here?” Yeah, it’s the same as it does in Australia! You know, you’ve got to get them in somehow and the hat has not changed design since 2015 which has literally kept me on the road, it keeps my children fed ha ha.”
Exactly, people will see it and ask what is all that about?
“They take notice. I remember when I first did the t-shirts, one of my ex-band members said you can’t do that and I said yes, I can! You just wait! I think they had an “I Love New York” t-shirt on and I thought Oh. My God! I’ve got to do that! It’s been amazing and we did a whole run of t-shirts for over here and they have sold out so fast.”
HEY DAWN TRACKLISTING:
1. Hey Dawn
2. Great Divide
3. You'll Be Fine
4. Ugly Flowers
5. When I Die
6. Lucky
7. Soar
8. Millionaire
9. Enjoy The Ride
10. Stories
“Hey Dawn” the fourth studio album from Fanny Lumsden will be released on August 4th and is available for pre-order/save HERE. In support of the release of the album, Fanny is about to head out on tour in Australia where she will be playing shows in Victoria, Canberra, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania where you can find full dates listed below with ticket information available on her WEBSITE. You can also keep up to date with Fanny wherever you are in the world by checking out her socials on INSTAGRAM TIKTOK FACEBOOK or TWITTER.
28th July - Bendigo, VA
29th July – Ballarat, VA
30th July – Anglesea, VA
4th August – Canberra, ACT
5th August – Wagga Wagga, NSW
6th August – Benalla, VIC
9th August – Brunswick Heads, NSW
10th August – Pomona, QLD
11th August – Maryborough, QLD
12th August – Toowoomba, QLD
13th August – Brisbane, QLD
25th August – Melbourne, VIC
26th August – Meeniyan, VIC
27th August – Bundalaguah, VIC
1st September – Milton, NSW
2nd September – Sydney, NSW
3rd September – Newcastle, NSW
14th September – Lilydale, TAS
15th September – Gowrie Park, TAS
16th September – Queenstown, TAS
17th September – Franklin, TAS