BY LESLEY HASTINGS
With her next studio album “Traditions” due out on 30th October, award winning Australian artist Fanny Lumsden is even busier than usual. A farmer, wife & mother and volunteer fire fighter, the Australian artist certainly packs more into her life than many of us. What an inspiration.
We last spoke in 2024, during her first UK tour, and since then she had returned several times….so I began by asking whether it was our beer and fish & chips that lured her and her band back, or was there something else?
“Maybe Greggs!! But I think there’s really just something so inquisitive about the audiences in UK and Europe. They are invested in a way I find so refreshing. There’s a culture of taking in new art I find exciting. Obviously we fall under the broad umbrella of country music but we represent a lot of genres. The UK and European audiences just appreciate good music, and live music….and my band are really good!”
Talking of the band….Fanny had just announced they were changing their name from the “Prawn Stars” to “The Daddies” ….what was all that about? Is it because they are growing up?
“It’s a little bit of everything! The term was originally linked to my band a few years ago at the Americana Fest in Nashville, I had a new son with me ( I’d had a couple of kids) and everyone was asking how I managed to do it all. My reply was ‘Oh I’ve got six dads with me!’. And then someone introduced us on stage as ‘Fanny and the Daddies’. We’ve got some new band members in the line up and it just felt like a nice time for a refresh” .
And they don’t have to wear the pink suits on stage anymore which they may be happy about?
“Oh no they genuinely loved those! When I said they were all done they were all a bit sad. But we had our Steve Irwin” festival outfits for this year (aside…I had a Google, he was an Australian environmentalist/conservationist which makes sense looking at the band’s outfits!) But this new album will come with a whole new uniform for the band”.
I said I was so excited about the new album and hope they’ll be back here next year to promote it? Particularly as one of the tracks “By The River” was inspired by Fanny visiting the Peak District so I think she owes it to us to return!
“We are definitely going to come back!
Yes, I’d been on tour with Paul Kelly, an incredible songwriter from Australia, and it was a dream come true. I’d toured with him before but this time it was just four of us driving around UK and Europe for three weeks in a van. A pretty amazing experience, and every night we sang a song called ‘The Pretty Place’ from his back catalogue. I’m usually pretty terrible at remembering lyrics and it has a lot of words in it….Paul sent it to me not long before we had to perform it and I managed to learn it quickly because what he describes in this song is like my ‘safe place’ where I go in my head. Growing up I always went to rivers, never to the beach (I live inland, 700k from the coast), so we are a big river family. So after that tour I was in the Peak District for a few days, hiking with my kids and husband, walking along by the river and the first verse was going around in my head….I sat down and wrote the song in about ten minutes when I got back to the Airbnb! And I just put it to the side. Then when I was recording the record we had recorded all the other songs and I just played this one to my producer….and asked him ‘do you think there’s just too many river songs in the world?’ and he was like ‘ well there are a lot but I feel like this needs to be one of them’.
As we were starting to record it he said that Paul Kelly would sound good on it (they’ve worked together too) and I was like ‘ that’s actually an amazing idea’ “.
Ha that’s great as I was going to ask about his involvement on the track!
I mentioned to Fanny that she doesn’t do many collabs…..
“No I don’t! I only really do them when it feels like the only reason is the meaning behind the song is linked to the person. It’s not great for my business really! I’m not like ‘ooh let’s write/record a song together because our combined fame will help us!’ It’s terrible really!”
I said I actually thought it was great! And I wish more artists would be like that.
“So when we were recording it live, the band and I did our parts but Paul couldn’t come in that day (we were in the UK actually, in London just before C2C) and I was having a hard day (I am the manager, run the band, there’s a lot!!) and things weren’t lining up …I got back to my accommodation and his recording was in my in box. He’s such a beautiful artist, to have his voice singing my words….I was so emotional. And my husband said how proud he was”.
Fanny had just touched on the fact that she does everything, and in contrast to her last two albums “Traditions” is being released independently. As opposed to having label backing what is the most enjoyable and rewarding side of doing things herself….and what does she really not like doing?
(laughing) “Yeah there’s a lot of truth in that! I work with my husband Dan, and the most rewarding part is knowing that we can have the conception and idea, and the follow through that we can create ourselves. Then we can deliver it to the people as directly as possible and get their feedback. In the end whatever the results it’s genuinely because we loved creating it for people who like consuming it. It’s not for any other reason. I love how we can be really responsive to things and be dynamic in how we create. We can have an idea and if it fails it’s our fault! Not that I’d ever blame anyone else!!
I suppose the most difficult side is just the sheer workload. It’s enormous….”
I asked her if she’s still a volunteer fire fighter on top of everything else….
“Yes! And I help my dad working in the farm. As he has Parkinson’s which I talk about sort of in one of the songs he needs a bit more help now. I’ve always been involved in agriculture and studied Rural Science at university. And then there’s the business side….Dan and I work eighteen hours a day”
I read that Fanny describes the new album as her most personal to date. Did she think that as she gets older she also get more reflective or introspective? And motherhood has maybe played a bigger role this time around, highlighting generational connections?
“Yeah…..I definitely think that has something to do with it. But then again my last but one “Fallow” was pretty introspective. The last one was quite narrative. It’s definitely spurred on by that though and I’m talking about the family a lot more. I think it’s really about being a woman in this world, more to do with my age and how confident I feel in myself. I don’t give a s**t as much . But yeah it’s about life events that happen as you get older as well. I absolutely love the world we’ve created. We’re about to release a video this week, Dan is just editing it, for the title track and it’s amazing, I love it, it’s really fun. But this topic of Traditions is really endless, you can delve into it in so many ways . I’m hoping that if I find something in it then someone else might too”
I was excited to hear that each track was recorded live, especially as the band puts on such a dynamic show. Did that energy get captured in the studio?
“I was hoping to make it feel a little more alive. It’s more dangerous recording it that way! Things can’t be perfect and I just loved the idea of creating something from that moment and that moment only. Yeah is has the same life in it that a live show does. Not the back bends and all the other craziness that happens on stage, you can just imagine that. I also just wanted to honour myself….I’m not folk enough to be folk, not country enough to be country, not pop enough to be pop ….I didn’t want to try to be anything else, or smooth over things. I wanted it to be rough and ready”.
I mentioned how the first two tracks available are so very different when it comes to the arrangement. “Mother’s Eyes” is big production, with banjo, pedal steel, everything thrown into it, whereas “Difficult Woman” is just Fanny and her acoustic guitar. Does she know how she wants songs to sound/feel eventually when she writes them? Or do they take shape in the studio?
“It changes depending on the song. I think I knew when I did ‘Difficult Woman’ it needed to be very simple, no one else should play on it, and everyone agreed. Just one take of me playing this song live. And we actually did it twice because the first time I felt like I was playing too much, it was too busy and fast. When I’m in the booth usually there’s life happening in the studio, but when I recorded that song they said everyone was just dead silent. I’m surrounded by a lot of beautiful men but being a woman in this industry has its challenges, I think that moment just felt very powerful which was nice”.
I said how much I loved that song….I’d noted down how I felt it was about tenacity, staying true to yourself, not bowing to pressure from outside….and that there’s a lot of pressure on women in the industry to conform to some extent or other (in “Mothers Eyes” she sings about selling more tickets when she’s had her Botox!). I thought those two songs are great juxtapositions and good choices to put out first …
“Yeah I actually hadn’t planned on releasing “Difficult Woman” at all! Then in Australia earlier this year we had a moment when our Prime Minister who is an amazing advocate for women’s rights, she’s really amazing….she was playing a word play game and when someone said her name one response was ‘difficult’. Which caused a bit of an uproar! All of the women were tagging themselves as ‘difficult’ and I’d actually written and recorded the song last year, so I knew I had to release it right then. When I wrote it I didn’t want it to be a ‘whining’ song, I wanted it to be uplifting which is why the chorus is about not feeling alone if you feel difficult, let’s embrace this together. So that’s why we released it first actually!”
And which of the other tracks is Fanny most interested to get people’s reactions to and why?
“Oh, that’s such a tricky question! ‘Traditions’, the title track, comes out this week and I’m excited just because thematically it’s right at the heart of the record. And it’s kind of about battling all the traditions in your life…your autonomy, your ambition, and how they need to change ….I’ve been told I can do everything I want and I do want that, and to do it all at once, but it’s kind of impossible. They need to bend which is why the cover looks like it does….the back bend is to represent that”
I also noted the tartan on the album cover….are there Scottish roots in the family?
“Yes!! My four grandparents are all Scottish. The Lumsdens lived up in Aberdeen. And my brother wears the Lumsden tartan on stage. I grew up with everyone wearing kilts to formal occasions”.
I noted the album launch is on 31st October, and I wondered if there were any Halloween traditions in the family?
“No, it’s really only come to Australia in the last few years, and I grew up on a farm so far away from neighbours there would have been no one to go trick or treating anyway! But with my kids we did get my family to come over and they’d hide in like the wool shed, the machinery shed and other farm buildings and the kids would dress up and go round all the buildings trick or treating my family! Very cute”
I finished by saying I was looking forward to hearing the title track when it came out a few days after this chat ….and to seeing Fanny & The Daddies next year when they hopefully come over???
“Yes, we are coming for a big UK/European Summer!”
Ah escaping from the Aussie winter….a great plan ( tho not if we have another summer as hot as this year’s maybe….)
Pre-order ” Traditions” here