Australian singer/songwriter and much loved country music star Fanny Lumsden is currently in the UK and Ireland for her first headline tour with a full band.

Fanny Lumsden recently released her album Hey Dawn and to much critical acclaim.

Hey Dawn has already won multiple awards including Best Country Album at the 2023 ARIA Awards and Alt-Country Album of the Year at the CMAA Golden Guitar Awards 2024.

Fanny and her band The Prawn Stars performed their song ‘Ugly Flowers’ at the CMAA Golden Guitar Awards and also performed at the ARIA awards. Hey Dawn debuted at number one on the ARIA Australian Album charts, and reached the Top 10 on the global ARIA charts. The album has also become the 4th highest selling country album of 2023. Her number song Millionaire was also a country radio Top 10 and CMT Number 1 hit.

Lumsden has had quite a colourful few years, some great times but some tragic. Having been affected by the bush fires back in 2019/2020, Lumsden has become a volunteer firefighter and has written of those traumatic events in her music but more so in her song Great Divide.

We caught up with Fanny Lumsden to discuss her tour, her album and the stories behind some of the songs, making her UK debut at Glastonbury, making a documentary and more!

Enjoy!

Hi – How are you?

I am well thank you!

Have you had a good week?

Yeah, it’s been wonderful. We got here on Sunday and then had our first show last night in Leeds so it was really fun!

Well welcome back! Your first ever show in the UK was at Glastonbury so you jumped right in in the biggest way possible!

Yes hahahaha! Outrageous! It was outrageous, so crazy! I can’t believe we got to do it and play at such an iconic festival, I can’t believe it was the first show! It all feels crazy to me especially because we are from Australia and it’s so far away and the concept of playing Glastonbury is so foreign to us and so ‘pie in the sky’ that it almost wasn’t on the bucket list because I didn’t know if it was possible so yeah! It was a really amazing experience, the crowd were incredible. We had a really fun time and then we got to go to the festival for the weekend so that was an added bonus.

Oh amazing! Who did you see there?

We saw Elton John and the Foo Fighters. I saw Maggie Rogers, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Mel C, The Teskey Brothers from Australia of course. It was awesome, it was really fun!

Tell us about this tour, what have you planned?

So we are doing our first ever band headline tour here in the UK. We started in Leeds which was really fun and we had a great crowd. We are in Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff then off to Ireland. I have got five members of my band with me including me. We have also stolen a local northern cowboy Tom Dibbs who has joined us as well. I have left two of my band members at home. He is doing the part of two people. It’s a real fun show and we are having a really fun time. The ‘Hey Dawn’ era, the album that we are celebrating is a very joyous album and it is a very joyous experience putting on these shows.

Tell us about The Prawn Stars (her band), I know two of them are at home but who are The Prawn Stars?

Yeah, one of them is my husband and he plays the double bass and electric bass. He also co-manages the band with me. He has been in the band the longest. My brother is also in the band, he sings backing vocals puts on sick moves haha and sells the merch. Then we’ve got my drummer Riley and then we’ve got Paddy who plays Mandolin, he plays many many instruments but on this run he is on Mandolin, 22 string guitar, acoustic guitar and sometimes banjo as well. Then there are lots of harmonies. The we have got Tom Dibbs on electric guitar and keys which is a lot of fun.

What do you like to eat and drink when you’re over here? Do you have time to go out and about?

We actually in Manchester went out to a great burger place. We had a little time to go out, we didn’t realise how short the journey was between Leeds and Manchester, it was like an hour. That’s just unheard of playing a show an hour apart in Australia because the towns are so far apart. That was just so funny as we were like “oh, we can go out”. It would be remiss of me not to mention that we are big fans of Greggs!! We think it’s so great, we love it!! It’s such perfect road food! You can drop in, grab one, it’s cheap. Hahaha we are very pro greggs. I also try and stay healthy as much as I can so we take our breakfast with us. We try and get out as much as we can if we have a bit of time to see each place, just one thing. Even if it’s just to walk around and get the vibe, I think if you can do it, it’s a good idea. I don’t want to just skim through places and not feel the soul of them if that makes sense?

Especially in big cities I guess! Places like Dublin!

Yeah we are actually arriving the night before in Dublin. We are having lunch with the Australian Ambassador.

Wow!

Yeah so we will have the morning there too!

I am guessing on the set list you will have your new single Great Divide? Can you tell us a bit about that song?

Yeah, Great Divide is the only track off the record that I kind of wrote about referencing the fires where I live. The big bush fires in 2019/2020. They burned where I live quite badly. I live on a farm about 6 hours from Melbourne, 6 hours from Sydney and it’s like right up in the mountain. Our big valley got burned three times in three weeks. You’d think it would get burned once and then it would be done but it didn’t. That was quite an intense time and I did put out a record called ‘Fallow’ out around that time but I included the story of that in but I hadn’t written any songs about it. This song is kind of an ode to the mountains and the power that they hold and how we try and capture it as humans but we can’t and we have to respect it.

This whole record is very story based and so this song also has a story about an aeroplane that went missing in 1931 that was flying from Sydney to Melbourne and they didn’t find the wreckage for 27 years. It’s called the Southern Cloud and it’s right where I live and I liked the idea that that mountain can be so powerful that it can just swallow something up that we made, you’ve got to respect it. So ‘Great Divide’ is kind of about that and how the people that live beyond the great divide which is like a mountain range that runs down the east coast of Australia, it kind of separates the eastern seaboard which is where the majority of people live to the west and I grew up on the western side of it, so it’s a little nod to the people who live out there as well.

I remember the news of the fires and it was horrific, so I am sorry that you had to go through it! It was traumatising to hear about, so I can’t imagine what it was like to actually experience!

It was traumatising, it was very intense. We are all fire fighters in my family now, everyone now has a fire fighting certificate because we were all there having to help. Knowing that fire trucks couldn’t get in to help us because one, there were so many fires burning that there wasn’t enough support and two, it is quite remote where we live so there’s nothing. It was just the people who lived there that had to fight it off, we didn’t have air water bombers or any stuff like that! It was just us on the back of 4×4 Ute’s that we had there and doing whatever we could. It was an impactful time and I did really much discuss it through the last record ‘Fallow’. The content of that record kind of spoke about new beginnings and that was kind of hope in dark times. This one is really the only one that directly references it.

Well thank you for sharing that!

‘Ugly Flowers’ is a song that I am really liking at the moment! It’s so lyrically interesting!

Thank you! That song, I was interested in how we change our perspective and we change our ideas, we change our mind as we grow older. The ugly flowers are geranium flowers and it really seemed like a good example of that because I know when I was young I didn’t like them, they were ugly. I grew up on a farm in regional Australia which sounds great now and is great but at the time when you’re young you kind of want something more exciting! I also grew up through a lot of droughts, it was very dry and they just kind of smelled bad so I didn’t like them. I now recognise what they represent and how they are beautiful in their own way and maybe it’s just some things you have to grow up to understand but I also like how they represent childhood and some things change and some things don’t. We used to spend a lot of time around my Grandma’s and she passed away and she was the amazing glue that kept the family events happening. She was always the one that brought us all together and celebrated with food and just music and love. That was really important and so this little song is just of about those tiny little things in life that maybe change your mind but help you tell a story in a different way!

Yes and my Nana was like that too and now we don’t have large family gatherings anymore which is sad.

Yeah and it’s a good wake up call. My mum is now stepping up to do that but you kind of lose the greater greater family and it becomes a smaller family unit and the next generation happens and then you do that generation. It’s an interesting thought exercise in how we pass down the stories and how they change how we look at things as well!

And who is the Lady that didn’t smile (lyric reference)

Hahahaha! That is a lady that went to the church we went to. The town I am talking about, maybe you would call it a hamlet here – It’s tiny and there is a church and a school. It’s in the middle of farmland, very vast, red dirt land farmland. She was one of the local ladies. She would come to church but never smile. She was really lovely but she never did smile so when you were little, you thought you were in trouble all the time.

What is the country music scene like in Australia as I know that it’s pretty big!

Yeah country music is huge in Australia, it’s the third biggest market after USA and Canada. There’s some big festivals, a lot of annual festivals. It has CMC Rocks, Tamworth Country Music Festival, there’s a lot! It’s growing and it’s a strong community. The artists and the industry is very tight knit. We all know each other very well and we have events where we all come together every year which helps cement that. It’s really lovely! There’s a broad church country music in general. In Australia, I am defined as country music for sure and I would not sway away from that at all but I think sonically, externally I can kind of fit in many other places as well. Definitely in the Americana but I wouldn’t call myself Americana, there’s pop music and folk music and Indie. I am country because I grew up in the country on a farm and I write songs about that life and from that perspective. That’s not how I define country music as a whole, everyone can be country but for me, that’s how I see that I fit into it!

I like Tori Forsyth, been listening to her for a few years! Do you know her?

Yeah! I do know her very well!

Aww!

The Australian scene, we do all know each other!

Well please tell her to come over here!

I will! She’s great! I have known her for many years!

So we have touched on some of the songs off of Hey Dawn, but how would you describe the whole album?

It definitely is a story telling album and it is definitely country but sonically it is probably my broadest album in terms of sonic breath of what we kind of encompass. It’s a record of stories told from different perspectives like the ones that were told to me, the ones that we tell each other and the ones that we tell ourselves. What I was really chasing on this record was creating just something that feels good. With the album before, with ‘Fallow’, it had such a big story attached, it had such a big life. It won every award it could have, it was a really intense album for us. It was part of the fires and it came out in covid. This one I didn’t want to overthink, I kind of wanted to make these songs from stories and make the songs feel good. I think it’s shocked me how joyful it’s been this record! When you talk about Americana, I’m definitely happy Americana haha-If that makes sense? We are having so much fun touring it because there’s lots of up, joyful, feel good songs on it!

I am guessing they are having great reactions live?

Yes! Totally, we have a lot of fun in the shows. The shows are very, like I jump around all over the place which is something very fun. It has quiet singer/songwriter moments with lots of harmonies and that musicianship but I am still jumping around, we are dancing on stage, we are dancing off stage, we are having a really good time and thanks to the songs.

You are also a documentary film maker?

Yes! So we do a little bit of that on the side, a little dabbling round here and there. We are making one at the moment about our country halls tour. We have been putting on shows in halls, like community halls in regional Australia. We have been putting them on for 12 years now. It’s hard to explain here as everything is so densely populated but because it’s so vast, you’ll drive 100 kilometres and be at nothing, not even a house and then they’ll be a hall haha. Then hundreds of people will come to the show! So it’s crazy but we have been taking music to places that doesn’t ever get music, doesn’t ever get a tour. We have been doing that for years so we are doing a documentary about that at the moment. That will probably come out later this year I think.

That has been a fun journey because it’s been an incredible thing that we have started accidentally and has just continued. We are hoping to bring it here (the UK) actually and we might do a trial run in the summer maybe up north and into Scotland and see how we go. I think they can work anywhere. Basically if you’ve got a hall, then it will work.

What song of yours is a family favourite?

Probably the song ‘Dig’ which is from my album ‘Fallow’. We always end the show on it and it’s got a dance with it that we get every audience to do. Kids love it, the family love it, it’s a really fun, vibey song! I think that is definitely a family favourite across the board. People love ‘Fierce’ too which is from that same record which is a female empowerment song. From this record , ‘When I Die’ is pretty popular as well. ‘When I Die’ is a song about someone’s wishes for their funeral that I know – for his ashes to be shot out of shotgun shells. He is big big rough Australian guy and I tell that story in the show and it’s a fun song to play live so that is always a favourite. Then of course ‘Millionaire’ which is one of the big singles from ‘Hey Dawn’ which did very well. It’s very much a song that you put on when you’re driving, it’s like a freedom song. You feel like you can fill that big space, even if you’re driving in traffic you feel it and so I think that one often is too!

You said you may be coming back later in the year?

Yeah, we are going to come back in late July and August. We are playing ‘Underneath The Stars festival’ (Kate Rusby) and we will also be doing our country halls hopefully!

Well we can’t wait to have you back, thank you so much for talking with us!