Born and bred on a farm in western NSW, 600km from the nearest City, Fanny Lumsden grew up riding horses, helping out on the farm and living a seemingly idyllic Aussie Country upbringing with her family. Music was a big part of the Lumsden household with everyone playing instruments and singing and there was never any doubt that Fanny was a born show pony.
Fanny talks to Wendy on Big Brekky about her new album, “Hey Dawn”, touring, life, and being asked to sing at a funeral.
Having completed her AMEB grades on Piano, and studied Music at High school Fanny went away for a while to study a Bachelor of Rural Science at UNE before making the move to Sydney where she started playing around the local scene, going to Songwriter nights.
It was from there she met her band members’ The Thrillseekers and from there where the real Fanny Lumsden story begins.
9 years later she has an ARIA Award (+ 2 other ARIA nominated Albums), 8x CMAA Golden Guitars, An AMP shortlisted (top 9) album, 3 ARIA chart topping albums, an AIR Award a CMC Award, her own Record Label - Red Dirt Road Records and her own hugely successful touring brand - The Country Halls Tour.
Following her successful sold out set at the Glastonbury Festival in the UK, award-winning artist Fanny Lumsden has dropped her much anticipated new record, Hey Dawn.
Featuring the top 10 Airplay hit ‘Millionaire’ and her current single ‘When I Die’ this is Fanny’s fourth studio album and the follow up to 2020’s watershed Top 10, 5x Golden Guitar and ARIA Award-winning album Fallow. Fanny has also unveiled two additional snapshots of the album in the lead up to release, sharing the video for the haunting album title track ‘Hey Dawn’ (view here) and ‘Ugly Flowers’ featuring home videos and slides generously supplied by the Hardie/Lumsden family. (view here).
Her latest clip ‘Stories’ is also out (view here). On this track, Fanny explains, “This song is a little love letter to the stories I’ve been told over my life that make me who I am.
We are made up of the stories that are told to us but are defined by how we tell them to ourselves. What are we other than this? What are we other than the stories we tell ourselves?”
The record is a rich character study, with the singer-songwriter reflecting on the stories that have shaped her and those around her. It’s also a more sonically diverse outing than Lumsden’s previous records, incorporating elements such as guitar-based indie-pop into her trademark world of gorgeously crafted, emotionally rich acoustic songwriting.
“I wanted it to feel good, I wanted to have fun,” she smiles. “I didn’t want to think too hard about it – I just wanted to feel.”
Hey Dawn, is, in short, Lumsden’s most complete offering to date. But it took a while to get there.
Lumsden and her band travelled to Tasmania to work with longtime producer Matt Fell at his studio in the picturesque Gowrie Park, many of the songs were still only ideas and shapes – an unfamiliar scenario for a singer-songwriter more used to being meticulously prepared.
The initial sessions were disrupted by a catastrophic storm that forced them to relocate to the eastern side of the island. It was there, in an Airbnb, that Lumsden awoke one morning just as the sun was rising.
“I literally just said, ‘Oh, hey dawn!’,” chuckles the singer. The seemingly innocuous moment became something more when the sessions returned to Gowrie Park and Lumsden visited a local market in a nearby hall, in which a man was playing piano.
Alongside her regular bandmates – husband Dan on bass, brother Tom on backing vocals, Josh Schubert on drums, and multi-instrumentalists Benjamin Corbett and Paddy Montgomery – she also welcomed the input of outside musicians such as EVEN’s Ash Naylor.
It's a fitting sentiment for an album that is about the here and now, how it’s shaped by the stories from our past, and how they can always be re-written in our future.
“You have to tell the stories of the moment you’re in, and you have to put them out and trust that that is okay,” smiles Lumsden. “It’s a new day, we’re here.”
Fanny kicked off her ‘Hey Dawn’ album tour accompanied by her sensational band, The Prawn Stars, in Bendigo at the end of July and she has a string of shows scheduled along the East Coast and into Tasmania, wrapping the tour in Franklin on September 17.
All details are below and at www.fannylumsden.net .
AUGUST 4 - CANBERRA, STREET THEATRE, ACT
AUGUST 5 – WAGGA, WAGGA CIVIC THEATRE, NSW
AUGUST 6 - BENALLA, BENALLA TOWN HALL, VIC
AUGUST 9 – BRUNSWICK HEADS, BRUNSWICK PICTURE HOUSE, NSW
AUGUST 10 - POMONA, MAJESTIC THEATRE, QLD
AUGUST 11 – MARYBOROUGH, MARYBOROUGH SPORTS CLUB, QLD
AUGUST 12 – TOOWOOMBA, THE POWERHOUSE, QLD
AUGUST 13 - BRISBANE, THE TRIFFID, QLD
AUGUST 25 – MELBOURNE, MEMO MUSIC HALL, VIC
AUGUST 26 - MEENIYAN, MEENIYAN TOWN HALL, VIC
AUGUST 27 – BUNDALAGUAH, LIVE AT THE BUNDY, VIC
SEPTEMBER 1 – MILTON, MILTON THEATRE, NSW
SEPTEMBER 2 – SYDNEY, FACTORY THEATRE, NSW
SEPTEMBER 3 – NEWCASTLE, LIZOTTES, NSW
SEPTEMBER 14 – VALENTINOS SAFE CO, LILYDALE, TAS
SEPTEMBER 15 – WILDER TASMANIA, GOWRIE PARK, TAS
SEPTEMBER 16 – PARAGON THEATRE, QUEENSTOWN, TAS
SEPTEMBER 17 – PALAIS THEATRE, FRANKLIN, TAS