Twenty‑Three Shows, One Van, No Sleep: How Fanny Lumsden Kept Climbing That Mountain

Having just completed a triumphant twenty three date European headline tour and supporting Paul Kelly across Australian arenas, multi-award winning artist Fanny Lumsden announces her national headline tour of Australia, taking place next month. Fanny Lumsden and her band The Prawn Stars will traverse the country in February 2026 with shows in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney before wrapping up in Canberra.

Recognised for her DIY and trail blazing spirit shown by her regional Country Halls Tour where she has taken her joyous, energetic, and brilliant live show to over three hundred halls across Australia, NZ , United Kingdom and Europe. Fanny’s recent shows in Europe included a triumphant twenty three date headline tour, a sold-out Country Halls tour in Scotland, no less than seven festivals plus a support slot with fellow Australian singer songwriter Paul Kelly. Fanny talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

Are you must excited for your first Australian headline tour coming up in February, it’s a huge way to kick off the year.
Absolutely! You got to kick it off in some kind of positive way, right?

It was a massive 2025. Do you feel the weight of expectation for 2026?
Not at all. I actually feel excited and energised by it. We’ve been working on new music, and I’m really thrilled about this whole new world we’re creating and putting out there. It was a huge year of touring, so in a way that momentum has helped… and yeah, I’m genuinely excited.

Touring with the likes of Paul Kelly, it doesn’t really get any bigger than that, does it?
Exactly. It was amazing. It was such an honour to be chosen to open those shows every night, and having Lucinda Williams there as well was incredible. And Paul, he’s just an unbelievable artist and an unbelievable human being. I always joke that I’ll have to fight people for this, but I genuinely feel like I’m his number‑one fan. We learned so much on that tour. It was our first arena run, we’d never played rooms like that before, and it ended up being so much fun. You never know how it’s going to go, but at that first show I walked out and thought, ‘Oh, this feels the same. Great. We’re going to have fun.’

Do you learn a lot playing big arena shows like that?
I think it really taught me how to communicate with people and make them feel comfortable. When I’m performing, my goal is always to make it feel like we’re just having a conversation. I wasn’t sure how that would translate in such big rooms. I speak really fast, so I was worried that on those huge PAs I wouldn’t be legible or people wouldn’t understand me. But it ended up not being a problem. I slowed down a bit, took everything in, and just enjoyed it.

Have you been blown away by the interest in the tour so far?
It’s really hard to sell tickets these days, and not all of these shows have sold out. I think the VIP packages are gone, but not the general tickets. Honestly, the fact that anyone wants to buy a ticket and come see my band, and listen to me rattle on about whatever I’m going to be talking about is such an honour. People are out there living their lives, and the idea that they choose to spend that time with us is incredible. We’re going to have a wonderful time regardless. And truly, the fact that anybody buys a ticket at all is amazing. There’s so much happening in February, so many tours, so many internationals, so we’re really trying to fly the flag for local as much as we can

Have you had a lot of incredible entries for your competition to support you on this tour?
Oh, it’s been amazing. They just keep coming in every day, it’s incredible. Having people perform your song is such a wild feeling. I’ve actually decided it’s a great litmus test for the song itself, because I realised it’s trickier than I thought. When you write something for your own voice, you don’t think about that. It’s not that mine is any better, it’s just that certain things naturally suit you. Hearing other people interpret it in their own way has been incredible. Everyone has done such a beautiful job, and there are so many amazing artists out there. The whole point was to find artists we’d never heard of before, and I try to keep across as many emerging acts as I can because there’s so much talent and so much great music being released. This really brought it all to the forefront. I’m excited, but it’s definitely going to be tricky to go through them all and choose.

Do you think you might have to choose two or three supports a show?
I think so, yeah. It’s going to be devastating to choose just one person, but the whole thing is amazing. Having supported Paul Kelly last year, and Rob Thomas, you really see the power of simply turning up to someone else’s show, you don’t have to deal with the stressful part of selling tickets, you just get the opportunity to stand in front of that audience, communicate, and build a bit of community. That’s such an honour. Hopefully we can offer that same opportunity to someone else along the way. And it also helps us get the word out. Even with the great response so far, it’s still really hard to sell tickets at the moment for everyone. So hopefully this helps spread the word in a different way than we usually do.

These people will bring their own supporter base so it’s a win-win for everyone…
It absolutely is. I think we forget how much of it is about the community you build when you’re playing live. Starting again in the UK, we had to go right back to the drawing board, and it reminded me that it all begins with those small audiences, little town halls, little pockets of people and the communities you build in each place. That’s the most important part. Getting to do that, and then getting to share that experience with someone else, is really special.

Look At Me is s fantastic single, is that a bit of a glimpse to what might be the next album?
A little bit, yeah. We’re calling it a bridge into the next era, so it won’t sound exactly like that, but it’s definitely a step in that direction. We were actually talking about this just this week. There are a lot of really fun vibes on the next record. We just did seven days in the studio, and I’m bursting to talk about it, but I can’t yet. So yes, sonically it’s a step toward where we’re heading, though thematically maybe not as much.

It was a really amazing moment to pause and reflect, which was the whole point of the song. We were doing the same thing while touring with Paul Kelly in arenas. We’re so DIY, we’ve been doing this ourselves for about thirteen years now, still self‑managed, and I don’t think little me back then ever would’ve imagined this version of myself, or that we’d get to do such cool things and play the places we’ve played, all on our own terms. I never would’ve dreamed of that. So the song became this reminder to stop and go, ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ And honestly, what we do is put on fun parties, what a cool job.

It is definitely a moment of triumph in some ways and still climbing up the mountain…
Oh yeah, the mountain still has heaps to go. That’s the cool part, this job always has something new around the corner, something else you can create. It’s definitely not a simple path, and I don’t think it even has a real destination, but we’re having so much fun doing it. That song was a great moment to pause and reflect. And the video clip was the same, it includes footage from 2011 all the way to now, little snippets we’ve been collecting. Dan went through twenty two hard drives to pull it together. We realised we’ve filmed pretty much everything from the start, so we had this huge archive just sitting in the house, and thought, ‘We should use some of this.’ Watching it come together was so moving. We came up with the concept, but seeing it actually take shape made me emotional. I was like, oh my gosh, we’ve done so much.

It definitely seems to be a lifestyle being a musician, can you see yourself doing anything else like being an accountant?
Definitely not an accountant, I would be the world’s worst accountant. But yeah, this is our whole life, and that’s why moments like that feel so special. Looking back at all the people who’ve been part of it, our close friends, all the amazing things we’ve done, that is our life. It’s not like I have work and then my life; this is my life. Watching the footage felt like looking through a family photo album. It has my kids being born, then suddenly we’re on tour, then different members coming and going. We included every single band member in that video, which was really cool too.

Will there be new music before the tour?
Yeah, there’ll probably be more singles before the album. We’re still finishing it, most of it is done, but there’s still a bit to go. It’ll definitely be out at some point in 2026. I’m busting to get it all out there; it was so much fun to make. And like I said, once I’m allowed to talk about it properly, I’ll go into heaps of detail.

Is it hard letting go of some of these songs?
Actually, no, I think I’m ready. You get to a point where you’ve played the older songs so much that all you want to do is play the new ones. Of course, you still have to include the old songs, and when you play them live the audience’s response makes it completely worth it, it’s really fun. But as a musician, the novelty of new songs is so exciting, so I don’t feel bad about wanting to move forward. That said, sometimes I look back and think, ‘Oh, we never play that song live anymore,’ even though I love it; it just doesn’t fit the set. Maybe one day I should do a whole B‑sides tour, all the songs we don’t play anymore. That would be fun too.

When you look back on 2025, what stands out for you?
A couple of things stand out. Definitely the Paul Kelly tour, just coming together with my crew and team. We’re pretty small; there are seven of us on stage, which is a big band, but we only have one crew member and he does everything else. We all pitch in and do it ourselves. Pulling that tour off with a full band straight off the back of our UK tour, which I’ll talk about in a second, felt incredible. At Qudos, for example, we had a six‑minute changeover, a six‑minute soundcheck, full band, full production, everything. And because everyone was so dedicated, we just made it happen. We got on stage and it was amazing. Moments like that made me so proud and to bring my songs, without changing anything about myself, into that space was huge. Land of Gold is in the set, and that was on my first album. I never imagined arenas when I wrote it; it’s basically a narrative with no chorus. So to play it and have people who’d never heard of us connect with it was really special.

Then there was the UK tour before that. We’d just come off twenty three shows, two days of recording, and two days of rehearsals, all in twenty six days, with the kids on tour and running everything ourselves. We were driving the van, doing the long hauls in the day, and I’d drive at night after the shows. We had a full van, we did country hall shows in Scotland and sold them out, we travelled all over the island playing festivals and club shows. It was so full‑on and so magical. And then, literally, we finished the last festival, played as early as we could, jumped off stage, found the crew showers, got cleaned up, piled into the van, drove straight to Heathrow with the kids, got on a plane, and flew to Perth to start the Paul Kelly tour the next day. I was so proud of us for pulling all of that off as one big epic effort, and actually enjoying the process. Finishing that run and still wanting to keep going was the most amazing part, because I knew how intense it was going to be.

Bluesfest was another huge moment. That show felt really special. They’re all special, of course, but sometimes you can feel when the audience and the energy in the room come together without you having to force it. When that comes back at you, when you haven’t had to create it from the stage, it’s mind‑blowing. That first Bluesfest show on Crossroads was definitely one of those moments.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Fanny Lumsden on the follow dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…