Fanny Lumsden
2nd June 2023
Raukawa Hall, Raukawa, New Zealand.
Review by Rob Harbers, photography by Andrew Caldwell.
Hot off the heels of the fantastically successful Hawkes Bay Music Month, the Small Hall Sessions are straight back on the horse, this time featuring Australian country singer, and veteran of many a small hall, Fanny Lumsden, with her family band. A straw poll of the audience revealed that none present had heard of her before these shows were promoted – but there they were anyway! Surely the strongest possible endorsement of Jamie’s ability to pick a winner!
A very intimate audience was treated to a full-on performance that can only be described as full-on entertainment from start to finish. This is a band that has honed its craft in Australia’s small halls, and it shows in the best way, with a truly heartwarming mix of songs about real people, banter, dad jokes, and even compulsory dancing(!). An experience from the heart and good for the soul, the perfect complement to the restorative effects already provided by Hawkes Bay Music Month.
Coming off the back of a punishing traveling schedule that left little time for relaxation, Fanny and The Prawn Stars showed no sign of the fatigue that’d be expected of lesser beings, instead ploughing straight in to a set of (mostly) original material. This is, as mentioned above, a family affair, with Fanny’s brother Tom on backing vocals (and sick moves), husband Dan (Danny and Fanny!) on bass and good friend Paddy Montgomery providing additional instrumentation. This familiarity shows in the playing, with song choices seemingly being made on the fly, depending on the mood, most clearly shown in the new song “Stories” which saw the rest of the band leave the stage for some solo Fanny. When I say “new song”, let’s be honest, who really knew, given the previous ignorance of the band’s existence? Probably not the worst position for a band to be in, one would think, avoiding the “now we’re going to play a new song” crowd reaction – when you don’t know any of the songs, they’re all new! And gives the band a break from the stuff that their fingers would be inclined to play without any conscious thought, out of pure muscle memory…
As for the playing: truly outstanding, particularly when it came to Paddy’s mandolin. 50 years ago, almost to the day, Mike Oldfield’s ground-breaking “Tubular Bells” album was released, and one of its more memorable passages is the sequence in which Viv Stanshall introduces a procession of instruments. The particular relish with which the word “mandolin” rolls off his tongue could almost be taken as a hugely prescient foretelling of the impact this instrument brings to the band, next-level stuff indeed!
Look, I could go on here for a lot longer, but that’d be at the risk of letting out spoilers (at least), and by now if you haven’t already decided that this sounds like the next hot ticket, probably nothing more I can say is going to convince you. But fuck it, I’ll give it one last shot-entertainment, in its purest form, awaits you and will lift you up! Two more nights only – be there or be square! If you’re not quick enough this time around, they’re promising to return later, after all this was their debut performance on the territory of Te-Ika-a-Maui, but wouldn’t you rather be among the first wave? Go to www.smallhallsessions.co.nz for tickets, and go!
Were you there at the Raukawa Hall for this intimate gig? Or have you seen Fanny Lumsden perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Ambient Light was provided passes to review and photograph this concert. As always, this has not influenced the review in any way and the opinions expressed are those of Ambient Light’s only.
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