In These Days, Fanny Lumsden makes a splash

Standing beside the river where the idea for her song These Days was born, Fanny Lumsden says she has been waiting for respite in a year that has offered anything but.

Country singer-songwriter Fanny Lumsden cools off in the Murray River at Tooma in the NSW Riverina. Picture: Dan Stanley Freeman

Standing beside the river where the idea for her song These Days was born, country singer-­songwriter Fanny Lumsden says she has been waiting for respite in a year that has offered anything but.

Inspired by the period between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, where “space and time collides’’, Lumsden’s song, which she wrote at home in the village of Tooma in the NSW Riverina, has become an anthem for 2020, where days melded into months during government-enforced lockdowns.

ARIA Award winner Fanny Lumsden. Picture: File

“This time two years ago, I was doing exactly what I’m doing right now — standing by the river right after Christmas.

“And I just thought ‘I wait all year for these days’,” she said.

Featured on Lumsden’s third album, which is titled Fallow, which took out Best Country Album at the ARIAs and earned seven nomin­ations for the 49th Golden Guitar Awards despite being released on Friday 13 in March — the day COVID killed the music industry — These Days is among 12 songs Lumsden says she wrote for her own comfort, not realising the comfort it would give to others.

Coming in at 19 in The Australian’s round up of 20 songs that have defined the year, ranging from Taylor Swift’s latest releases to TikTok remixes of the Fleetwood Mac classic Dreams, Lumsden’s tune is among ground­breaking sounds that defied the odds over 2020.

“Because (it) came out the day the music shuttered, there was ­absolutely no way I was going to let this album sink,” Lumsden said. “That first week was the toughest, but we worked flat out all year to try and get it out there — and it turns out the album which I wrote to find my solace in provided a solace to others as well.”

Lumsden said she still held a lot of hope for 2021, with a tour scheduled to start in March in ­venues across Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and NSW.

“I have been waiting for these days in 2020 which have been relatively calm for the year that has been,” Lumsden said. She spent the first part of the year dealing with sweeping fires that came devastatingly close to her home near Tooma.

“It felt like the most dangerous place to live, but a few months later it felt like a sanctuary,” she said.

“We have all worked out how to function in different modes, and I’m just excited to share my music and delve into the other chapters of Fallow that I haven’t been able to share.”