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The story behind Fanny Lumsden’s song When I Die

When a farmer approached musician Fanny Lumsden in a pub with a strange question, it led to a song — and the man himself making his music video debut in chainsaw pants.

Brett, left, and Fanny Lumsden in the video.
Brett, left, and Fanny Lumsden in the video.

The song began in a pub in southern NSW when Fanny Lumsden was approached by a man with a strange question: how much would it cost for her to play at his funeral?

The award-winning country singer-songwriter thought he was joking, and laughed it off by naming a ridiculously high fee – as well as a down payment of a cow and two loads of wood – then turned back to her drink, thinking no further of it.

“Six months later, he rocked up to our house with the first down payment of a load of wood,” Lumsden told The Australian with a laugh. “So I had to get the details.”

The man’s name was Brett, a cattle farmer and woodcutter who lives on a neighbouring property to Lumsden and her family near Tooma.

The details were these: when he dies, Brett wants his ashes mixed with glitter and put into shotgun shells. Then he wants his friends to gather for a wake on the side of a hill behind his house – a spot he dubs “Awesome View”.

“There’ll be a bonfire, and I’m going to rattle out a bunch of Monty Python songs and some others,” said Lumsden. “Everyone’s going to shoot his ashes into the sky with shotguns at sunset, and send him off in this most glorious way.

“The attention to detail, the intention and the joy that he was getting from planning it, and just being sure this is how he should be sent off – it really stayed with me.”

And so being a renowned songwriter with a swag of Golden ­Guitar Awards and an ARIA to her name, Lumsden marinated on the rich details of Brett’s post-death wishes until the time was right.

Guitar in hand, she wrote it during a pit stop on the Nullarbor Plain, on a long road trip around Australia a couple of years ago.

“I was sitting around the campfire, and the song came out in one go,” she said.

“I think it’s awesome.”

She’s not wrong. Titled When I Die, the upbeat track features stirring lead guitar lines played by Ash Naylor of The Church and Paul Kelly’s band, and it appears on her newly released fourth album, Hey Dawn.

For the music video, there was really only one location: Awesome View, on Brett’s property in the Upper Murray, on the western side of the Snowy Mountains.

And, naturally enough, Lumsden’s unexpected musical muse had to make his film clip debut in a song about him.

Wearing his chainsaw pants, the bearded cattle farmer mimed playing guitar alongside Lumsden and her husband, while her father David leaned against a rusted ute, pretending to play bass as his daughter sang her heart out.

The shoot took two hours, and all involved in it had a ball.

When Lumsden showed the finished video to Brett, how did he respond?

“He told me, ‘Oh, it’s better than I thought it was gonna be’,” said Lumsden with a laugh.

“That’s high praise, I think, from Brett.”

If you’re wondering about Brett’s health, he’s fine – just planning ahead. “I think he went to a funeral that he felt didn’t fit somebody’s personality, and he doesn’t want that for himself,” said Lumsden, whose knack for slice-of-life songwriting is redoubtable.

Her tour in support of Hey Dawn continues in Brunswick Heads, NSW on Wednesday (Aug­ust 9). With her band The Prawn Stars, Lumsden will play shows in Queensland and Victoria, before concluding in Franklin, Tasmania, on September 17.

Andrew McMillen
Andrew McMillenMusic Writer

Andrew McMillen is an award-winning journalist and author based in Brisbane. Since January 2018, he has worked as national music writer at The Australian. Previously, his feature writing has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone and GQ. He won the feature writing category at the Queensland Clarion Awards in 2017 for a story published in The Weekend Australian Magazine, and won the freelance journalism category at the Queensland Clarion Awards from 2015–2017. In 2014, UQP published his book Talking Smack: Honest Conversations About Drugs, a collection of stories that featured 14 prominent Australian musicians.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/the-story-behind-fanny-lumsdens-song-when-i-die/news-story/6d82ebd224f9c5def7bad5d5a82a59cc