Unlike most of our international tours that are much more sensible, our two-month summer tour of the northern hemisphere this year was a huge mish-mash of continent hopping and ridiculously round-about routes between countries.
Featuring a blur of otherworldly European festivals, amazing American venues, friends’ homes for long overdue catch-ups, and a couple of days in New York (just because we could), it was certainly one for the books.
Julz playing guitar in Central Park NYC - image supplied
In July, Julz and I kicked off in Llandudno, Wales with LFest, a boutique camping festival which was absolutely gorgeous. We didn’t get to enjoy Wales for long though, before our crazy plans had us driving though continental Europe to Milan, in order to to fly to New York.
After a whistle stop to the Big Apple, we played four shows in Colorado, before we headed back to Milan, then on to Zug, Switzerland and across the border to Les Gets, France for the Lounge Music Festival.
As we were already in France, we decided to do a marathon drive straight after our gig to spend a few days making music with our friend and long-time collaborator Raph White, at his country house in Provence (which obviously involved thorough ‘research’ into the local food and wine culture too).
About to swim in Trappers Lake, Colorado - image supplied
After that we were back to London to play a super intimate show at Olympic Studios, which is a really special venue, curated by producer Chris Kimsey (of The Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton and Led Zeppelin fame).
Thanks to our good friend and beautiful Irish musician Aine Tyrell, we headed across to the land of Guinness next for Ireland’s biggest music festival, Electric Picnic. This festival is commonly compared to Glastonbury (which Julz has played, but I’ve never been to). All I can say is, I have never experienced anything quite like this festival – it is MASSIVE!
Our first day in Ireland was madness, running around on the way to the festival grounds buying gumboots, ponchos and pillows from op-shops, navigating our way through the gates alongside 60,000 other music lovers, trying to locate artist camping and negotiate transport to bring our gear to the stage, and about a million other errands before our show. You can see how we ended up walking 13 kilometres on our first day!
Leesa in artist camping at Electric Picnic - image supplied
The mania was at an all-time high when Billie Eilish hit the main stage, but even though our set was on a much smaller stage than Billie’s we had a fantastic time, even playing a few tunes with Áine as well.
We definitely stayed up far too late in Ireland to properly prepare ourselves to get back to Düsseldorf to start the German tour. But alas, we psyched ourselves up for a huge couple of weeks – 11 shows in just 13 days.
Despite the late nights, weird routes and stupidly long distances travelled, we had a blast skipping the Aussie winter this year, playing music all over the world. In fact, now that it's all done we're straight into the next one and excited to be travelling just as far to all four corners of Australia.
Until next time,
Leesa
Hussy Hicks 2019 Tour Dates
8-11 Nov - Blues At Bridgetown (Bridgetown WA)14-17 Nov - Mullum Music Festival
29 Nov - Manly Fig (Sydney)
