Taking On The World

"It was really cool – it was like the height of touring that any musician could ever hope to achieve,” Fullbrook says excitedly as she relives her adventure across the UK with Neil Finn. “It was interesting to see what it would be like to tour if you were really successful in that huge world stage way. There was an amazing tour band and catering and people on hand to help with your guitars and yeah, it was really luxurious. I did about three weeks of my own shows as well while on the tour, so I had like the two extremes: doing a big tour with a crew of 20, and then doing my own little dive bar shows and hiring a van and having my friends play with me. I really saw the things I love about both and the things I hated about both. It was a great thing to experience at this point in my musical career.”

The tour was, in many ways, the perfect preparation for the New Zealand-based indie folk trio set to tour their new full-length, Brightly Painted One, across Australia and then overseas until November. The album was released in May to stellar reviews, and to Fullbrook, wrapping her head around that is as big a challenge as preparing for the tour.

“It's a weird feeling when you get a really good review – something inside you just niggles away at you like, 'No, they're wrong!' I think anyone involved in anything creative would understand that you're never going to be totally satisfied by any one project. It's a long journey and you have ups and downs with every record; you love it for a couple of hours and then you hate it. I'm always a bit suspicious of high praise, but I am happy that it's been received pretty well across the board.”

As the second full-length and first since 2010, Fullbrook recognises that she and her band have gone about things differently, and that it was simply a natural process that came with personal growth and an understanding of the industry she has become so heavily involved in.

“When I made my first record I had absolutely no idea about anything in the music industry; I didn't know what a promoter was as opposed to a booking agent! Those songs had been developed with no intention to record them, let alone tour and release them and actually dedicate myself to being a musician, so that was a very different mindset to the one I had when I was making this latest record, which is more along the lines of, 'Okay, we're a band now and we are on tour,' so it's a very different landscape for writing. It is about time we came out of our shells and did a headlining tour, and it is daunting, but it's also comforting to know the audience will be there for us.”