Tour tips with Stu Larsen

Tell us about how you got into doing music full time?
Life was just a little too comfortable, working a job and doing music on the side in Toowoomba QLD and I realised that I didn’t want to spend my life this way, so I quit and gave away most of my things and hit the road in my little two-door Ford Fiesta. I promised myself that I’d try survive solely from music for two years before going back to a job.. but that’s twelve years ago now….

Any favourite tour tales?
So many…. playing in some old castles in Europe was pretty insane, as well as touring South America for the first time.. but the ultimate tour tale is when I almost died in the jaws of a black jaguar in Mexico City while a security guard pointed his gun toward the situation in an attempt to do something to save my life… I survived both the jaguar and the gun..

Top five tour tips?

• pack light, you don’t need too much to be on the road

• eat well, difficult in some places, but worth the extra effort in the long run

• locals know best, most of the time..

• take photos, you’ll forget so many things down the track

• take the time to see the place and meet the people

What is your studio space like?
I travel with a little portable set up and the last time I used it was in a hotel bathroom for some demos, it’s so good to be able to record wherever you are! The upcoming album was recorded at Golden Retriever in Sydney and I think it’s my new favourite studio, Tim Hart (producer) and I felt so at home there and Simon Berckelman was a dream to work with.

What does Whisky & Blankets - (A Tu Lado) - Spanish Version, mean to you?
Whisky & Blankets is by far the happiest song I have ever written, it’s a very folk-pop track that was actually written in one of the saddest and most heartbroken weeks of my life. I was sitting in an apartment in Amsterdam in the winter, staring out the window for days while writing the saddest songs I have ever written and then one morning, I decided that maybe the situation deserved a happy song and out came Whisky & Blankets..