Hat Fitz & Cara
Bello Winter Music | 11–14 July
Hat Fitz and Cara are hands down one of the best live duos you’ll see. The husband-and-wife team have clocked up 10 years of touring, festivals, and albums, and have just released their much-anticipated 5th studio album Hand It Over, featuring lead track Hold On. They play Bello Winter Music for the first time. We spoke with Cara Robinson.
How the hell do you get that incredible energy of you and Fitzy live distilled into an album?
Sometimes we feel that we don’t actually manage to capture the live energy in the studio, we try through the process of recording it live as much as possible, through to the mixing then mastering, maintaining the energy, so I guess you could say our recordings would never be seen as polished or over produced.
Can you tell me about Hold On, your lead track off Hand it Over?
In short this song had a message we wanted to share with our fans or anyone who was having or had had troubled times with themselves through life. We all know life can be a bit of a rollercoaster at times and there was a tendency through growing up to blame those closest to us on occasion. I guess the moral in the lyrics was to know that the big responsibility in life starts with ourselves and that in turn relates to how we treat each other.
Do you both take criticism well from each other? I know I hate it when my husband tries to tell me better punchlines… then he’s not onstage with me (thank god!).
Ha ha! Yes, it’s always hard to take criticism from anyone. Especially while onstage and from the hubby. We are such vain and prideful beings sometimes. So quite honestly, yes, we both take huge offence at each other’s critical remarks towards each other.
But there’s always room for bringing it back round if one has gone too far. We will be driving off after a gig and one of us will say Maaaan you cooked me good and proper tonight! That comment mostly comes from Fitzy, I have to say.
I just love the balance of you two – your incredible exuberance, and Fitzy’s laconic Aussie ‘let’s just get on with it’… it makes the performance so much fun, and it feels so natural… Did that onstage relationship evolve over time or is it there all the time?
Fitzy is Fitzy on stage and off. He has always called a spade a spade, whereas I would tend to over think what a spade is and what it could mean. That has always been our patter. Of course it is heightened with the energy of our audiences. Sometimes there’s a tendency for us to cut loose more when it’s a crowd who knows us well or is egging us on.
To be honest we have had three in ten years where it has gone really wrong and all humour is lost.
That’s mostly when we are beside ourselves with fatigue while on the road.
You guys are relentless live giggers; it’s made you a kickarse act onstage. Hard to believe it’s just two of you. How do you maintain that massive energy?
We love what we do. When we are onstage together and have a great sound, when Fitzy’s amp and my drums are cranked just enough so that we are both vibing off the first note, and we have great folk who have come to see us then there’s nothing stopping us from going, ‘Hell yeah, how good is this?’ Wooohoooo life is good! And we’re all together. Next song…
