One thing Liz Stringer loves is to travel and talk to people.
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This is because it is through connecting with others she learns about different life experiences and becomes inspired to write her music, and has found a message from the hundreds of connections she has made in her past.
“I think we’re all the same,” the singer-songwriter said.
“We experience the same mundanities in a similar way, that’s what I keep learning.
“That’s why songs about love and breaking up are so universally identified with because everybody has been there.”
While Stringer said part of what she loves about touring is this opportunity of being able to constantly meet new people, she thinks she is very lucky to have the chance as most do not.
“I think it’s a very privileged access to human beings, seeing how people live in Australia and different parts of the world. I find it infinitely interesting,” the 36-year-old said.
“Everyone has a completely different experience, as far as their upbringing goes and their experience of the world.
“I think I’m getting a bit older and a bit more mellow. I know that a farmer in Mildura is not going to have the same view as I have, growing up in Melbourne, on some political issue.
“But it’s about being able to listen and being really open about how you don’t understand where they are coming from.”
Stringer is bringing her band and incredibly rich voice to the Candelo Village Festival on April 21-23, as part of a follow-up tour to her new album All The Bridges, which is a departure from her usual sound as it has a greater rock and roll feel.
“A lot of my earlier albums were more folky, more acoustic and darker,” she said.
“This is more poppy, which is stuff I like to listen to. Stuff like Tom Petty, Springsteen, that hooky kind of pop-rock.”
The change between sounds was a natural progression, Stringer said, which was just how she was writing.
“I’m interested in the idea of songs being an oral history, it’s not just about self expression it’s about documentation and dissecting the human experience,” she said.
“I never set out to write something specifically, things just come to me.”
Stringer grew up in a house surrounded by music, but while she always knew it would be a large part of her life she never expected it to become her job even for years after the age of 16 when she went to Germany, formed a band and recorded her first demo.
“We made a cassette, so I don’t know if any other copies exist in the world and if they don’t then that’s probably a good thing,” she laughed.
Stringer will perform at the Candelo Village Festival in Candelo on the afternoon of April 23. For more information, visit www.candelovillagefestival.org.