As previously revealed on Dear Scotland, Fran and Andy will be playing a series of acoustic shows in New York and LA in September. Additional NY and LA shows have now been added and are on sale today at 2pm. Details about additional tour dates throughout North America and ticket info (including pre-sales) below.
The tour is being billed as “An Evening With Fran Healy & Andy Dunlop : A Chronological Acoustical Journey Through The Travis Back Catalogue.” Pre-sale tickets are available now here for the extra LA show and here for NY shows. Regular sale of the LA and New York shows starts later today at the links below and ticket information on the other shows will shortly be on the Travis website here.
Fran Healy – This much I know
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Pure joy is a rare thing. I remember being one year old and being on my cousin’s rocking horse and going absolutely mental on it. I wanted to ride that thing forever.
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I did my first performance aged six at school. I had to sing a traditional Scottish song called ‘Westering Home’ but because they couldn’t find a kilt that fitted I had to wear a miniskirt.
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Scottish people don’t show off. They’re very self-effacing folk. People ask why Travis are so nice, but we grew up in a place where being flash will not be tolerated.
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Men will shag anything. We’re wild animals, though humans were given bigger brains for a reason. Thinking about where desire is leading you is important.
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I’ve always had a strange confidence. Even though money was tight I borrowed £600 off my mum to record our first songs. She said, ‘If you don’t have it now, what use is it going to be later?’
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Because I was an only child brought up mostly by a single mother the band has become my family. I know I have friendships as deep as real brotherhood.
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My dad was a long-distance lorry driver. He’d come and see me once a month. My big summer treat was to ride in the cab of his truck and go round doing deliveries with him. I get flashbacks sometimes on a tour bus. I’ll see him at the wheel.
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Talking is the essence of educating kids. I just talk to my son non-stop. If you’re talking or listening you’re engaged, you’re having to think. I also threw the TV away.
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Being raised by my mother I form strong bonds with women. I still know Katie McKee – the first girl I snogged aged 13. She’s the cousin of Catriona, the girl I was really in love with, who I still know and who designed my house.
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As a man you’re either a love rat or marriage fodder. That’s how women see it. I was always the latter, I think. You never get a casual just-for-a-laugh shag if you’re marriage fodder.
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When you become a dad you delve into the box of stuff that your dad gave you. I realised there simply was no box of stuff. That’s when I realised the huge hole a father leaves in your life.
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I bear the scars of romantic foolishness on my hand and on my knee. Aged 16 I chased a girlfriend into the bathroom. She slammed a glass door on me and my hand went through it. I went to hospital for stitches. Later she rang to see if I was OK and running for the phone I tripped and fell on a nail, which went into my knee.
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I’ve lived in Glasgow, London, New York and now I’m in Berlin. Berlin has been at the centre of so much history and it feels like that again.
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I like German straightforwardness, but it means I’m wasting some good jokes. Any sarcasm and my German friends say, ‘Why would you be saying the opposite thing of what you really mean?’
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Going from the dole to having loads of money is a sharp learning curve. I’m as miserable now as I was when I was skint. You have a pinboard of worry or anger in your life and the same stuff goes up there.
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Once we stayed in a hotel in LA for three months recording an album. The bill for my ‘extras’ like bacon and eggs, a few beers and phone calls came to thousands and thousands of dollars. It’s called the rock’n’roll lifestyle, but really it was just breakfast.
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I’d like to be an old age pensioner in New York. They’re walking their dogs down by the river and feeding off the energy of the young people. That’ll be me.
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The Observer, Sunday 7 September 2008, Interview by Michael Odell
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Fran tells a great story about how he was friends with Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian when they were kids and what Fran thought about the first ever Belle and Sebastian gig here.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NwqN-xj9Xs
Photo: Audrey Harrod