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Hat Fitz & Cara

By Chris O

There I was in a smoky, tipsy, mid-festival Irish Trad Session in a
Chris O’s Column
hotel at the top of a mountain. Cutting through the jigs and reels,
from behind me came an extraordinary sound of fast metallic
picking, which turned out to be Hat Fitz playing his Beeton resonator
guitar. The next day I was in a festival audience that was blown away
by his incredible acoustic blues set with drummer Itchy.

Scroll on a few years to the mid 2000’s, Cara Robinson joined up with Fitzy and moved to
Australia. Just as we were thinking it couldn’t get any better, the music soared to a new level
with her amazing vocals, drumming,
and whistle playing, and kept
evolving with every show I was
lucky to attend.

With a musical style which is a
unique combination of folk, roots,
and gospel blues with old time
flavourings reminiscent of a time
once forgotten, high-energy duo Hat
Fitz and Cara are among Australia’s
most talented roots music artists.
The husband and wife team have
clocked up 10 years of worldwide
touring, festival performances and
album releases from their base of
operations in the hinterland of
South-East Queensland’s Sunshine
Coast and are showing no signs of
slowing down. Fitzy served his
Rob, Blackham Images, London musical apprenticeship in the 1980s
touring around Western
Queensland playing the show circuit
with his father’s band alongside boxing tent shows and rodeos. Meanwhile Cara was growing
up in a commune on the other side of the world, living a gypsy lifestyle around various parts of
the Northern Ireland coast.

Winners of Blues Album of The Year at the 2013 Australian Chain Awards and UK Spiral Earth,
Hat Fitz & Cara also won Best Vocal of the Year at the 2015 Chain Awards, were Finalists in the
2015 Memphis International Blues Challenge in the USA, and more recently Finalists of
International Acoustic Music Awards 2020 with two songs for the best Duo.

I contacted them and asked them about their lives. This is what they told me.

CO: Growing up at opposite ends of the world, what was some of the music that grabbed
you both at a young age? When did you fall for the blues?