Kategorie: 2011

Welcome back, here we are with the second part of the Frank Turner interview made during his European tour 2011 at the Backstage in Munich!
If you did not catch the first part here it is!

European Crises and Frank

RTC: Now it gets really intellectual, how does the EU crises affects you as a person / musician?

FT: On a boring business level, it depends on what will happen in Europe – will make a difference to touring, short time – long time. You have to pay attention to it.
On a personal level, the way the democratic government in Greece and Italy has been kind of replaced by technocrats is pretty worrying because I am a fan of democracy as a concept. On a philosophical level I find it uncomfortable, but it is something that at this stage everybody can have as many opinions about miserable life like they want to, but it does not make that much difference to what actually happens in the short run. (sits thinking)

RTC: OK, as you have a bachelor in European history, will the European Union survive this? Which risks or opportunities you see?

FT: To speak from a historical point of view the last 60 years of peace in Europe are pretty remarkable, in the long view of European history it is been a long time we did not went through a war, I would say this is a good thing. If one was looking at long time historical trends one could perhaps get a bit nervous about the fact that we haven’t had a war for 60 years. I do think that the single currency probably won’t survive, at the end of the day it has just to do with economy, it is not an optimal currency area and it doesn’t really work out to have all these countries with the same currency. I hope that Europe survives in peace and prosperity and with free trade, but you never know. It is an interesting time to live in.

Songs and children

RTC: Back to easy questions, best song in which you were involved?

FT: I find it difficult to pick individual songs because for me it is like choosing between children, you are not supposed to do it!

RTC: Do you have children?

FT: No I don’t have children.

RTC: (now I smile) or do you just don’t know about the children?

FT: (laughs out) I don’t know that I have children, (smiles) I am pretty sure that I don’t have children.

RTC: In August I saw you at the Festa di Radio onda d’urta in Italy and some girls were running looking strange from your backstage area (chees)….

FT: hey that wasn’t nine months ago (damn right he is – this was a 1:0)
At the moment there is a song on the new record –England Keep My Bones- called “Redemption” that I am very very proud of, it took me a long time to write that song and to get it right, so yeah for giving you an answer, maybe that one.

RTC: Best song which you would like to have written?

FT: You know right now this is a weird answer, do you know the Weakerthans the Canadian indie band? Their singer John K. Samson just did a solo record which is not actually out yet but he gave me a copy of it and there is a song on this album called “Heart Of The Continent” that I have been listening on repeat for about three weeks, I can’t stop listening to that song, it is so very very good.

RTC: You still remember your first record you bought?

FT: It was Killers by Iron Maiden, technically speaking it was my dad who bought it for me, but I was the driving force behind it (smiles)

RTC: And the last one?

FT: The last record I bought, hold on, wait a minute, now I really want to answer this question. (thoughtful face – relief) Oh yes it was from Josh T. Pearson called “The Last Of The Country Gentlemen”, he is a singer/songwriter from USA, it is the most utterly, utterly dark and depressing record I have heard in my whole life. It is stunningly depressing, it is really good. It is a powerful record and you need to be in the right place for it. It is basically a concept album about how he got married when he was in love with his wife’s best friend. “Women, when I’ve raised hell” is one of the songs, so depressing and he sings it so raw and with lots of blackness.

The HC plus festival questions

RTC: Imagine you are god and you are able to set up a festival of your choice (even dead people or dissolved bands), name the five headliners?

FT: Let me think about it.
1) Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street band
2) The Band
3) The Weakerthans
4) Black Flag 1981 (5-piece)
5) Radiohead 1999

RTC: Last one from my friend Sasch, when will you be back with the new HC project and what is there to expect?

FT: A lot hopefully (laughs), the problem is the time. We will be rehearsing in January and hopefully touring in summer. The name is not yet fixed!

After some cheers and handshakes – of I went. To get this to an end, the show was great and here are the Frank Turner And The Sleeping Souls concert pictures from the gig at the Backstage in Munich. Thanks for reading.

You have never heard of Frank Turner before? Well today is your lucky day, because now you did! And anyway, sooner or later you would have come across this name if you are interested in music (what you are, if not, you would not be reading Rock The Cam). To get more information about his (musician) life, just check out his Wikipedia profile or his webpage.
I met Frank in Munich at the Backstage and was able to do an interview with him. My impression was that he is a nice guy, knowing what he is up to and doing his musician job not just as a job, but as a passion.

Fuck this, I wanna go home

RTC: You are touring a lot and you have songs like “Living The Dream” or “The Road”, is it always what you wanted to do? And when bad times hit you, how do you motivate yourself?

FT: I guess it is what I was always wanted to do. When I was about 10 years old I just liked music and I wanted to play it myself as well. My dreams about what it would be like being a musician kind of changed as I get older, but it was always that I wanted to be a musician and being able to move around and to play shows – it’s a great feeling.
Bad times, hmmm, everybody has bad days, in any walk of life everybody has a day when it is like “fuck this; I wanna go home!” I remember one time I was in Tallahassee / Florida and I was very sick, I’ve been on tour for a really long time, was totally on my own, nobody around; and then I was starting to look up flights to go home, because I was just like: fuck, I won’t get back in the van again. But you know in the end of the day I know first of all, this is what I wanted to do, I do it to/for myself and I can’t really complain about it, because if it is so terrible I could go home and do something else. But again: I’m lucky to do this and I can do it. There are lots of people who would like to do it but it does not work out for them.
That means even when I have the worst day ever, I still remember it’s a lucky situation to be in.

RTC: What else would you do if it wouldn’t have come out like this?

The tattooed teacher?

FT: I would probably be a teacher, I recon – something like this, but I think now I have too many tattoos to be a teacher, so that one is fucked as well (Smiles)

RTC: Do you do any sports? Do you have time for that on tour?

FT: Not really, I started doing sit ups and pushups, because now I am 29 and when I started with touring it was with 16 and when you are young, let’s say with 21, you can get drunk every night and it doesn’t really matter and it is fine. While you get older however, you just have to –yeah- eat more fruit, do more exercises and maybe not get drunk every night (laughs out)

RTC: Now you almost ruined my next one: How do you keep yourself and your voice in form?

I spent a really depressingly large amount of time thinking about my voice

FT: With special tea for my throat because the main thing for me to look after it’s my voice. I sing every day and when I do, I sing loud and really hard. I spend a really depressingly large amount of time thinking about my voice every day. It is funny, the first time I met Murrey from the Xcerts our very first conversation we had was what kind of things you do to look after your voice. I think anytime two singers meet you always have that conversation cause singers spend the whole life thinking how to make sure that the voice is OK.

Music, Mom and Iron Maiden

RTC: How does your mother describes your music to her neighbors?

FT: (starts laughing) I don’t know (keeps on laughing – it seems that Rock The Cam came up with a funny question…). I should ask her myself. My Mom and Dad were not very stoked about me being a musician for a long time. Well my Mom, she came last Sunday, we played The Hammersmith Apollo in London which was the biggest headline show I have done yet. There is a balcony in the venue and I reserved some seats right in the middle for her and I could see her over the crowd. At the end of the set I was telling that my Mom is there and she stood up and was like Yeahhhhh – which is pretty cool.
Anyway, to get back to your question; I don’t know how she describes my music, but she is proud of it (smiles)

RTC: What made you start with music? You said you started touring with 16?

FT: Yes, this was when I did my first tour; however I started playing in bands when I was about 12.

RTC: How is that, did you see someone or something and you thought, oh cool I wanna do this as well?

FT: My parents were into classical music and so I did not know any Rock ‘n’ Roll music. When I was about 10 years old I was at a friend’s house and his older brother had an Iron Maiden poster on the wall, for me it was like ugghhh, fucking cool! He told me more about this band and I got the album “Killers“; I loved it. Straight away I was bugging my parents to get me a guitar for x-mas or birthday, whatever. I don’t know why but it was in the minute I heard it, I liked it and if I like something I want to try it to do it myself.

The Sleeping Souls

RTC: What are the differences between performing solo and being with a band? First time I saw you, you played solo on the tour with the Gaslight Anthem and 10 months later you came around with the band.

FT: I always wanted to have a band when I started doing this, but at the same time it is under my name and the core of it is me and my acoustic guitar which is a strong backbone to it, so it is kind of a balance act. To me it is a nice thing to do both kinds of shows because if I’ve been doing one kind of show for a long time, it is always kind of cool to do the other thing and it keeps it fresh for me. (Smiles)
When I play solo it is cool casue I can change the setlist at seconds, I don’t have to tell nobody else and I generally talk a lot more. But with the band the range of sounds is much wider, there is more dynamic, more drive. At the end it is limited what you can do with an acoustic guitar and a voice, but with a drummer, a keyboard player, a bass player, there is more of interaction and it is more of a rock show – and I like rock music (smiles).

RTC: How much influences can the band take or are you the only decision maker?

FT: In terms of the music, generally speaking like the core of the song, the melody, the structure it is my thing, but in times of how we arrange it for the whole band, that is something we all work on together. The guys I am playing with and I am not saying this because some of them are here, are all very talented musicians and great guys as well, so everybody puts ideas on the table although at the end of the day I have kind of a veto. If I don’t want to do it, then it is not going to happen.

Xtra Mile and Epitaph

RTC: How did the contract with Epitaph Records happen? In my opinion your music does not exactly fit to the Epitaph roster but being on Epitaph is kind of an accolade.

FT: (looks like he still can’t believe it himself) Well in 2009 things were going pretty well in UK but outside I hadn’t started doing anything. We were talking to record labels and one of the problems was that all labels we were looking at –including some majors labels- wanted to sign me for everywhere, but the record label I am on in the UK –Xtra Mile Recordings- is kind of my family.

RTC: and you wanted to stay with them in the UK.

FT: Exactly, this was the reason we were having trouble, nobody wanted to do a deal like that with us. In the time Epitaph got in touch with us –I think this has something to do with Chuck Ragan playing my records to someone at Epitaph- and they were into my music. When we explained the whole thing about staying with Xtra Mile in the UK, Brett was like “hey I totally understand, happens with Epitaph a lot of times as well that someone tries to steal bands away”. He also runs Anti Records having Tom Waits, Nick Cave and it is the sister company from Epitaph, means more or less different sticker on the CD but same company. The negotiations were with Anti and when the deal was almost closed, Brett decided to bring out my stuff on Epitaph and for me it was like Fuck, that’s fine for me (big smile). We still work together and it is great.

RTC: Can you make a living from your music?

FT: Yes, the most of it comes from playing shows and I don’t have time to do another job with 200+ shows a year.