Frank Turner

Before interviewing Frank Turner, I had seen him play solo a handful of times. The last time was in the early afternoon in a tent at a folk festival, where he lazed limply in the throes of a vicious hangover between songs. But even in that miserable state, he was fully animated and smiling during his songs. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down with him in the back of his bus on his first headlining North American tour. We sat down and proceeded to have a wonderful talk about everything from our mutual love of John K. Samson to high school exams. He was as friendly and welcoming as you would expect from a guy who pens catchy songs that invite the entire audience to sing along.

Photos by Mitch Coulter

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How’s it going so far?

Good, I’m back in Edmonton. It’s taken about 2 years for me to get back here, just about 2 years I think since I was here. Sorry about that. But the tours going great. It’s our first kind of full band headline run of this across the Atlantic and we are doing this insane lap of the continent. We started in New York, Florida, south Texas, Denver, then the whole west coast, then here and we are going on to Winnipeg, then Chicago, Detroit, Toronto and then back to New York. So, it’s a lap basically. We are a little over the halfway point and it’s been great. There have been lots of people at the shows. Most of the shows are sold out, tonight is sold out which is fucking mad. I’ve only ever played in Edmonton once in my life and I played first. Now I come back and the show is sold out, that’s mental. In a good way.

It’s the 4th time I’ve seen you. I travelled out of town to see you the other times.

Did you come to the folk festival in Calgary?

Yeah, that was one of the times. It was neat because it was such a different crowd than say the Gaslight Anthem shows.

Yeah, definitely. The Canadian folk festivals are really interesting. I hadn’t really heard of them before I was asked to do them and I sort of discovered that they are this massive thing. It’s amazing. From a performer’s perspective, it’s amazing. You do your normal set, but then all of those workshops that they make you do… it’s really kind of… There’s a danger in doing what I do, where you can get into too much of a routine. You turn up, do your set list, crack the same jokes and go home. There’s something about those workshops that really snaps you out of that sort of thing. You get to meet a lot of people. The problem is that I get them all mixed up. I think it was in Calgary that I met Jim Bryson. He’s a Canadian singer/songwriter that I am a huge fan of. It was a really good time.

Going on a tangent off of Jim Bryson, I noticed that when you were announcing your Canadian leg of the tour you did a modified cover of The Weakerthans’ One Great City!

That was great. It’s funny, literally just before you came on the bus I was having a conversation with Ben, my guitar player, in the front lounge about an email I just got from John K Samson from The Weakerthans. He’s a really nice guy and we interact on a great level, but I fucking grew up listening to The Weakerthans. They are arguably my favorite band of all time ever. I’m not complete adjusted to the fact that he’s like “what’s up man, you wanna grab dinner?” It’s like fuck! It’s funny, an awful lot of my favorite bands are Canadian. I mean, you are wearing a Propagandhi shirt, I love them too. Also, I have a tattoo of Godspeed You Black Emperor! And I like Set Fire to Flames. Yeah, just loads and loads of Canadian bands have crept into my consciousness over the years. Now here we are.

I heard a rumor that you were thinking of starting a hardcore band. You originally played with post hardcore band Million Dead and now you are doing the singer/songwriter thing. Do you think that you pull fans in from different scenes?

I like to think that I pull in fans from a wide demographic to my shows. Certainly in the UK there is. I mean, Im more closely aligned with the punk scene on this side of the Atlantic. Not that I would complain about that for a second because that is my background as well. It’s just kind of cool that in the UK you will get people who barely even know what punk rock is who come to my shows at the same time that you get diehard kids with Black Flag tattoos and Mohawks. You get people who rub shoulders who may not normally be in the same room together. That’s something that I am proud of in a way. That hardcore thing is going to happen. I should have not told the NME about it I guess. It’s definitely going to happen, it’s just definitely going to be a side project from what I am doing now, which means that it is something that I am going to do when I have down time from what I am doing now. That is something that I don’t have very much of generally speaking. Hopefully next summer I will get some time. I’ve got a line up of the band and we’ve got some ideas and hopefully we will get some time to do that.

You are playing your shows with a full band, which is a first for up here in Canada. How is that different?

It’s funny, I was thinking about that the other day. I think that over time, certainly what I am doing at this particular point in time… one of the nice things about being a solo artist is that it’s just my name I am slightly free-er than just bands are to do whatever I want. If I feel like doing a drum and bass record, then I will. Not that I am planning on doing that anytime soon. The band that I am playing with now, I always wanted to model it on the E Street Band or The Band, you know a great rock and roll band, which I think we’ve done. It’s funny, I think that at the moment, things are drifting in a more straight up rock and roll direction instead of a more folk direction which is fine with me. Certainly from a live perspective it’s fun. I feel like folk shows can get a little dry after a while. You know, there is certainly an element to the live show that I want it to be the sort of rock and roll bar show where people are up and dancing around on the tables and kissing strange girls they’ve never met before and just getting drunk. That is certainly all part of it.

On the new album, you definitely have more of that sound. The piano is more obvious and the overall sound is fuller. A track like “I Am Disappeared,” I can’t even really imagine that song with just an acoustic guitar.

The arrangements are certainly a lot less incidental these days. I do think, the songs for me are just skeletons at first. At least the good songs are, let’s put it that way. Then there’s the chords, a simple melody that you do, add some lyrics. I like to try and make it so that I have at least a version of all of my songs that I can do on my own. Part of that is practical because I tour a lot on my own. It just kind of seems better, I don’t know why, Ive run out of words now. Even if you do end up arranging it for 14000 orchestra, as long as it kind of has that kind of chords behind it then it will work.

I recently reviewed the new Chuck Ragan album “Covering Ground.” I noticed that you did a guest vocal on that. How did that come about? How did you guys run into each other?

I owe Chuck an enormous debt of gratitude actually. There’s an argument to be made that he is largely responsible for the way things happened for me outside of the UK. I’d sort of reached the point where I was doing okay in a sort of underground way in the UK, but no one had any idea of what I was doing outside of the UK. Then Chuck, on the first Revival Tour in 2008, threw me on a few shows on the east coast. Literally everything seems to have started from there, it got people talking. Then the Gaslight Anthem came from that. Chuck is a friend and a peer, but I also owe him a lot of thanks and high fives, which I try to give him every time I see him. It was fun singing that song with him. In a way it was kind of sad. He sent me the songs and said these are the parts I want you to sing and I went to a studio and sent it back. I would like to one day sit down with a couple of acoustic guitars and Chuck and write something. We haven’t done that yet. Hopefully one day we will.

He seems to be pretty busy these days. As busy as you at least.

That’s the problem with being friends with people who also tour. Unless you arrange to actually tour together, the time you get to hang out is extremely limited. I feel, if I can say this without sounding hugely pretentious, that me and Chuck both intend to be lifers with what we do, so if it doesn’t happen in the next six months, I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it because we can do it down the road.

I also got my hands on a split that he released for the UK Revival Tour dates with 3 UK artists that I didn’t know. Do you think that you in your own way have helped to open doors for singer/songwriters in England?

I hope so. One of the things… the job that I do requires a great deal of self promotion. Those moments when I can use what I do to promote other musicians who do what I do and are in most cases better musicians than me, it kind of makes me feel like I am giving something back. Any time I am doing a tour, if I am headlining, I take a lot of time making sure that I am happy with the lineup. I have a list of bands or singers that I want to take on tour as long as my arm. I think the world is full of singer/songwriters or bands or whatever who are amazing who don’t have the exposure that they deserve. The universe that we live in has quite a big disconnect sometimes I think between quality and exposure. I think we can all agree on that. If you can do a little something to rebalance that, then that is something.

Have you done anything with your openers (Andrew Jackson Jihad, Into It. Over It.)?

For this tour, I did one show with AJJ before this tour and totally fell in love with their stuff. I was like, these guys are the fucking future. I think they are incredible. They are unique. I love their lyrics and they put on a great show. That was definitely something that I was fighting hard for this tour. Evan of Into It. Over It. was more of a discovery for me this tour. It was a case where Nick who booked my shows in America came up to me, quite unusually for him, and said “you have to take this guy on tour with you.” I have a couple of other names in the hat as well and I was like I don’t know, but he was like “if you ever listen to anything I have to say, this is the time.” I gave a listen to his music and I liked it so I decided to give him a try.

I admit that I am not familiar with his music.

I think in a way that is cool in way. On a tour that is how it should be. The headliner is why you are there, you have a middle act that some people know and hopefully have someone opening the shows that is a new and interesting delight for people, in theory.

I saw the picture you uploaded about your new ink.

Everyone in the band has been ripping on me saying that it is a Foo Fighters tattoo. I’m like mother fuck. It’s cool though, I got it done by Oliver [Peck], who is the Warped Tour tattooist. He’s a good dude. He is famous for tattooing hard and fast. He did both of these in a half hour, which hurt like balls. They say that you never get any drop out ink from an Oliver Peck tattoo. I know him through Lucero really, he is friends with those guys and jumps on their bus all the time.

The reasoning behind the tattoo choice?

I like old violins and old Tele’s and I think it’s a cool tattoo. It’s not massively complicated. I do want to say that it is really, really great to be back up here in Edmonton. When I came here last time I was with the Gaslight Anthem and I played first out of four bands. Were you at that show?

Yeah.

That show really did stick in my mind for two reasons. First of all, I remember cracking a joke about how you no longer had the biggest mall in the world, that Taiwan had beat you and that you guys needed to buck up your ideas. It did not go down very well. Obviously, this a very sort of crude and in some ways frivolous measure, but for the first time on that tour I sold like 200 CDs, which was utterly ridiculous. I remember kind of like, Jesus Christ, I have to come back to Edmonton like now. Then it took me 2 years. Sorry about that. It is going to be a fun show.

I remember seeing an Epitaph ad shortly before the show about your new album, but there are 10 million bands out there and I didn’t get around to giving your stuff a listen. Then I got to the show early, which is rare for me, I usually show up late. I was happy I didn’t that night. I didn’t know who you were, but I was like who is this guy. I don’t think a lot of people in the crowd knew your stuff before that night, but I clearly remember when you were singing “Photosynthesis.” It was such a catchy song that watching the crowd pick it up as you were going and by the ended everyone was singing along to the chorus. That was really neat to see. The entire bill was one of the best I’d seen in a long time.

Oh yeah, Murder By Death are an amazing band. In a way, this is where I get kind of old fashioned. I think that… there is just so much music out there and getting out there and playing your music is the best way to get out there, instead of mail shots or magazine articles or any of that kind of that promotion. In a way I feel kind of bad saying that because my record label works very hard at organizing that sort of thing and it does good, but I truly feel that the best way to get out there is to just play your music. Especially because you are supposed to be a fucking musician you know? Hopefully, the internet is having a very large impact on the music industry and hopefully one of the things it will lead to is the death of the studio band, the one’s that can’t pull their shit off live. That would be excellent because I remember being utterly disgusted when I was a kid seeing bands that had a great record, but they couldn’t pull their shit off live and being like “fuck you guys,” you know what I mean.

Well, Nickelback is still one of the best selling Canadian bands around.

(Laughs) Here is a question for you, is there any Edmonton band that I may know?

Well, Wednesday Night Heroes were on BYO Records for a while and they had a strong underground fanbase. I think that personally, SNFU are the band that I think of when I think of Edmonton music.

SNFU! Are they from here? Fuck me, are you kidding?

Yeah, they’re from here. It’s actually Chi Pig’s birthday today, he turned 49.

If I did an SNFU cover tonight would people know it. Fuck me, I love SNFU, I never knew that they were from here. How long do I have until show time? Now I have to relearn that song. Sorry, I’m hitting you with questions here, but I haven’t really talked to anyone here apart from the sound guy, who is a total weirdo. This is going to sound like a weird question, but in the UK when you are 16 you do this national exam, with English, Math, Science… When you are 18, you do you’re A Levels and those are the 2 kind of qualifications. Is there any equivalent to that here? I know in America it’s the SATs.

Well, in Grade 12, you can write your Diploma Exams.

How old is that?

17 or 18.

Is there another thing that you write at another age?

Well every province is different. We all have our own school systems. So here in Alberta, you would write your Diploma Exams, which you would need to get into university.

Ok, so then you get a degree from university?

Yeah.

Ok, cool. That is going somewhere for the gig later. Final question, do you know who Joel Plaskett is?

Yes.

What do you think of Joel Plaskett?

I don’t know his stuff that well. I’ve seen him play at a festival and he did okay live.

I’ve been asked to do some shows with him over here and I haven’t heard of him before. It seems like he has a big crowd.

Yeah, I saw him with Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band and City & Color. I went for the Rev, but I was only one of a dozen people there into his music. Then Joel Plaskett came on and a couple thousand people seemed really into it. Even more than City & Color that night, which in Canada is a big deal.

Cool thanks. I never knew SNFU were from here. I really need to work on that now. Don’t tell anyone, it’s going to be a surprise. Thank you man. I’ll see you out there.