Classic Episode - Frank Turner

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[SPEAKER_01]: They say there's nothing new under the sun and ain't that the truth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The working songwriter has been on the air for over 10 years and 300 episodes now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As you've probably noticed, only the latest 100 published episodes are available in your podcast app and on Spotify.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So we're bringing back some of the gems from past years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, if you want access to every single episode of the show at any time, you can become a subscriber to the vault.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What is the vault?
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[SPEAKER_01]: The vault is a private members only section of my website, jopugmusic.com, where you can access any episode of the show for streaming and for download.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, we're bringing back some classic episodes to the main feed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a reason to not join the vault?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course not, because it means that our latest episodes will only get paywall to all the sooner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is this a relatively convoluted system?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course it is, but such are the trade-offs that the ever-changing media landscape leaves us to navigate.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's always an honor that you listen to this show, and I hope you enjoy some of these classic episodes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today's episode with Frank Turner was originally aired on April 8, 2022.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I hope that you enjoy this classic episode.
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[SPEAKER_01]: this week began his career as the vocalist for the post-hardcore band, Million Dead, before stepping out on his own to begin a wildly successful solo career.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Frank Turner hails from the UK, but his following stretches the world over.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's released nine albums, selling well over a million copies, and his latest release has hit number one in England.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's recorded for Epitaph, Polydor, and Interscope Records.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's toured with the offspring, Jason Isbel, Chuck Reagan's Revival Tour, and many others.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's headlined Royal Albert Hall and Wembley Arena.
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[SPEAKER_01]: NME has called him a slow burn success story, and American songwriter has said that he's a decidedly engaged artist, a musician who's far more than just a brassh provocateur.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In truth, it would be hard to find a punk with greater purpose.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I got a chance to catch up with Frank on the phone a few weeks back and hear about his journey so far.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Director.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for being a part of the working songwriter podcast.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I got to tell you, I'm getting ready for this interview.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like to me that you've lived and worked like five different careers in the span of 20 years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's going to be hard to get this all in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It might not be wise to start at the beginning because that could stop us from getting all in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But nonetheless, I'd like to start there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What did music and creativity look like in your household growing up?
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good question.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean music looked like my parents when I was very young my parents don't really believe in modern music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like the drum kit is kind of beyond their remit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know so my parents listen to classical music and and church music and and that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I do remember that we had like my mom got a copy of Sergeant Pepper on cassette as it is like oh here's some modern music which is like wow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: but uh and there was some some kind of old kind of like musical voodvelle stuff there's a little bit to that around too but um rock and roll in the broader sense of the time wasn't really part of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean my mum taught piano and recorder at the local kind of primary school and stuff so um you know there was music around but it wasn't punk rock and it wasn't rock music or anything like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean creativity I don't know like it's not
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[SPEAKER_00]: And neither of my parents are especially like creators, as should we say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So my first really exposure was when I stumbled across the music of Iron Maiden when I was about 10 years old and that was a huge light bulb moment for me and my musical development.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Man, that's a trip.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the people I wrap with on this show, the story seems to go, well, I got a hold of my parents' record collection and it was filled with all these great rock and roll stuff, great, you know, full heroes and yet you're coming from a place where you say, you know, maybe it wasn't discouraged, but at the same time you really had to seek it out yourself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think it was that made you seek it out and that sense of why didn't you just end up a banker or something like that?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think my parents would have preferred that, and It's funny, there was some discouragement that comes later in the story because my first loves were metal and punk rock and this was completely far into my parents And I bought a copy of a music magazine that had a feature on cannibal corpse in it and my mum then banned me from buying music magazines Incidentally, I still love cannibal corpse, I think they're amazing, but um
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's a whole other thing, but you know, so I guess like I'd now I was just there's a purity to it to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There was something just so exciting when I the first I had the song I'd so much which is track one on the album Killers by Iron Maiden and just the drums and the guitars and everything it was so exciting to me But also you know relevant all of this is there was a sense of ownership for it for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't something that was kind of given to me or I was encouraged towards I've long felt like
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[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe not in my adulthood, but suddenly all through my childhood and adolescence any interest I had in music was something I had to actively fight for and actually seek out myself And it means it's kind of mine, you know, and and I'm fiercely sort of protective of it as a result and
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[SPEAKER_00]: over time that interest brought in from metal into punk into just kind of rock and roll and even folk music in country and all the rest of it but it's my thing that I had to seek out and find and I think that that's a big part of how I think about music is it's it's it's very dear to me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's funny yeah i can actually draw a straight line between that and you know you have this you've you've always had a career where you very famously have kind of just like done what you've wanted to do uh uh the business of it be damned and uh that's interesting in a way that's kind of an advantage.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's, you know, with no disrespect to anybody, but like, I have dear friends who were, you know, raised by very musical parents who are very supportive and who, like, took them to Glastonbury when they were five and all this kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's cool and that's great, but it's so alien to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I had to sneak out of the house to go to shows.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had to kind of light to my parents when I went to my first music festival, all this kind of thing, you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So,
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[SPEAKER_00]: There is a sense of ownership that comes with that and a dedication, you know, I feel like music's always had me and I'm always going to have music, like I think of the song radio by Rancid, which is one of my all-time favorite songs and he sings for the I, you know, when I've got the music I've got a place to go and that's always been one of the ways I think about music in the broader sense as it's kind of a refuge for me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In fairness to your mom, it wasn't a magazine about the Ramones you brought home.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was cannibal corpse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you got to kind of- Yeah, absolutely.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, although, I mean, I know, so my mom, I think, was under the impression that kind of rock and roll shows involved kind of bikers injecting each other with Harrow and in the dark.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And of course she wasn't wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm kidding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, she was as an adult in fairness to my parents now I sort of recognized that what I was involved in was just completely alien to their experience of the world They didn't know anything about me in this music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was 18 and the summer of love and I was the one who told him who Jimmy Hendrix was, you know?
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[SPEAKER_00]: it was just not that well and and I can understand now with a little bit a few more years under my belt that it would be it could be quite sort of alarming almost feel a child to kind of particularly quite a young age to immerse themselves in this world and and of course punk rock which comes with more than just the music there's and you know haircuts and bondage trousers and brothel groupers in the rest but also getting into kind of like anarchism and this sort of thing and it was quite it was quite all consuming for me as a kid.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when did this go from something that you were listening to and kind of participating in passively or just as an audience member to something that you were going to start making yourself?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, theoretically, immediately, in the sense that I remember hearing Iron Maiden and actually shortly afterwards a big thing for me was the Freddie Mercury tribute concert was on TV and the UK and that had like, you know, Metallica and Guns and Rose's obviously lots of Queen's Sabbath members of Zeppelin, all this kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: almost from the word go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is a deeper sea to thing in my character.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I was like, I want to do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be involved.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be part of this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously at the beginning, that was a statement made with very little kind of realistic appraisal of what that might involve.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but I got it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I got the, um,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I got the electric guitar starter pack from a catalogue store for the thanks to my parents in, you know, good for them for that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, you know, it was like 80 bucks and you get a black and white strap copy and a 30 watt amp and a strap and a lead and a pick and a but we didn't play in a daybook and all this kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, and I started trying to learn mega death riffs, which I still don't really know how to play because they're hard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the Vano was a huge deal for me on so many different levels, but one of them was that I could actually play those songs, you know, and that was quite revelatory to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean right from the beginning it was like how do I do this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be part of this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of the...
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[SPEAKER_00]: the degree to which that was kind of real world practical or realistic or whatever has changed over time, you know, when I was kind of 12 I wanted to be an Iron Maiden and be a rock star and have long hair in tattoos and all the rest of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I was in my mid-teens I was very into the whole kind of super anarchistic DIY crime think like screw venues and record labels forever sort of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: you know swinging wildly all over the map as I've been want to do in my life and then that's the point in my life where it started becoming a more realistic thing and understanding the industry and understanding you know how to make a band kind of get legs or a solo career or whatever it might be but the desire to participate was immediate.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But you chose artists throughout that whole thing that were very kind of DIY and partitioned portray even the metal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And if I mean Iron Maiden very famously, they fly their own, they're the pilots of their own jet.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right to go around the world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, sure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they had a beautiful DIY moment at the beginning of their career with the soundhouse tapes and all that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's punk rocker rived in my life and what was so wonderful about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And now to me is that the requirement for entry,
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[SPEAKER_00]: in punk rockers showing up and enthusiasm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're there and you want to be there and you want to be part of it, then you are part of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And my interest, my journey into the world of punk rock took place at roughly the same time that the Brit pop thing was growing up in the UK.
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[SPEAKER_00]: which I always loved and felt very alienated by because it was a scene that was predicated on cool and on irony and on those kinds of things and I hated that because I'd never been cool and I maintain that I'd still never have been cool and I don't want to be cooler, I don't want to be invited to afterpies to do it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean like and with punk rock it was like if you found out where it was
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[SPEAKER_00]: and you wanted to be there and you liked the music, then you were in, that was it, that's all you needed, you needed to care.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that was a beautiful thing and I still do, you know, and it remains very dear to me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to get a little bit ahead of ourselves here, but I do want to ask, you know, pursuant to that point there, how do you, how do you maintain that sort of, um, given that the barrier to entry is just showing up and being enthusiastic with, with kind of punk?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, how do you maintain that over the course of, uh,
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[SPEAKER_01]: of 20 years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You've been in it for a long time and you still kind of have this kind of beginner's energy to you and talk about it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't mean that in any sort of fact.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think you've heard in which I meant that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take that as a compliment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, how do you keep that sort of fire specifically kindled?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean I don't know this a good question and I mean I suppose I would also say that there are days when I don't good Lord You know and I think like anybody who got kind of who lost themselves to punk rock as a concept at any point It's quite a lot like Catholicism
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[SPEAKER_00]: But which I mean that like you'll never be you'll never be a non-punk you might be an ex-punk You might be a lapsed punk that you still think about what Ian McIe would have to say about your decisions Well, you're lying like him bed at night or whatever, you know And there's definitely been days and and periods of my life where the the reality of a punk scene has been quite disappointing to me You're quite alienating, but
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[SPEAKER_00]: But, and to agree what I do now isn't really part of quote unquote the punk scene, it's kind of this established a thing unto itself and one of my dearest friends once said to me He said, oh, I see what you're doing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to you're trying to build a version of the punk scene as you thought it was when you were 15 And you're trying to recreate that and I said yeah, that's a fair cop, you know, but I guess just ultimately I'm I'm blessed by the fact that
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still kind of as fired up by a good song and by a good music and a good show as I ever was, you know, I mean, there's levels in which you're never going to be quite as blown away by things as you were when you were 16, you know what I mean, but nevertheless, like just seeing a great band kill it or a great singer player song that I wasn't expecting, that still fires me up as much as anything else, and actually
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is majorly jumping ahead, but one of my more recent things, I've started producing for other artists, and it's just the greatest thing because you've worked with younger artists.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 40 years old now, and I've been working with artists who are 20 years younger than me, and they're full of piss and vinegar, and it's the first time they've ever been in a studio, and you say something, which to me is so mundane, like, hey, why don't we double track that guitar, and they go, wow, you know, or whatever, and there's this wonderful kind of
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[SPEAKER_00]: If I ever feel dated, which I do or bored or whatever, engaging with younger bands is the exciting thing to do for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Got a new band and I can't see some kids who are doing it for the first time and they'll blow your way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what you're kind of getting from them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think that you're imparting to them?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What are they learning from you?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've spent a lot of my time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the majority of my life kind of in and around studios and thinking about songs and song writing and particularly arrangements and that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the process of learning to be a producer, I don't know what kind of learning about the technicalities of how to operate a compressor or whatever.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But actually, I realized in an awful lot of it was stuff that...
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[SPEAKER_00]: To my surprise was a skill that I already had, which is just kind of knowing that, like, hey, we need to lift that melody in that chorus, or maybe we should change the key in the bridge, or maybe we should cut that third verse, or, you know, and just to that holistic thinking about the song as an entity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, you know, one of the things I feel very strongly about is the order that I get that I consider my interest to be songwriting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: not without any genre qualifications and I think that you can have that conversation about a cannibal corpse on the same as you can about George Johnson actually with different kind of specifics of course but you know and it's like just sort of allowing the song to win, allowing the song to breathe and to grow and to go where it wants to go and that kind of thing
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[SPEAKER_00]: it turns out that my many years of slogging away at this has kind of given me at the very least a head start on like some kids coming into a studio but as I was saying like the most interesting part of it to me is when it becomes a two-way street and they're teaching me things as well you know and and pulling me out of my grooves and my my my habits should we say
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, from those many years, as you said, of slogging through it and with writing songs, how do you think your songwriting has changed the most over the last 20 years?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what have you learned from writing songs that you didn't know when you were 20 years old?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, many things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a huge question and I like it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, like I think that, um, I mean, the first thing I would say is I'd like to think I've got better at the craft side of songwriting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You bloody hope, so after that much time, kind of slugging away at it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I think I'm sure we both understand there's an art and a craft to songwriting and there's sort of separate things in a way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, at this point in my life, I feel that when I come to write songs now, I much better at the crap side of it than I was on Ozianga.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The outside remains a femoral, it remains in a lockedable and it's why, um, and also, you know, I find myself in a place where like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Quite often I feel like the low-hanging fruit has already been picked in terms of my subject matter choice, you know what I mean?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've written my breakup song and I've written my touring song and I've written my home song and everybody can write those songs but to find
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[SPEAKER_00]: the subject matter or the feeling or the initial spark might take longer, but once that kind of that ball is rolling, I find it easier to direct it into a better place or a more interesting place or whatever it might be.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But in terms of what I learned about myself, I mean there's a huge degree to which for me, and I think for a lot of people, some writing is a form of kind of catharsis or public therapy or have you want to put it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And
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[SPEAKER_00]: because I've been doing it for so long, it's almost like it's flipped, it's inverted and I sort of I often figure out what I think about something in the process of writing about it, you know, particularly kind of emotionally significant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: events in my life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure I learned things about gardening for my songs, but in terms of how to deal with relationships in my life or losses or whatever it might be, quite often the process of writing is the process of figuring out what I think about it and learning about myself and my reactions to it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I love that idea of early on having the low hanging fruit songwriting and I feel like I think about you in the studio with those younger musicians and you're getting to help them whether they know it or not, you know, silently you're kind of like listen man, this is your low hanging fruit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's make it as good as we possibly can because once low hanging fruit is picked, there's only medium to high hanging fruit left man.
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[SPEAKER_00]: right right and like and then that possibly that's the moment when you I'm trying to find an appropriate method that sorts the weight from the shaft to a degree because everybody can everybody can reach the low-hanging fruit and you know you talk about Dylan or whatever and like to me Dylan because more interesting is a summarizing after his sort of first five records because he's already used up his low-hanging fruit he can't write you know don't think twice again
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[SPEAKER_01]: no he can't but what's so interesting I feel the same way that you do but what's so interesting with that is when I was younger when I was his age when he wrote that first crop of songs I used to think to myself these older albums of Bob Dylan's are the worst you know I can't stand the stuff these first five albums is where it's at then as I get older now you know I think I've listened to the song when he returns you know probably a thousand times in the last five years you wouldn't have caught me dead listen to that song ten years ago
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[SPEAKER_01]: kind of the the audience in a way has to go along with the journey as well in the writer in that case.
20:02.388 --> 20:17.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, but then it's funny you should mention that because in a different field like I'm a huge fan of the poetry of TS Eliot and I've found an interesting thing for me when I was younger his younger work spoke to me the love song of Jaifra Proofrock in the way sand and the
20:18.861 --> 20:20.122
[SPEAKER_00]: the preludes and all that kind of thing.
20:20.562 --> 20:24.325
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't really get my head around like Ashwin's Day and the Cortez and that kind of thing.
20:24.725 --> 20:39.757
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I get older, that later period stuff starts speaking to me more and like, I think it's okay for different times of art to speak to different demographics or different periods in a writers career to speak differently to different topics, you know.
20:39.897 --> 20:41.458
[SPEAKER_00]: And in a way actually that it maybe it should.
20:42.259 --> 20:45.701
[SPEAKER_00]: And I spend a lot of my life at the moment thinking about
20:46.562 --> 21:06.207
[SPEAKER_00]: writers who've had long careers, you know, as writers and who've maintained an interest in for me, I think a lot about Nick Cave and I think a lot about people like that and they're sort of maintaining interest in maintaining originality and freshness over that period of time because it's I'm now at a point in my career where I have to do that.
21:06.247 --> 21:11.329
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to justify writing another record, you know, because we're up to the high hanging fruit now.
21:12.807 --> 21:14.488
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, I said we were jumping ahead.
21:14.508 --> 21:15.829
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's jump back for a second.
21:15.869 --> 21:19.091
[SPEAKER_01]: So first group that put you on the map was called Million Dead.
21:19.771 --> 21:21.993
[SPEAKER_01]: What was your creative role in that project?
21:22.073 --> 21:22.933
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you get into it?
21:22.953 --> 21:23.934
[SPEAKER_01]: And what did you learn from it?
21:25.542 --> 21:27.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so I got into it.
21:27.263 --> 21:29.884
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in another band before with some friends at school called Neger.
21:29.944 --> 21:31.305
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were terrible.
21:31.325 --> 21:34.646
[SPEAKER_00]: That band broke up and the drama was started new thing with some other people.
21:34.686 --> 21:36.647
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got sort of drafted in as the singer.
21:37.747 --> 21:41.569
[SPEAKER_00]: We were a creatively, we were a kind of radically democratic band.
21:41.669 --> 21:45.150
[SPEAKER_00]: In a way that was, I think, a really good learning experience.
21:45.250 --> 21:47.311
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it made us better than we would otherwise have been.
21:47.371 --> 21:53.514
[SPEAKER_00]: But it also doomed us to not last very long as a band because the tensions that came along with that were pretty insurmountable over time.
21:54.014 --> 22:02.720
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, nevertheless, like I wrote a fair amount of the guitarist for that band, but like nothing that I wrote would, nothing that anybody wrote would survive intact.
22:02.820 --> 22:07.663
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, everybody attacked it from different angles and brought different things to it.
22:08.063 --> 22:13.447
[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of the music, in terms of the vocals and particularly the lyrics, that was kind of my department.
22:13.967 --> 22:30.055
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean to the extent I have memories of like the other guys in the band didn't really care what I was doing over the top Like it was like it, you know, we don't have it in our monitor anyway, so it cares So so I had this kind of department to myself in that instance, but uh
22:31.075 --> 22:47.603
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, I learned a so much from that band and both about the business of being a musician and making a living and touring and that kind of thing, we were not, we were not a hugely successful band, but we sold 800 tickets once, you know, that's, that's pretty good.
22:49.284 --> 22:56.850
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we did a lot of shows over a four year period and we put out two records and, you know, we signed some record deals and that kind of thing.
22:56.910 --> 23:00.213
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, that I learned a lot from that.
23:01.014 --> 23:02.575
[SPEAKER_00]: Music, though, it's interesting.
23:02.695 --> 23:05.137
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to disavow it.
23:05.177 --> 23:06.858
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned a lot from it in many ways.
23:09.060 --> 23:24.588
[SPEAKER_00]: When that band broke up I sort of became a quote unquote solo artist and the sort of in it It's difficult to put my finger on specifically, but in retrospect one of the major differences was that I started thinking about songwriting as a holistic project rather than There was a slight we're in many dead.
23:24.608 --> 23:28.890
[SPEAKER_00]: There was kind of sort of cut and shut kind of vibe to our Quart and quote songwriting.
23:28.930 --> 23:33.253
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like this is a cool riff and this is another cool riff and then we're gonna put them
23:34.353 --> 23:54.963
[SPEAKER_00]: on top of each other and then he's going to shout something over the top and they're hey there you go and sometimes it works and they work as holistic songs and sometimes it doesn't or didn't I should say but it was thinking about the song as an entity unto itself was kind of the big change for me when that band broke up
23:55.920 --> 24:10.177
[SPEAKER_01]: Was there a moment when that insight came to you all at once or was that sort of like a slow realization, the idea that you had to look at a song as sort of a system in and of itself and you had to look at the whole thing?
24:11.290 --> 24:16.214
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I'd say it was a slow process and it, you know, it had been bubbling away for some years.
24:16.254 --> 24:24.441
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when I was, despite my childhood listening to kind of thrashing punk and all the rest of it, I had a, a sideline and thanks to my older sister of being into the counting crows.
24:25.082 --> 24:32.628
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always loved counting crows and, and I feel very strongly that, like, that Adam, well, they're writing collectively that Adam specifically, was, was a, was a, was a,
24:33.128 --> 24:34.908
[SPEAKER_00]: a great crash course in songwriting.
24:35.048 --> 24:35.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Got them, you know.
24:36.769 --> 24:42.530
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that I was thinking about it in those times initially, but I can still play every song of their first three records with my eyes closed, you know.
24:43.711 --> 24:59.674
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, that was kind of bubbling away, but I also, my taste in music kind of evolved a little while I was in, and then dead I was in a hardcore band touring with other hardcore bands playing shows with other hardcore bands, and I couldn't then get in the van at the end of the day and listen to hardcore, I would have lost my mind.
25:03.696 --> 25:09.020
[SPEAKER_00]: And I sort of got into, I mean initially just some kind of a normal kind of old country world.
25:11.162 --> 25:14.565
[SPEAKER_00]: Josh Rouse, I don't know if you know Josh Rouse.
25:14.745 --> 25:18.228
[SPEAKER_00]: His first three or four records really turned my head.
25:19.068 --> 25:26.091
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a friend of mine got me into Nebraska was a big thing, and my knowledge of Springsteen prior to that was pretty dismissive.
25:26.131 --> 25:35.435
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the singing cheeseburger guy, and no thanks was kind of my vibe on it, and had a Nebraska and went, oh hold on, this is something else.
25:35.595 --> 25:39.617
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in particular actually, the Johnny Cash American Recording series of albums,
25:40.217 --> 25:41.458
[SPEAKER_00]: were, was a big thing for me.
25:41.738 --> 25:54.844
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a simplification, but one of the major realizations for me and all that is that you could be in tents without being loud, and that you could be heavy without necessarily having a shaved head and taking a shirt off and screaming at the front row and having a China symbol doing that.
25:55.486 --> 26:17.558
[SPEAKER_00]: on the court as or whatever and that was that was news to me because you know I wasn't really familiar with that well then I'd never really listened to Bob Dylan until my early 20s or any of that crew and I got into Tom Petty for the first time in my life or whatever because I didn't have this background going up so there was a there was a big voyage of discovery through that kind of classic songwriter.
26:19.137 --> 26:34.418
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I love the idea that you had to learn that being being loud wasn't necessarily being intense and vice versa I had to have a musician once explained to me He's like when you're playing something fast it doesn't have to be loud like loud and fast Don't have to go together and neither do slow and quiet
26:36.460 --> 27:01.438
[SPEAKER_00]: slow and fast or loud and quiet and yeah yeah a similar a galaxy brain moment from right but exactly exactly and it was it it was just it sort of opened the door to kind of different modes of expression really you know and of course my sort of foundations still lie with a lot of that kind of punk rock music and when I say punk rock I use it in the broader sense of the time because a huge part of it for me was the kind of post hardcore it's it's it's now the
27:05.861 --> 27:08.702
[SPEAKER_00]: sunny day real estate and mineral and that kind of thing.
27:08.722 --> 27:17.466
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a big part of it for me as well, and there was a songwriting element hanging around in there too, but yeah, and then the other major contributing factor
27:18.643 --> 27:21.684
[SPEAKER_00]: that's really worth the mention is it started as a social thing.
27:22.904 --> 27:44.130
[SPEAKER_00]: I started hanging out at a different bar because my girlfriend at the time it turns out while I've been on tour with me and did had been generous with her affections to quite a lot of the people hang out at the kind of punk rock bar where I used to hang out and I came home and was sad about this and a friend, a guy who at the time was a friend of a friend sort of took pity on me and he said, well look, I
27:47.692 --> 27:50.596
[SPEAKER_00]: we don't sleep with each other's girlfriends coming out with us.
27:51.196 --> 27:57.324
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did, and stumbled across this place as it was called Nambuca, still there, although different people now.
27:57.364 --> 28:02.471
[SPEAKER_00]: But, and it was this scene of people, which had nothing to do with punk rock, but there was a real kind of,
28:03.632 --> 28:15.481
[SPEAKER_00]: energetic kind of DIY vibe going on and there was a guy called Jay who after the lock-in when they closed the pub at night, they'd lock the doors and he'd get out in a acoustic guitar and play chords with three songs about us, about his friends.
28:15.721 --> 28:23.487
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember we had one weekend where everybody dropped acid and it was hilarious and then the following weekend he had a song about last weekend and I was like, what?
28:24.047 --> 28:27.310
[SPEAKER_00]: Because at the time I would take six months to write a song.
28:27.610 --> 28:48.372
[SPEAKER_00]: and it would have to have 19 different chord changes and blah blah blah and it was so immediate you know and it felt I mean it felt kind of punk to me but it was it was just so real and so visceral and and real you know and there was a whole bunch of people around that scene who were kind of messing around with acoustic guitars.
28:49.498 --> 28:52.199
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of whom have gone on to do well.
28:52.239 --> 28:53.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Jamie T. was hanging around there.
28:53.619 --> 28:55.220
[SPEAKER_00]: Laura Marling was part of that scene.
28:56.060 --> 29:01.602
[SPEAKER_00]: Young, a young lad called Marcus Mumford, who has gone on to do rather well, was on the fringes of it as well.
29:02.442 --> 29:05.623
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of kind of peep, but nobody knew who any of these people were at the time.
29:05.643 --> 29:07.284
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very pure.
29:07.404 --> 29:11.325
[SPEAKER_00]: And there wasn't even much sense that it was a scene that was going to go on to greater things.
29:11.385 --> 29:13.285
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a bunch of kids messing around.
29:14.006 --> 29:14.706
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really,
29:15.346 --> 29:16.626
[SPEAKER_00]: on a dawned way.
29:16.947 --> 29:23.549
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a real, real kind of learning experience for me hanging out with those people and being part of it.
29:23.569 --> 29:29.831
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started playing a couple of acoustic songs that I've written that were about last weekend or whatever it might be.
29:30.371 --> 29:33.972
[SPEAKER_00]: And when Million Dead broke up, I was gutted.
29:34.652 --> 29:40.614
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to that bar and I said to my friends, how my band just broke up, I'm really sad.
29:40.654 --> 29:42.435
[SPEAKER_00]: And they all immediately said, well just do the songs
29:43.963 --> 29:56.334
[SPEAKER_00]: that you've done at the open mic and I do those ones and I said really and they said yeah we like those ones and and that was so it's all that thought basically that was a big big transitional moment for me.
30:05.082 --> 30:09.143
[SPEAKER_01]: better at your instrument is an essential part of being a songwriter.
30:09.384 --> 30:11.764
[SPEAKER_01]: When you play better guitar, you write better songs.
30:11.904 --> 30:12.585
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that simple.
30:13.365 --> 30:14.285
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you do that though?
30:14.966 --> 30:21.008
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, you could get lessons from the neighbor who majored in tonal dissonance at Swathmore.
30:21.528 --> 30:22.830
[SPEAKER_01]: but that'll cost you a pretty penny.
30:23.230 --> 30:35.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Or else, you could pull up YouTube and pay nothing at all, but then you'll just end up sifting through videos of nerds unironically weeping as they play every stone gossard solo back to back for two straight hours.
30:36.805 --> 30:38.367
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the sweet spot in between?
30:39.378 --> 30:43.544
[SPEAKER_01]: peghead nation, the online home for American roots music.
30:44.305 --> 30:54.901
[SPEAKER_01]: They feature curated video workshops with world-class instructors on guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, upright bass, dobro, and ukulele.
30:55.682 --> 31:10.801
[SPEAKER_01]: They have levels of instruction that meet the needs of both scrappy upstarts and grizzled veterans, and most importantly, all of it comes in at a low monthly subscription that actual strapped for cash songwriters can easily afford.
31:11.981 --> 31:27.372
[SPEAKER_01]: To start taking classes yourself, head on over to pegheadnation.com to check out their 50 available courses and enter the promo code TWS, the initials of our show TWS, to get your first month free.
31:28.173 --> 31:37.960
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also send a gift subscription to the songwriter in your life or to the player in your band who needs a not so subtle hint about their plain prowess.
31:38.761 --> 31:42.764
[SPEAKER_01]: Peg head nation, when you play better guitar, you write better songs.
31:43.124 --> 31:43.884
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that simple.
32:02.812 --> 32:07.778
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like Frank found sobriety at just the right time in his journey.
32:08.680 --> 32:20.014
[SPEAKER_01]: And talking to friends who have taken that same route themselves, there seems to be a sense that it's necessary not only to escape the deleterious effects of drinking drug.
32:20.615 --> 32:24.277
[SPEAKER_01]: but also to reconnect with life on its own terms.
32:24.877 --> 32:29.900
[SPEAKER_01]: And notice, once again, the radical beauty of stone-cold reality.
32:30.441 --> 32:36.304
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a wonderful poem by the poet Tim Delugos that explores this phenomenon.
32:37.064 --> 32:39.506
[SPEAKER_01]: It's entitled, Ordinary Time.
32:41.647 --> 32:44.589
[SPEAKER_01]: Which are the magic moments in Ordinary Time?
32:45.633 --> 32:47.313
[SPEAKER_01]: all of them for those who can see.
32:48.113 --> 32:51.014
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what redemption means I decide at the meeting.
32:51.834 --> 32:57.355
[SPEAKER_01]: Then walk with David wearing his new Yale T-shirt and new long hair to 103.
32:58.255 --> 32:59.876
[SPEAKER_01]: Leonard and Ileen come too.
33:00.776 --> 33:04.976
[SPEAKER_01]: Leonard wears a shark's tooth on a chain around his neck and long-blond hair.
33:05.997 --> 33:12.538
[SPEAKER_01]: These days he's the manager of boots and saddles and customer for the gay cable network
33:14.512 --> 33:22.776
[SPEAKER_01]: One week, the announcer is a rhinestone cowboy, sequen shirt and black fur chaps, and the next, a leatherman, etc.
33:24.479 --> 33:26.860
[SPEAKER_01]: Eileen's crew cut makes her face light up.
33:27.701 --> 33:32.383
[SPEAKER_01]: Underneath our hairstyles, 23 years of sobriety all told.
33:33.364 --> 33:38.147
[SPEAKER_01]: The age of a girl who's not so young but not so very old, wrote Barryman.
33:39.107 --> 33:42.969
[SPEAKER_01]: Who flew from his recovery with the force of a poet hitting bottom?
33:43.950 --> 33:49.413
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the way I choose to go out of this restaurant or day today, and I have a choice.
33:50.713 --> 33:57.080
[SPEAKER_01]: Wanda the comedian comes over to our table, call me wicked Wanda she smirks when we're introduced.
33:58.001 --> 34:04.127
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is New York City a wash in stand-up comics at the least funny point in its history?
34:05.148 --> 34:07.070
[SPEAKER_01]: Still, something stay the same.
34:08.351 --> 34:15.117
[SPEAKER_01]: People wonder what the people in their buildings would think if the ones who were wondering became incredibly famous.
34:15.637 --> 34:25.165
[SPEAKER_01]: As famous as Madonna, Debbie Harry lived in Eileen's building in the village in the early 70s and she was just the shagrel in the band upstairs.
34:26.446 --> 34:36.754
[SPEAKER_01]: Poets read the writing of their friends and are happy when they like it thoroughly, when the works that good and the crippling sense of competition stays away.
34:38.011 --> 34:38.993
[SPEAKER_01]: trips get planned.
34:39.694 --> 34:51.852
[SPEAKER_01]: David, home to California, I leaned to New Mexico, Chris and I to France and Spain, on vectors which will spread out from a single point like ribs of an umbrella.
34:53.131 --> 35:08.305
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, after the comfort of a wedge of blueberry peach pie and cup of decaf, sober friends thread separate ways home through the maze of blankets on the sidewalk, covered with the scraps of someone else's life.
35:09.877 --> 35:20.360
[SPEAKER_01]: Mind consists of understanding that the magic isn't something that I make, but something that shines through the things I make and do and say.
35:21.120 --> 35:29.562
[SPEAKER_01]: The way a broach or scrap of fabric shines through the detritus to catch Leonard's eye and be of use for costumes.
35:30.590 --> 35:52.116
[SPEAKER_01]: When I am fearless and throw enough to give it room, all the room there is in ordinary time, which embraces all the people and events and hopes that choke the street tonight, and still leaves room for everyone and everything and every other place, the undescribed and indescribable.
35:52.696 --> 35:58.458
[SPEAKER_01]: More various and cacophonous, then voice can tell or mind can conceive.
35:59.399 --> 36:03.975
[SPEAKER_01]: and for the sky's vast depths from which they're all a speck of light.
36:13.372 --> 36:29.680
[SPEAKER_01]: In retrospect, it all makes sense because as you say, you know, you mentioned these other names that are part of that scene yourself and there's sort of like at this point there's a bit of a well-trod path between being in maybe a heavier band and then kind of taking it a singer songwriter route.
36:30.300 --> 36:34.242
[SPEAKER_01]: That wasn't that was kind of uncharted territory though about 15 years ago.
36:34.282 --> 36:37.264
[SPEAKER_01]: So where did that feel like to leave that band and
36:37.764 --> 36:44.586
[SPEAKER_01]: and go out on that way, did it feel like you were doing something kind of reckless or crazy or stupid or what?
36:45.226 --> 36:45.866
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny.
36:46.647 --> 36:50.768
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, all my friends thought I was insane and I thought I had a plan.
36:51.228 --> 36:58.090
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I look back in it and I think I must have been insane and all my friends think I must have had a plan.
36:58.130 --> 37:04.292
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's flipped and I mean, I'm proud of it in a way in the sense that there's a part of me that
37:05.112 --> 37:09.075
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite surprised by how pure my decision-making was at that point in time.
37:09.635 --> 37:10.236
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not.
37:10.416 --> 37:15.199
[SPEAKER_00]: If I joined another punk band, I probably could have kept selling 800 tickets for shows and all the rest of it.
37:15.239 --> 37:20.163
[SPEAKER_00]: But my first solo show, after a minute in Debra Cup, I had two people there who were both on the guest list.
37:21.824 --> 37:22.364
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
37:22.444 --> 37:24.966
[SPEAKER_00]: And like it was back right down to zero.
37:25.246 --> 37:29.630
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just sort of had this kind of drive and purity to it.
37:29.690 --> 37:30.370
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt like I had
37:33.252 --> 37:59.306
[SPEAKER_00]: a new musical landscape to explore, and I did it because I believed in it, and I'm quite proud of me and my early 20s in a funny way, because it wasn't the popular or the cool or the established route, and nobody else thought it was going to go anywhere, and I'm not even sure if I thought it was going to go anywhere, but I felt like I needed to do it, you know, and I'm proud of that.
37:59.746 --> 38:03.569
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you think that character trait of yours stems from to want to do something?
38:04.009 --> 38:16.018
[SPEAKER_01]: He mentioned you kind of described it as a decision-making process that was very pure and you were going after something, oh, you might call it truth and beauty and going after that, you know, first and foremost.
38:16.458 --> 38:21.201
[SPEAKER_01]: So where do you think that's an odd part of a character to have?
38:21.302 --> 38:25.825
[SPEAKER_01]: I think all of us, you know, stray away from that, where do you think that part of your character comes from?
38:26.515 --> 38:31.196
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a fine question and I might be the wrong person to ask.
38:32.396 --> 38:39.078
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, my mom is quite sort of practical and get on with it kind of thing.
38:39.478 --> 38:53.961
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that part of it links back to what we touched on earlier that my process of getting into music was quite solitary, not completely, but it wasn't at the beginning I was just buying records and listening to them on my own and my headphones and discovering
38:56.942 --> 39:02.427
[SPEAKER_00]: And this before the internet as well, so you know, I was pretty kind of mystical in some ways.
39:03.007 --> 39:21.582
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's just kind of like, I'm quite, from an early age, I was quite used to kind of like thinking about music and making decisions about music in an entirely solitary way, you know, or at least not needing external validation to, for my creative decisions, you know.
39:23.163 --> 39:37.855
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in the funny way, one could argue that, like, it's fortunate that it worked out, and therefore we're having this conversation, because there is, of course, an alternative universe in which it didn't, and then we're talking about that ridiculous idea I had of doing a stick record after being in a punk band that went nowhere, or whatever.
39:37.975 --> 39:38.815
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um,
39:39.816 --> 39:45.839
[SPEAKER_00]: So who knows, but yeah, I don't really know, but it is a facet of my character.
39:45.859 --> 39:49.180
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a facet of my sister's characters, so there's something in the family.
39:50.140 --> 40:02.386
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny, I don't know if you've ever read about this before, but throughout history, when people are coming to inventions, sometimes in different places in the world, not even knowing that the other is working on it.
40:02.446 --> 40:05.207
[SPEAKER_01]: People are in kind of parallel STEM working towards a similar,
40:05.707 --> 40:21.758
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you were trotting that path, there was a similar path being trot across the pond here in the United States by a lot of the people who would be part of what we would call the revival tour with Chuck Reagan and Dave Haas and so on.
40:22.038 --> 40:26.001
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you end up becoming a part of that crew and hitting the road with those guys.
40:27.162 --> 40:30.584
[SPEAKER_01]: How did that musical friendship affect your creative life?
40:32.380 --> 40:38.687
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it enormously so, and it remains a point of pride for me that I'm the token English guy from the Revival crew.
40:39.087 --> 40:48.577
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, that was a beautiful thing actually, so I had a poster of Chuck on my wall when I was younger from his hot water music days.
40:48.977 --> 41:10.363
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say poster, it wasn't really poster, it was an advert from the back page of a zine or something that had just a poster of Chuck, kind of going, like a common ground in games, but it was something, and I had it stuck up on my wall, and I'm some of the hundred percent sure how, but Chuck became aware of what I was doing, and offered me four shows on the revival tour the first one in 2008.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was blown away by it because at the time I was doing a few shows in America, but it was incredibly hand to mouth the ROI touring with some friends of mine in vans or I did a coffee shop tour in a car with a friend of mine and no one came and we drove like 8,000 miles or something and played to like 8 people.
41:33.277 --> 41:44.800
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I've been sort of trying to begin slogging away at the American idea without a huge amount of success and at the end of a very long and grueling tour I got offered these four shows and it wasn't just Chuck, you know,
41:56.747 --> 41:57.227
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the bill.
41:57.247 --> 42:11.014
[SPEAKER_00]: It was merely Chuck Ben and Tim, and that was crazy to me, and that first night was the first time, first of all, I'd ever played to like certainly triple figures in the States, put maybe even double figures of audience members.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was an Asbury Park.
42:13.496 --> 42:22.180
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I did went over super well with the audience, and I was sort of aware that Chuck was doing solo stuff, and I was aware that Tim was doing solo stuff, and so I know what you mean about
42:25.562 --> 42:26.823
[SPEAKER_00]: There were some flags in the ground.
42:26.863 --> 42:47.792
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the against means early stuff was a big part of that kind of acoustic punk thing on crime as forgiven by I think that some of the things that social D had done in terms of bringing Johnny Cash into punk rock was an early precursor that as well I have a bit of a theory as well that there's a kind of there was a sort of an inevitable point in the evolutionist punk as a concept when
42:48.392 --> 42:54.574
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of it starts in the late 70s with no future gets to a point of having several generations involved in the same thing.
42:54.614 --> 42:57.795
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to involve a kind of philosophical recalibration on some level.
42:58.275 --> 43:02.676
[SPEAKER_00]: It sort of has to, you know, Johnny Rotten has got grandkids now, you know what I mean?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, some sort of like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, philosophical, uh, soul searching was within punk as a concept.
43:13.635 --> 43:16.016
[SPEAKER_00]: I think was sort of inevitable at some point.
43:16.076 --> 43:18.597
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is one of the ways that that's kind of paned out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it was, it felt, when I came to those revival shows, I felt, um, I felt like I found my people definitely, um, and, uh, I remember very much feeling so inspired by that tour in turn as a writer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because again, there was an immediacy to it that the way that the tool worked, you know, you would just in conversation during the day someone would suggest a song, whether it was one of you was or a cover or whatever, I never would learn the chords and we'd play it that night and people would figure out harmonies and
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was so, again, very, very kind of immediate, and it made me want to write more songs that would sort of fit that format.
43:58.089 --> 44:02.252
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote a song called The Road that was very much inspired by being around the revival tour.
44:04.033 --> 44:06.095
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it was, it was a huge thing for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And like, I, my music is, and my songwriting has gone on to other places since, but I do, I am actually kind of actively thinking about kind of getting back to that roar acoustic at my moment anyway.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's so interesting that you mention finding your people, both with the guys on stage, the guys can gals on stage, but also with an audience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You got one thing that I don't think I understood before playing music.
44:34.388 --> 44:39.871
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought, well, if you can get on an opening tour and play for any group, 1000 people, that's a good thing.
44:40.371 --> 44:46.574
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, I know it's better to play for 50 people who are really into what you do than 2000 people that have no clue.
44:49.775 --> 44:52.678
[SPEAKER_01]: That is such a formative part of being a musician.
44:52.919 --> 45:08.896
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually interviewed you mentioned earlier, Ian McCuy on this podcast, and I was asking him, I was like, you know, what's up with your creativity these days, are you writing and he said, well, I have a hard time writing because I used to know who I was writing for, and now I don't know who I'm writing for.
45:09.814 --> 45:20.475
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it sounds like you found a place, that's a very inspiring thing to come to a club and play for a group of people who immediately get what you're putting out there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I know Ian a little and he's an absolute diamond and of course he's Ian fucking Bokai so you know all the hats off.
45:29.677 --> 45:33.100
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a very restant to do what I'm about to do which is to disagree.
45:33.120 --> 45:34.582
[SPEAKER_00]: So to great.
45:35.462 --> 45:39.846
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel very strongly like my only audience as a writer is my own best judgment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing else.
45:41.468 --> 45:42.809
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't give a fuck about anything else.
45:42.849 --> 45:45.171
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I think it's really really important that I don't.
45:45.691 --> 46:10.029
[SPEAKER_00]: You know when I write a song when I wrote the first songs that I wrote as a solo artist or even in a band I sat in a room with a guitar and I made a noise if I thought sounded cool and that's it and to me I don't want to be writing for a specific audience I don't think as an artist you get to choose your audience people show up deal with it you know, I mean like and of course it's fantastic if you find a scene you find a group people who love what you do But you know
46:12.117 --> 46:31.786
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course it's fantastic if you make music and people connect with it, if anyone connects with it, that's great, it feels good, it pays the bills, whatever else it might be, but like the only moments of regret I have in my career as a musician and the moments when I've straight close to writing songs for a different audience other than my own best judgment.
46:39.869 --> 46:55.624
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there'd been moments when that's kind of bled in a little bit to my decision-making process and those are the moments I regret and like I feel it's really important that my audience though right for is I don't want to say it's not quite myself, but it's like it's just my own taste in music, you know, is this cool?
46:55.684 --> 46:56.225
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I like this?
46:56.285 --> 46:57.126
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it feel good to me?
46:58.127 --> 47:01.190
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's it, you know, and I don't ever want to think about anything else when I write
47:02.398 --> 47:08.103
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it sounds like you're in the same place that you were 15 years ago when you met with that idea.
47:08.123 --> 47:09.284
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do something true.
47:09.304 --> 47:10.245
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do something beautiful.
47:10.265 --> 47:12.227
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where we're going.
47:12.467 --> 47:15.670
[SPEAKER_01]: You've spent a lot of time on the road over the years.
47:15.810 --> 47:18.512
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain lifestyle that goes along with being on the road.
47:18.933 --> 47:21.995
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been a part of it myself, full disclosure.
47:22.416 --> 47:24.318
[SPEAKER_01]: You had to extricate yourself from that.
47:24.958 --> 47:27.699
[SPEAKER_01]: lifestyle, and in fact, there's a new song on your new record.
47:27.719 --> 47:29.380
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk about the new record in general.
47:29.680 --> 47:39.343
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called Untainted Love, and it begins with what is apparently a Johnny Cash quote that I've never heard before, where he told Bono, I sure do miss them drugs, which is brilliant.
47:40.603 --> 47:44.985
[SPEAKER_01]: What made you decide to make that change in lifestyle and how is that affected?
47:45.065 --> 47:50.627
[SPEAKER_01]: You're both your creativity and then also your approach to being on the road and touring and bringing them into the people.
47:51.318 --> 48:03.283
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the first thing to say for me is that my substance abuse issues and touring were for the longest time to separate channels of my life, like I would get fucked up when I go at home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've never really been very good at playing when I'm messed up.
48:08.124 --> 48:13.326
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'll have a couple of drinks, but anything stronger than that and I can't really play and I know I can't really play.
48:14.847 --> 48:24.054
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is, for a longer period of time, for a longer period of time, my substance abuse issues were under control because I was on tour so much that I would come home for like four days, get fucked up and then go on tour again.
48:24.154 --> 48:25.735
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was okay and it was under control.
48:26.155 --> 48:30.478
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a moment in my career when the gaps between tours start becoming a bit longer.
48:31.139 --> 48:36.403
[SPEAKER_00]: For various reasons, one of which that I was kind of doing quite well and could afford to take more time off the road and all the rest.
48:36.483 --> 48:42.067
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when the kind of boundaries start and my control of the situation started to fall apart.
48:42.547 --> 48:47.972
[SPEAKER_00]: and there were sometimes when someone's to be as then came on to the road and I played some of the worst shows in my life and I'm really fucking ashamed of that.
48:49.493 --> 48:52.716
[SPEAKER_00]: But so, you know, there's a wonderful line to hold steady.
48:53.518 --> 49:06.043
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my old time favorite bands and Craig is a friend, but also an incredible writer and there's a line in one of the songs where he says, it started recreational and it ended kind of medical and that killed me the first time I heard and say that because my Christ was that true for me.
49:06.503 --> 49:17.327
[SPEAKER_00]: There was one day it was partying and then suddenly it was five years later and it wasn't partying by any conceivable measure and it felt like work and it felt like medication and it felt like
49:18.107 --> 49:25.009
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was bad news essentially and I'm pleased after a lot of effort to currently have that in my review mirror It is an ongoing thing.
49:25.029 --> 49:26.330
[SPEAKER_00]: It will always be an ongoing thing.
49:26.350 --> 49:30.591
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the nature of addiction But like I'm not sorry ever bought the I'm not sure.
49:30.631 --> 49:37.773
[SPEAKER_00]: I never wrote fucked up And I'm not sure I really buy the idea that anyone's ever written anything good when they're wasted
49:38.393 --> 49:51.661
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, you know, there are exceptions to this if you want to get into the weeds of which type of drugs we're talking about, but generally speaking, I don't, I'm not convinced that, um, oblivion does much for creativity, actually.
49:52.181 --> 49:56.564
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that that's, that's certainly my experience of it is that is that that's not really true.
49:56.964 --> 50:01.687
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, I mean, a huge thing I mentioned earlier, but Nick Cave's been a huge, um,
50:02.427 --> 50:08.331
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of guiding light for me in a way and one of the things about Nick K. was he has these two very distinct phases of his career.
50:08.391 --> 50:15.737
[SPEAKER_00]: He has when he was messed up and when he was clean and I personally think he became an infinitely better songwriter when he got clean.
50:15.877 --> 50:18.799
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, Abba 12 blues is my favorite record he ever did by Miles.
50:19.479 --> 50:23.222
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was his first clean record and it's just startlingly brilliant.
50:23.462 --> 50:26.604
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you know, I, I, uh,
50:27.742 --> 50:32.450
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're also talking about lifestyle on the road, another thing that's been really good for me in recent years.
50:32.470 --> 50:41.824
[SPEAKER_00]: We've done a bunch of touring with Jason Espel, who I'm sure you know, and who is a phenomenal songwriter and a lovely human, but also quite famously as sober.
50:42.970 --> 50:54.060
[SPEAKER_00]: and we did some touring with him in the States where he had his daughter and his wife along with him and it was, it wasn't like a dry backstage, you know, if you wanted a glass of wine, you'd have a glass of wine but like no one was doing tequila shots, you know what I mean?
50:55.241 --> 51:01.387
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was this really kind of like stable and healthy approach to being on the road and it was quite
51:01.647 --> 51:05.770
[SPEAKER_00]: revelatory to me for me to experience that was like oh shit this this works.
51:06.150 --> 51:23.121
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact Holland whispered this is better like because we play better shows and I don't feel like shit 23 hours a day and John I mean and I can sing better and someone and someone and someone so and so and so and definitely and then the final thing so this is a long hours to show question.
51:23.382 --> 51:25.183
[SPEAKER_00]: The final thing is that like
51:25.623 --> 51:32.047
[SPEAKER_00]: I've realized, you know, I'm 40 years old now and it's a marathon and not a sprint and I would like to do this for the rest of my life.
51:32.107 --> 51:39.012
[SPEAKER_00]: Now there's a couple of contributing factors to whether or not that's possible, one of which is whether or not anyone cares enough for me to keep doing this for a long time.
51:39.472 --> 51:45.216
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also, you know, you can do things in your 20s, you can't do in your 30s, learn your 40s, physically speaking.
51:45.816 --> 51:50.860
[SPEAKER_00]: There were tour schedules I looked back on from my 20s when we would do like 24 shows and a row without a day off.
51:51.481 --> 51:53.003
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I can do that now.
51:53.203 --> 52:06.162
[SPEAKER_00]: Like are you kidding if we do like four in a row and like half dead So you know, it's these things change, but like I'm trying to find ways of sustaining this in the longer term because I love it And it's what I want to do
52:07.083 --> 52:07.483
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
52:07.503 --> 52:15.328
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're totally right that no one ever actually, well, I shouldn't say no one, but that most people don't create from a state of oblivion being totally messed up.
52:15.688 --> 52:21.031
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do think it becomes a part of people's narrative about how they created it.
52:21.051 --> 52:21.351
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
52:21.852 --> 52:22.372
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
52:22.512 --> 52:23.273
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that make you sense?
52:23.753 --> 52:24.353
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
52:24.373 --> 52:26.214
[SPEAKER_00]: In a way that I think's really toxic, actually.
52:26.314 --> 52:26.555
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
52:26.655 --> 52:31.337
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Kirk remains one of the greatest songwriters of this 20th century, and I think it has fuck all to do with his hair and addiction.
52:32.258 --> 52:34.419
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the two things should be separated.
52:37.089 --> 52:38.830
[SPEAKER_00]: I am going to say this and it's going to get me in trouble.
52:38.950 --> 52:40.970
[SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely love the doors.
52:41.450 --> 52:42.531
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't stand the doors.
52:42.731 --> 52:47.512
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons is I think that Jim Morrison was somebody who wrote while he was tripping.
52:47.532 --> 52:54.034
[SPEAKER_00]: And Boy can detail because it's boring and mundane and just the... And now what's the hate role in?
52:54.094 --> 53:00.276
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry if you like the doors good for you enjoy the new music and all the rest of it, but it's just it's to me that's the sound.
53:00.396 --> 53:02.436
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what writing when your messed up sounds like.
53:02.717 --> 53:04.157
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's not to my taste.
53:04.537 --> 53:07.282
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're going to be canceled for admitting that you don't like it.
53:07.302 --> 53:07.543
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
53:07.623 --> 53:09.045
[SPEAKER_01]: I said it to you on it.
53:09.065 --> 53:09.446
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
53:09.646 --> 53:09.927
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
53:11.209 --> 53:11.910
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, listen, man.
53:12.391 --> 53:14.996
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been so fascinating talking to you about your...
53:16.101 --> 53:24.130
[SPEAKER_01]: your years doing this and in your perspective on all things creative and I really appreciate you taking the time to do the show thank you so much.
53:24.430 --> 53:35.142
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a great pleasure and like I was trying to explain this to a friend of mine the other day like you know there's or there's a kind of like memes on the internet of like you ask a guy what he's thinking about and it's usually like tractors or
53:35.863 --> 53:37.604
[SPEAKER_00]: like steak knives or something.
53:37.924 --> 54:00.118
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when my wife asked me what I'm thinking about 99% of the time it's songwriting that is my major obsession in life and like like she's what are you thinking about and it's like is there anything that rhymes with the word here to for or is that for tenses and she's just like oh my god and you know and so I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff and it's lovely to really dive into it so thank you for having me.
54:00.698 --> 54:01.038
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
54:01.098 --> 54:01.979
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you down a line man.
54:02.419 --> 54:02.659
[SPEAKER_01]: Peace.
54:18.147 --> 54:20.149
[SPEAKER_01]: This week's show is brought to you by Bandzougal.
54:20.489 --> 54:28.497
[SPEAKER_01]: Built by musicians and four musicians, Bandzougal is an all in one platform to build a beautiful website for your music.
54:28.898 --> 54:37.806
[SPEAKER_01]: Use promo code TWS, the initials of our podcast, TWS, to get 15% off the first year of any subscription.
54:38.867 --> 54:42.909
[SPEAKER_01]: Frank Turner's latest album is entitled F.T.H.C.
54:43.330 --> 54:46.131
[SPEAKER_01]: that's initialism for Frank Turner Hardcore.
54:46.611 --> 54:49.453
[SPEAKER_01]: It's available everywhere music is sold or strained.
54:50.213 --> 55:02.480
[SPEAKER_01]: If before we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember, an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly, reverb is not a song.
55:02.940 --> 55:07.823
[SPEAKER_01]: So let all that take care of itself, and for you, just keep your eye on the song.