CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 146: ON WORKING WITH AUSTRALIAN BANd, SLOWLY SLOWLY
Interview by Jamie Shepherd.
FMM: Congratulations on releasing your album, Undefeated. It was amazing!
FranK: Thank you very much.
FMM: Is that your tattoo on the album cover?
Frank: Yes it is. I got it done actually the last time that I was in your part of the world. I was in New Zealand, towards the end of writing the album. I was in Wellington, and I have an old friend of mine who is a tattooist in Wellington and I’d been looking for the album title for a long time, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I was walking back to my hotel after breakfast and suddenly went, “undefeated, that’s what it is!” and in about two hours I was lying face down on the table getting it done. I was texting my manager, and saying “this is the album title, dude! We can’t change it now, it’s on my back.” Thankfully he was like, “yes, I think it’s a great album title – but a little more notice next time…”.
FMM: That’s such a good little story for it, actually. So, you were over here last year, playing with Mom Jeans. Are you excited to come back around and play Good Things, a couple of side shows, and share your new music with us?
Frank: Yeah definitely! You know, I’m fortunate enough to have been to Australia many times now, and literally always have a great time. I mean, there was a break for a couple of years because of the pandemic, but there was a stretch at the beginning where I came to Australia once a year every April for like six years in a row, and I loved it. The tour with Mom Jeans was great. It was my first time getting to know those guys, and they were wonderful people, it was a really fun tour – but I’ve never done Good Things before, so I’m excited for that, and a couple of side shows. Hopefully gonna make a few friends and all that kind of thing. It’s important to say with all the love in the world for Good Things, I’m not considering the next trip as the Undefeated tour of Australia or anything. This is a getting to know people, making new friends at the festivals, but I know we will be back for another proper tour, at some point of the album cycle.
FMM: That’ll be fantastic. I’m going to Good Things myself so I’m really keen to see your set.
Frank: Have you been before?
FMM: Yeah, I’ve been the past two years – it’s a fantastic festival!
Frank: Oh, that’s good. That’s great, I needed to know!
FMM: I was wondering, if you’re keen to play alongside any of the other artists that are on the line up for the festival, that maybe you haven’t played with before.
Frank: The line up is fantastic, and I haven’t studied it in detail, but I will say that – I have told this story on stage quite a lot. There’s a song on Undefeated called Letters which is about a pen friend I had when I was a teenager, and our initial meeting. We were both on a camping holiday at a campsite in the south-west of England and we were both wearing our favourite hoodies with our favourite bands at the time, and she was wearing a Pennywise hoodie, and I was wearing a Korn hoodie, because when I was 13, Korn had just come out and they were my favourite band at the time. She came over and told me to listen to punk rock, and that was sort of a big turning point in my life. Nevertheless, the first two Korn records have still got a very sweet spot in my heart, and I have never seen them live. So, I’m excited to see Korn.
FMM: I don’t know if this was when you started with music, but I know you have a previous project called Million Dead, and that was a bit heavier than what you’re doing now. Was that genre shift difficult? Or, do still find influences within the heavier genre?
Frank: I mean, I suppose I do, in the sense that I still listen to heavier music. I listen to a lot of extreme music. I like a lot of grind and death metal and stuff like that. I mean, obviously, how much of that directly influences songs written with acoustic guitar is… up for debate. But that’s definitely where I come from, if you like. I mean, back in 2005, Million Dead broke up and I decided to do this acoustic thing, and it was a funny moment in time, because at the time, I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing and I was pursuing my artistic vision, or whatever pretentious way of putting it you want to use. All of my friends thought I’d gone mad, and like I was having a kind of psychotic episode. Looking back now, 20 years later, I think I must’ve been mad and all my friends think I must’ve had a plan. It sort of flipped. I guess the reason for that is because it worked, and there was no guarantee at the time. And in 2005, the idea of going from playing in a hardcore punk band to playing the acoustic guitar was more unusual than it is now. In a lot of ways, I look back at my younger self and I feel quite proud of him for being so pure in artistic motivations. Like, I suddenly didn’t do it for commercial reasons, you know. I got told to piss off by booking agents and managers and record labels, and I was like, I don’t care. I’m doing this. And it worked, which continues to be a pleasant surprise.
FMM: I also did want to ask you about your little collaboration with Australian band Slowly Slowly. You worked with Ben on a rendition of your song Show People from your last album – how’d the collaboration come about?
Frank: Well, the first thing to say is that I feel like collaborations is a thing that other genres, like the hip hop world figured out is a good idea a long time ago, and the people in the rock world were like – why would we do that? But now everyone is like, oh yeah, that’s a really good idea actually. It’s a good idea promotionally, but also creatively, too. Ben actually mentioned me in a lyric in one of his songs, and that was my first encounter with Slowly Slowly’s music. It’s a very nice thing to be mentioned in a song! And then I dove into their stuff, and I thought it was great, and then people from the label were asking, “Do you have any ideas for collaborations that you could do, particularly from Australia?” and I was like “well… there is this band who have mentioned me in a song.” And I said to the Australian guys, “I don’t know if you guys have heard of Slowly Slowly,” and they were like “What the fuck are you talking about? Of course we’ve heard of Slowly Slowly.” So, the stars sort aligned and I ended up with Ben’s email address, and just kind of cold called him – and he is just an absolute sweetheart, and just a great singer and I’m so stoked about how the collaboration actually came out because he really inhabits the song in his wonderful way and there’s a little part of me that’s jealous of his singing voice, and another part of me that just wants him to sing the whole damn thing, so I can just stand in the crowd. But I really love the version that we released, it just really sings.
FMM: Was there a reason you chose that track in particular?
Frank: Yeah, I was going through the record, Undefeated, and was thinking a lot of the songs are personal and might be a little challenging to hear another voice on it, like something like Ceasefire, it might be a bit odd to have two voices. But Show People is sort of a conversation piece between me and myself when I was younger, and its about reassurance. It’s a celebration of the culture of live music and all the rest, but it’s also a reaching out to myself when I was a kid and saying it’s gonna be okay. Because, I mean, when I was a kid, everybody – my teachers, my parents, friends, everybody – laughed at me and discouraged me when I told them I wanted to do this for a living. They were just like, that’s a dumb idea, don’t do that, that’s a declasse idea, you shouldn’t do it. And I fucking did it anyway, and I’m proud of that! But there’s also a part of me that, if I had a time machine, I’d reach out to that kid and be like, dude, it’s gonna be okay, just keep at it.