Frank Turner is an English singer/songwriter whose solo career began in 2005. Since then he’s toured the world extensively, releasing three EPs and three full-lengths along the way. His new album is due out this June on Epitaph, entitled England Keep My Bones. We met with Frank before his recent show at Beat Kitchen to discuss the upcoming record, touring, songwriting inspirations and more. Turner is equally sincere and humble, and these characteristics translate seamlessly to his songs. Despite his success, he remains modest and focused simply on pursuing a lifelong career as a musician. England Keep My Bones will indeed allow him to do just that, as well as continue to find new listeners and perform in unfamiliar places around the globe.

Bill – What can you tell me about your upcoming album? 

Frank – Well, I’m very pleased and I’m excited about it. It’s not like a stylistic left-hand turn or anything like that. It’s still definitely in the vein that I’ve been working in for the last few records. I just feel like it’s a little deeper. I feel like I kind of squished my feet a little further into the quicksand, both lyrically and musically. Some of the loud bits are louder and some of the quiet bits are quieter. There’s an a cappella song on there, there’s a horn section and some other new stuff. I haven’t made a drum and bass record, let’s put it that way. Maybe one day I will, but not yet.

Bill – England Keep My Bones was recorded at Church Studios with producer Tristan Ivemy. What were some of your favorite aspects of the recording process?

Frank – Tristan mixed my second record, Love Ire & Song, and then the third record I did I went off and made with Alex Newport, which was cool. Alex was great, but for this one I wanted to go back to something I knew. I’ve known Tristan for a really long time, he’s an old friend. It was pretty great to work with Tristan again, you know, he’s a good dude. Church is an incredible studio. It’s where they recorded “We Are the World.” We were channeling some of that shit, (laughs). It’s actually at least partly still a functional church, which made it a bit weird recording the last song on the record. It’s called “Glory Hallelujah” and it’s kind of an atheist anthem. There was one moment in the recording process where I stood on a box in the middle of the room, conducting a kind of ragtag, gospel choir who was singing “There is no God” at the top of their lungs. I thought to myself, “If I’m wrong about this, I’m fucked. This is real, fuckin’ go to hell kind of territory right here.” Anyway, it was fun, (laughs). It was a good time.

Bill – That’s pretty hilarious. You’ve stated that you wanted this record to sound more like a solo effort compared to your last album, Poetry of the Deed. Can you explain that a bit further?

Frank – I think the thing with Poetry of the Deed was that it was the first time I’ve done a record where I had a stable lineup for the backing band when they came into the studio with me. We recorded a lot of the music live and we worked out all the arrangements in quite a short period of time. I wrote the songs and then in terms of who was playing what it was kind of like the first time we’d all done it in one room together, collectively. That meant that it kind of turned into a band record in terms of how it felt, which is fine. It was fun to do and it was cool, and I love my dudes and everything. They play all over the new record as well, but this time around I wanted to make it a bit more like I was going to sit down and figure out what I wanted to do arrangement-wise on my own, and then take it to people. Just have it be a bit more like, “You’re playing this, you’re playing this, you’re playing this,” rather than everyone throwing everything in at the same time. I feel like I succeeded in my mission.

Bill – Tell me about the first song off the new record that was released, “I Am Disappeared.” 

Frank – The genesis of the song was that I had this dream about driving around in downtown Detroit with Bob Dylan and he didn’t say anything. It was a weird dream and it kind of stuck with me. Talking to a friend of mine about it, it turned into a conversation about escapism and getting away from stuff. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record and we sort of leaked it, well, I sort of leaked it. As much as that sounds terribly melodramatic, it’s not quite as awesome as that. Basically, we were having a discussion about whether or not we should leak it, me and the label. Everyone had a different opinion and everyone was kind of backwards and forwards about it. It was taking fuckin’ forever and I got bored and just thought, “Fuck it. I’ll leak it anyway.” It’s not like something that was completely unplanned, but that’s how to win an argument. Let’s put it that way.

Bill – Got it. “Peggy Sang the Blues” is the album’s first official single and it’s reportedly about your grandmother. What inspired you to write this song?

Frank – My father’s family is quite a kind of stuffy, socially-conservative family. My grandmother Peggy was my dad’s mom and it was great because she was at the center of it and she was totally disrespectful of everybody else in it. In a way that she didn’t really give a shit. She used to drink and smoke, play cards all the time and speak her mind. She was just a real kind of character. The older she got the more cantankerous she got as well. When I was a kid growing up, she was my favorite family member to see at parties. I remember the first time I ever got properly drunk was at her 80th birthday. My parents told me I was allowed to have one glass of champagne. I was probably ten or 11. They were like, “You can have a small, half-glass of champagne, then no more booze for you.” So, I have my half-glass of champagne and then my grandma took me aside and showed me that if you added black currant to it, mixed it up and didn’t put it in a champagne glass, then it looks like you’re drinking something else. I proceeded to drink a shit-ton of champagne that way and just got insanely fuckin’ drunk. My parents were mortified and were like, “I can’t believe you got wasted at your grandma’s 80th birthday!” My grandmother was sitting there like, “This is fuckin’ cool” and just enjoying it. Obviously, that’s not entirely what the song is about, it’s kind of a protest to life, but I certainly feel inspired by her in that way.

Bill – That’s really cool. With this being your third full-length for Epitaph, what do you like best about working with the label? 

Frank – I’m going to have to provide you with a boring answer I’m afraid. They’re just good at what they do. They’re good people, they work really hard and they know what they’re doing. Since working with Epitaph, I’ve gone from absolutely fuckin’ nobody having any idea who I was outside of the UK, to tonight’s show being sold-out and stuff like that. We’ve sold some records, people know the songs and care and all those kinds of things. It’s partly because I’m touring, but also I can tour because of their support. I like being with them. Obviously, there’s prestige in having the Epitaph thing as well. I grew up with punk rock and that is cool as shit. To be honest it’s not something I think about so much anymore, not because I’ve necessarily gotten over it, but it’s not an everyday thing. It’s more I just speak to my press people and they’re cool as shit and they help out when I need it.

Bill – Your music is often described as folk/punk. How do you feel about that description? 

Frank – It’s okay, but genre tags are kind of tedious things. I think they serve a purpose up until the point where you and the person have both heard the music that’s under discussion, after which point who gives a fuck? There are folk elements to what I do and there are punk elements to what I do. I think there are probably more country elements than folk elements, but I don’t know. I spent years in a band that spent its entire existence being called an emo band and all of us hated emo, so I suppose being called folk/punk is better than that. Those are at least two styles of music that I like and can handle.

Bill – The song “Try This at Home” from Poetry of the Deed is somewhat like your anthem. It talks about individuality, integrity and chasing your dreams. What were you trying to achieve when you wrote this song?

Frank – That song kind of started out as joke because of the Billy Bragg record Don’t Try This at Home. I know Billy, he’s a good dude and I obviously know he was kind of talking about something else. I thought that was just a slightly sad title for a record by someone like Billy. It’s like the opposite of what it should be. That was the kind of genesis of the lyrics and it just came together. It was quite fun rhyming the word “music” with the word “dicks.” Doing that made me feel like a fully-fledged adult.

Bill – That’s great, (laughs). People often say this about bands or artists, but you really do tour relentlessly. What are some of the most important things you’ve learned on the road, both as a musician and a person?

Frank – Without wanting to be overly melodramatic about it, I feel like I’ve learned pretty much everything I know of any value on the road. Musically, just playing every day makes you a better musician. The thing is I’m not just a musician, though I am that and I’m proud to be that. I am also an entertainer, which is something I’m proud to be as well. There are a lot of people in this business who feel like that’s a slightly cheap word, “entertainer,” and I think they’re idiots. I think it’s a noble thing to be. I like it because it sort of puts you in this tradition of Vaudeville, the traveling circus and those kinds of things. That’s a tradition I’m proud to be a part of. I’ve gone off topic. Anyway, I’ve learned everything I know about how to write songs and keep a crowd’s attention, how to tune and restring a guitar whilst talking to someone. In terms of life stuff as well, there’s a degree of self-reliance that comes from being on tour. I’m sure there’s other ways of learning this in life, but I think I’m more of a grown-up person because of touring. One of the things I like about tour is that problems are problems and they need to get solved now. You can’t put it off till tomorrow. You can’t be like, “I don’t know, I don’t feel like doing it today.” It’s like, “Bullshit. You have three hours to sort this out. Do it. Go!” Once you’ve had a couple years of existing with that thing it’s cool, because in everyday life you can kind of do stuff and wait around and that’s cool too. I have a tour manager friend who had a band that was late to a flight that was going to get them to a festival. They got to the airport and there was a really long line at security, so he just grabbed a jacket off the chair, walked around the edge of security and no one batted a fuckin’ eyelid. They put them on the plane and they made their flight. Shit like that I just really fuckin’ enjoy, you know what I mean? Like, “Right, I know someone who lives 45 minutes from here who’s probably got a carjack,” and you call them, they come out and then you keep going. It makes you feel very alive.

Bill – That makes sense. In terms of shows, do you prefer playing smaller venues or larger festivals?

Frank – There’s different kinds of skills to entertaining smaller rooms, I mean we played Wembley Stadium with Green Day and that was pretty fuckin’ insane. That was definitely a new skill set, which I’m definitely still learning. I love playing and I like signing and entertaining. I don’t massively care what context I do it in. It’s just fun. This is the thing; I have a fuckin’ blast when I play a show. I have more fun than anybody else in the room. Well maybe, I don’t know, we’ll see. I want my shows to be a celebration. I’ll play anywhere for anyone. I don’t really care. Tonight’s going to be great, a room this size when it’s sold-out is going to be fuckin’ sweet. At the same time, we did Brixton Academy before Christmas, which is 5,000 people, sold-out in London. That was fuckin’ awesome as well. It feels as good as you’d imagine it feels to walk out in front of 5,000 people who paid to see you and just kind of stand in front of the stage and say “Hi” and everyone just screams back at you. I’m lucky I get to do the fun things.

Bill – What were your experiences like while playing shows in China?

Frank – It was cool. I was technically there illegally, in the sense that I didn’t have a permit to be there or anything like that. I had a tourist visa, but that’s one of the advantages of doing solo stuff, I just showed up at the border with a guitar case. I just walked over the border, no one gave a shit and I got picked up on the other side. It was interesting because obviously rock ‘n’ roll is at least in origin a Western phenomenon. Pretty much all of the places you play are quite Westernized, so it was very interesting to be somewhere that isn’t. It was weird, it was quite tough. I ate some seriously strange shit. Some of the shows were just weird, because people had never been to a gig before and really didn’t know what the hell was going on. There wasn’t much of a connection really going on and people didn’t speak English and stuff. Some of the shows, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, were kind of like normal shows. The shows were sold-out and there were a lot of people there. Some people knew the songs and everyone was up for it. I found it incredibly inspiring because they had a kind of burning, naïve passion for rock ‘n’ roll that is easy to forget about when you live in a culture that’s saturated with it. To me it almost felt like being at CBGB’s in 1975. It was like they were fuckin’ stoked about the whole thing and there was such a kind of energy and excitement in the air about the simple fact of rock ‘n’ roll. That to me was really, really exciting and energizing in a way. 

Bill – That’s awesome. How is touring in America different than playing shows throughout the rest of the world? 

Frank – It’s different from China, yes. Not really from like the UK. The main difference I would say is that people travel further for shows in this country. I constantly have my mind blown by how far people drive for shows here. In the UK, if you do a tour and you play Manchester and you don’t play Liverpool, everyone in Liverpool will go crazy. It takes 20 minutes to get from Liverpool to Manchester, on trains that run all night and cost like three pounds, but people will not travel 20 minutes to get to a show. Whereas here, you get to shows and it’s like, “Oh yeah, we drove six hours to be here.” I’m like, “Fuck, that’s the entire length of my country. Jesus Christ.” Then they’re like, “Yeah, we’re driving back afterwards and going to work tomorrow morning.” I find that endlessly humbling. It’s like, “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Everyone’s like, “No, it’s just what we do.” 

Bill – What about home do you miss most while on the road?

Frank – The more I tour the more English I feel, which is one of the themes of the new record. I think it’s because almost nine times out of ten I’m the only English person in the room, this being quite a good example right here. I’m not uncomfortable about that in any way, but it just makes you consider what it is that’s setting you aside from the other people around you. It could be your accent or if you understand the etiquette correctly or whatever it might be. I do miss England. I miss the countryside. There’s a feel to the countryside in England that I miss a lot and I miss the coasts and that kind of thing. I don’t miss lots of things about England. I don’t miss our utterly fuckin’, pathetically awful, bullshit excuse for politics. I don’t miss the appalling obsession with class that our country is stricken by and things like that. I do miss some things. I miss cricket and English newspapers. I really miss English newspapers. 

Bill – Is there anything else you’d like to share with your fans?

Frank – I’ll tell you what, I’ve never particularly liked the word “fans.” To me it implies almost like a class division between people who make music and people who listen to it. When I’m not on tour, which isn’t all that often these days, but when I’m not on tour I buy records or go to shows and hang out, same as everybody else. I used to write zines and I used to put on shows, see what I mean? The word “fan” is just a bit kind of like, “You’re over there and we’re over here.” I don’t trash hotel rooms and have you guys pay for my fuckin’ idiotic, adolescent self-indulgence, and then you go home and don’t talk to me or the band after the show. So basically I’d just like to say, “Hi, come hang out.” Last night I was in Chicago, I went and found an Italian restaurant, I love Italian food. I had a great meal, finished up some work that needed doing, then I was like, “What am I going do?” I just put a thing out on Twitter and ended up at a whiskey bar with a bunch of kids who are coming to the show tonight. We were just drinking whiskey and hanging out and I had the fuckin’ best time. They were really nice people. We drank some cool whiskey and they told me a bunch of shit I didn’t know about Chicago. It was called the Duke of Perth and it’s pretty near here I think. I would much rather do that with my day off than sit in my fuckin’ hotel room being a tortured artist.