Favourites from Wednesday to Sunday at SXSW

I wrote about my Monday and Tuesday experiences at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas and have posted photos of acts I've seen throughout the week, but here's a rundown of my SXSW highlights from Wednesday to Sunday.

Wednesday
 

The Wet Secrets

The Wet Secrets
I believe this Edmonton band's Free Candy album deserved more Polaris Music Prize consideration, and it always puts on an entertaining show.

Carl Barat and The Jackals
The former Libertines member played a couple of songs from that band as well as more recent solo material. This performance was much better than when I saw Barat in Austin a number of years ago.

Frank Turner
It's no secret that I'm a major fan and this solo acoustic performance was good enough to get me to see him do it again (though with a somewhat different set list) on Thursday night even though I'd just seen him play with his band The Sleeping Souls in Toronto earlier in the month.

Broncho
If you like King Tuff, Weezer, power pop and '80s new wave, you should enjoy this hook-happy quintet.

Thursday

Mac McCaughan

Mac McCaughan
The Superchunk, Portastatic and Merge Records founder reached into the catalogue for several favourites as well as songs from his forthcoming Non-Believers solo debut. He was alone on stage with an electric guitar, but he didn't need any other backing for his songs to shine.

The Apache Relay
This makes the cut if just for "Katie Queen of Tennessee," a great, classic-sounding pop song.

The Cribs
I still think of this British group as being very young, but it said the last time it played SXSW was 2007, which shows how much time flies sometimes. The group offers a great mix of power pop, punk and indie rock.

Big Harp
This guitar, bass and drums trio plays sharp power pop that can also rock pretty hard and sometimes sounds like it has keyboards infusing through it, even though there are none to be found.

Hippo Campus
This young Minnesota band incorporates African high life elements into its indie pop and had the crowd dancing to its infectiously upbeat sounds. This is an act that could go places and ranks among my best discoveries of SXSW.

Alvvays
The most buzzed about Canadian band at SXSW played to packed houses everywhere it went while playing almost 10 shows over the week. Its dreamy, jangly pop won over another crowd at Cheer Up Charlies' outdoor patio and the only disappointing part of the 20-minute set was its brevity.

Surfer Blood
Snappy, indie pop songs with chiming guitars are this band's forte, and the numbers it played from its forthcoming album stand up to anything from the catalogue. This is music that makes you happy, which made this band a great way to close my Thursday as it put a bounce in my step despite my aching feet on my walk back to my apartment.

Friday

July Talk
The male-female vocal dynamic and mix of grit and sheen makes this Toronto band interesting to listen to and even better to see, as there's great stage chemistry between Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay. I'd say that this could have been the second biggest Canadian buzz band of SXSW.

Best Coast

Best Coast
This California group has a distinctly Californian sound, if that makes sense, and its forthcoming album is titled California Nights. The new songs were just as enjoyable as those played from previous albums, and there's a lot to like in this group's gauzy, dreamy indie pop.

The Waco Brothers
It's a SXSW tradition to have margaritas with members of The Waco Brothers at Guero's on Friday afternoon and then head across the street to the outdoor space behind the Yard Dog Gallery to watch them close off the Bloodshot Records day party. It was another wild and woolly time, as drummer Joe Camarillo fell off his drum stool, two women in the front row with me fell down and Jon Langford name-checked me from the stage regarding a falling incident of mine a few years back. Familiar originals and time-honoured classic covers were played so well that I had to go back and see the band at the Carousel Lounge on Sunday night, where Langford invited me on stage to sing "Folsom Prison Blues" with him.

Joe "King" Carrasco
I loved Carrasco and his band The Crowns in the early '80s and seeing him perform some of the songs from those days was one of my SXSW highlights a few years ago. This set didn't include any of that material and didn't have the organ from those records, but featured a more traditional Tex-Mex, blues and rock-and-roll approach. He's still the "King" and a consummate showman.

Hinds
I found out that I share a birthday with one of the members of this young, all-female garage rock quartet, who I also saw tearing up the dancefloor while fellow Spaniards The Parrots played a garage-surf set on Saturday night. Hinds includes elements of jangle pop, garage rock, indie rock and '60s pop and, while the music still needs a bit of polish, it's on the right track. Ending a set with a cover of Thee Headcoats' "Davy Crockett" was a nice touch.

Twin Peaks
This young Chicago band is apparently a favourite of the sons of Jeff Tweedy and Jon Langford, and I'm on board with them. The quartet is full of energy and punk spirit but can also write very solid songs.

Palma Violets
This British quartet pleased a large and enthusiastic crowd with a raucously entertaining and spirited set of psychedelic-tinged rock-and-roll. It played a handful of songs from the forthcoming Danger In The Club album that are worth looking forward to.

Saturday

Low Cut Connie
Singer/pianist Adam Weiner was one of the most engaging frontmen I saw all week and at one point he grabbed my pen and drew a happy face on my notepad. The Philadelphia band's vintage rock-and-roll sound was a great way to start the day, and including a cover of The Gories' "I Think I've Had It" was even better.

Elliott Brood
I've seen this band numerous times in Toronto and once before in Austin and it always delivers a roots-rocking good time.

Black Linen

Black Linen
This Atlanta group plays melodic, hook-laden, '60s-influenced power pop very well and has a cleaner sound than most of its contemporaries.

Chuck Prophet and The Mission Express
Prophet and his band provided one of my live music highlights of 2014 and even though this set was shorter, it was again right on target. Among the favourites played were "Countrified Inner-City Technological Man," "Wish Me Luck," "Ford Econoline," "Temple Beautiful," "Willie Mays Is Up At Bat" and a cover of The Flamin' Groovies' "Shake Some Action."

Spells
This quintet couldn't stay on the 720 Club's small stage, or even in the club, during a very interactive party rock set that was a ton of fun for the 50 people in attendance.

The Blind Owls
This well-dressed band look very young but play like it's 1966 with mod, freakbeat, garage rock and pure pop elements. A cover of Them's "Gloria" fit right in with the original material.

Danny B. Harvey and Anne Marie Lewis
Harvey plays guitar in HeadCat with Lemmy and Slim Jim Phantom and has played with numerous other people including, on this night, his bride-to-be Anne Marie Lewis (the niece of Jerry Lee). Harvey is the best guitarist I saw all week, while Lewis can definitely sing, and their mix of rockabilly, '50s rock-and-roll, country and blues was a marriage made in heaven with covers of "Hit The Road Jack," "House of the Rising Sun," "Suzie Q," "You Win Again," "Who Do You Love?" and more.

The 69 Cats
Harvey stayed on stage along with his drummer and were joined by Jyrki69, the singer of Finnish goth’n’roll band The 69 Eyes, and former Cramps bassist Chopper Franklin. Let's call the sound gothabilly, as the band put a unique spin on such familiar songs as "People Are Strange," "She's Not You," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Smokestack Lightning" and "Bela Lugosi's Dead." This was pure entertainment.

The Uglybeats
I've seen this group at three previous SXSW festivals, so I ended this one with a level of familiarity as the Austin quintet provided a healthy dose of good times with its retro-garage original songs and a cover of The Ramones' "I'm Against It."

Sunday 
 

Jon Langford and The Far Forlorn

Jon Langford and The Far Forlorn
SXSW essentially ends on Saturday, but there are usually a few shows spread out over Sunday for folks like me who need another fix. It was provided along with some tasty fowl at Lucy's Fried Chicken, where Langford and seven other musicians performed some of his solo material as well as a couple of cuts from his band The Mekons.

 


Number of performances seen from Monday to Sunday: 84
Number of selfies taken: zero
Amount of money spent on food from Tuesday to Saturday: zero

Free Food
Thanks to Nettwerk and Canadian Blast for filling me up on Wednesday. The SOCAN/ASCAP boat cruise and the British Music Embassy at Latitude 30 provided me with nutritional fuel on Thursday afternoon and the M for Montreal poutine party got me through the evening. Friday's food was provided by the British Music Embassy and the Australian BBQ, where I also got a free rain poncho to help make me a little drier on a very rainy day. The British Embassy came through again big time on the food front on Saturday. There were also free drinks at all of these parties, and others as well. Thank you to you all for keeping me well-nourished and lubricated.

SXSW Thursday in words and pictures ... okay, mostly pictures

I've decided that time and other commitment constraints won't allow me to write comprehensive reports on my goings-on from the South by Southwest Music Festival every day, so I'm just going to provide a list of the acts I saw on Thursday and some of their photos for now, and then I'll follow up with highlights later.

Here are the artists: Look Vibrant, Rah Rah, Mac McCaughan, The Lost Brothers, Del Barber, The Apache Relay, The Cribs, Gang of Four, Loud Larry Ajust, Big Harp, Jeff Stuart and The Hearts, Slothrust, JP Hoe, Hippo Campus, Alvvays, The Saturday Tea, Frank Turner, Quiet Company and Surfer Blood.

Hippo Campus is my best discovery of a band previously unknown to me, aside from hearing a couple of songs online.

Here are some photos:

Surfer Blood

Quiet Company

Frank Turner

 

The Saturday Tea

Hippo Campus

Big Harp

Gang of Four

The Cribs

The Apache Relay

Mac McCaughan

Del Barber

Alvvays

Rah Rah

Frank Turner and Joel Plaskett make great tag team

Frank Turner and Joel Plaskett Emergency, perhaps the best double bill that will hit Toronto this year, should have left no-one disappointed after Friday and Saturday night's performances. Even my friends who had people puking in the row in front of them at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre had a great time.

Turner filled England's Wembley Arena last month and is a bona fide star in his homeland while he continues to build his following around the world. His Toronto fan base is definitely growing and is undeniably loyal.

Frank Turner

Turner bounded on stage at 8:10 p.m. on Friday, admitting he didn't know what time it was since he'd just arrived from Australia to complete the last two nights of a lengthy world tour. He was on his own with his acoustic guitar and no band, but he has more than enough charisma on his own to compensate.

The set began with "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous" and continued with 12 more songs from the breadth of much of his catalogue. People were singing and clapping along to most of them, including "Long Live The Queen" -- which I'm convinced is one of the best songs of this century.

Turner should be back at home in England by now and will soon start working on his next album. He previewed two songs that could be on it on Friday. The first was just finished that day and was getting its debut performance. It's still untitled, but is a relatively gentle song with lots of lyrics. The second newbie was "Wherefore Art Thou Gene Simmons?," a bittersweet yet humorous number about the KISS bassist's long, catalogued and photographed list of sexual conquests.

There were too many people in the theatre lobby during Turner's set, but I'm sure that he must have made believers out of a good portion of the Plaskett fans who might not have been familiar with him before. The man may have the worst tattoos in rock and roll, but he wears them proudly. I look forward to his Toronto return.
 
Joel Plaskett Emergency opened Canadian Music Fest with an invite-only gig high up in Toronto's CN Tower in March, and I thought that it was the most rocking and animated performance I'd seen from the group out of the dozen or more I've taken in over the years. There were certainly elements of that present on Friday night, but this was a much longer and varied set that also included a solo acoustic interlude where drummer Dave Marsh and bassist Chris Pennell got to take a break.

Joel Plaskett Emergency

Fans rushed the stage early in the set and almost all of the 1,200 people in the theatre were on their feet throughout the 110-minute performance. The loyalty and familiarity was evident with all of the singing along that went on, from "Tough Love" at the beginning to "Come On, Teacher" at the end.

I think I've probably thought of Plaskett as a songwriter first and foremost, even though I've never left one of his shows without having a good time. But this past weekend's shows reinforced that he's also a great guitarist and -- at age 37 and with seven studio albums to his credit since 1999 after the demise of former band Thrush Hermit, which released its first EP 19 years ago -- has become a complete entertainer who can totally charm a large audience.

Marsh and Pennell have combined with Plaskett to make the Emergency more muscular than it's ever been, and having "monkeys on a switch pedal" and a fedora-wearing bust of Wayne Newton on amplifiers near the back of the stage didn't hurt the entertainment value either.

Monkeys on a switch pedal

Both Turner and Plaskett knew that a lot of people would come to both the Friday and Saturday shows and they think enough of their fans that they changed their set lists so that if there was a favourite song you didn't hear one night, there was a good chance you probably would have heard it on the other night.

I was chastised for paying too much attention to my note-taking and photography on Friday night and not enough to the young hotties who were dancing beside and in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that the days of women half my age being interested in me are gone. Still, I elected to leave my tools of the trade at home on Saturday just in case I had one more kick in the can left in me. And what happened? I spent the night standing beside a young woman who I made cry about six years ago when she interned for me at ChartAttack.com and thought I was too tough on her performance assessment. So, needless to say, I didn't score that night either.

Joel Plaskett

But I attended a post-show party at the home of promoter Jeff Cohen (who was basking in his self-described "Bill Graham moment") and his hostess with the mostest wife Tara (my computer's auto-correct just changed mostest to moistest, but I thought I should change it back to avoid any potential gossiping). Turner didn't make it back to the house, but Plaskett and his crew and a lot of other friends did for hours of food, drinks, fellowship and falling into swimming pools. I took a traveller for my walk home and thought about how special the two nights I'd just experienced were until I arrived at my place at 5 a.m.

Here are the set lists from Turner and Plaskett's May 18 performances at Toronto's Queen Elizabeth Theatre:

Frank Turner
"I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous"
"Try This at Home"
"Peggy Sang the Blues"
"Wessex Boy"
"I Am Disappeared"
"Substitute"
New and still untitled song
"Long Live the Queen"
"If Ever I Stray"
"Wherefore Art Thou Gene Simmons"
"English Curse"
"I Still Believe"
"The Road"
"Photosynthesis"

Joel Plaskett

Joel Plaskett Emergency
"Tough Love"
"Waiting to be Discovered"
"Deny, Deny, Deny"
"You're Mine"
"Heartless, Heartless, Heartless"
"North Star"
"You Let Me Down"
"Harbour Boys"
"Beyond, Beyond, Beyond"
"Love This Town"
"Face of the Earth"
"Nowhere With You"
"Lightning Bolt"
"Work Out Fine" with interlude medley featuring Lee Dorsey's "Rain Rain (Go Away)," April Wine's "Oowatanite," The Rivieras' "California Sun," Manfred Mann's "Doo Wah Diddy," Sam Cooke's "Cupid" and Eagles' "New York Minute"
"Through and Through and Through"
"Maybe We Should Just Go Home" with interlude medley featuring Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?"
"Extraordinary"
"I'm Yours"
"Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'"
"Come On, Teacher"

SXSW day one: Joe "King" Carrasco lives up to his name

I've been coming to the South by Southwest Music Festival since 2004 but haven't seen any more of Texas beyond the Dallas and Houston airports, so I changed things up a bit this year and spent a day in Houston and another in San Antonio before jumping full on into SXSW. I'll take San Antonio. Houston? Probably not.

New Town Drunks

The music began Tuesday night at tenOak, which I'm hoping isn't a music venue the other 51 weeks a year. Chapel Hill, N.C.'s New Town Drunks, a sextet featuring acoustic guitar, saxophone, upright bass, keyboards, drums and the sexy Diane Koistinen on lead vocals had the honour. Two dozen people were there to take in the group's mix of folk, rock, cabaret, alt.country, jazz and tango. Koistinen came into the audience to dance and the best line of the show came in the last song, which included the lyric "Like John and Yoko all night long, lying naked with a bong."

Whiskey Daredevils

Another band with a booze-related name, Whiskey Daredevils, was a step up. Greg Miller had crazy eyes, but was an excellent showman and I thoroughly enjoyed his three band members' backing on a set that featured old school country music played loud and fast. "Long Gone" inexplicably incorporated some of The Doors' "The End," "Bakersfield" mocked Buck Owens' hometown as being filled with strip malls and 7-11s and not being Nashville West as the band members had expected, and "Trucker Bomb" was about running over plastic bottles filled with urine on a highway median with a lawnmower. Good times.

I first saw Frank Turner three years ago in Austin and have continued to be a big fan, including hosting the launch of his 2010 North American tour in my living room. The British singer/songwriter played a solo acoustic show at Latitude 30 on Tuesday night and opened with "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous," "Try This At Home" and "Peggy Sang the Blues" before doing a couple of new tunes. One was about getting tattoos, and Turner got a pretty bad tattoo in Austin before, and the other was called "Time Machine."

Turner returned to more familiar territory with "Substitute," "Wessex Boy" and "Me and My Friend Dan" before covering Tom Petty's "American Girl." It hurt to tear myself away from the club after "I Still Believe" and "The Road," but I've seen Turner quite a bit over the past three years and have been waiting to see Joe "King" Carrasco and The Crowns for 30 years.

Joe "King" Carrasco and The Crowns

I finally got my chance at Skinny's Ballroom, a relatively small room that wasn't even full. That was a major injustice. Carrasco's nuevo wavo mixes new wave, rock and roll and conjunto and is a total blast. Carrasco lives and plays regularly in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and told me that a lot of his neighbours are from Ontario, but I don't think he's performed in Toronto since I moved there in 1988. Carrasco's early albums were big favourites of mine and he pulled out some classics like "Let's Get Pretty" early on.

Joe "King" Carrasco

But the band has a new album to push, and title track "Que Wow" just became my favourite song written by a guy stricken with typhoid in Mexico. Carrasco said he was friends with both Manu Chao and ? and the Mysterians' Bobby Balderrama, which gave him even more credibility points along with his cover of "96 Tears." I don't know Spanish, but I sang along to every word of "Buena." Carrasco changed crowns mid-set and came into the audience a couple of times, including climbing on top of a table beside me at the bar, and ended the 80-minute set with an extended "Don't Bug Me Baby." He wanted to do an encore, and we were all ready for it too, but the club unfortunately nixed that.

I talked to Carrasco after the show and traded business cards, so hopefully that planted enough of a bug to get him up to Toronto. In the meantime, folks in Austin can see the man and his band at the Austin Music Awards tonight and at The Dog and Duck Pub on Friday at 4 p.m.

Frank Turner makes history in Toronto

Frank Turner has come a long way in North America since I tried to interest people in his Campfire Punkrock EP five years ago, first saw him on a small rooftop at the South by Southwest Music Festival in 2009 and witnessed him playing to an almost empty Molson Amphiteatre later that year while opening for Offspring.

Turner launched his 2010 North American tour in my living room in front of 30 of my friends and is now selling out shows across the continent. More than 1,000 people turned out for his all-ages concert at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre on Friday night, making it his biggest headlining gig ever outside of the United Kingdom.

Turner was obviously jubilant with the turnout and rabid singing along by many in the audience, and it was reflected in his ebullient performance with his backing band, The Sleeping Souls. He opened with "Eulogy" and went on to play a mix of older material and songs from his latest Epitaph LP, England Keep My Bones.

A Canadian flag with Turner's name emblazoned across it was thrown on stage towards the end of the 75-minute opening set. It was draped across the front of the drum kit before briefly gracing Turner's shoulders during a surprise closing number: a cover of Queen's "Somebody To Love." So that's what Freddy Mercury would have looked and sounded like if he was a raging heterosexual.

Turner's encore began with a solo acoustic cover of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel," which he introduced as a Toronto song. When I gently chided Turner and told him that Cohen was from Montreal when we met for drinks at a local pub after the show, he said he realized he'd made a mistake as soon as the words left his lips -- but it was too late to turn back. The song should go over well if he pulls it out again tonight for his show at Montreal's Corona.

Turner remained alone on stage for "Ballad of Me and My Friends" before The Sleeping Souls returned for a rousing run through "Photosynthesis" wherein the singer urged everyone in the house -- including the bartenders and security guards -- to sing the anthemic chorus. They did, and Turner rewarded the diehards up front by diving off the stage into their outstretched arms.

Slowly but surely, Turner is becoming a star. That's certainly the case in Toronto, at least, which he's claiming as his second home after London.

The British artist's Canadian tour is almost over, but he'll return next spring as part of an exciting double bill that I'm already looking forward to but can't yet reveal.

In conversation with Frank Turner
British folk-punk singer/songwriter Frank Turner made a whirlwind visit through Toronto last week. He played a concert in my living room on Jan. 25 and then three more shows over the next two nights.

Some of Turner's time was also spent talking to journalists to promote Poetry Of The Deed, which was released by Epitaph Records last September. Spinner ran an article from my interview with him yesterday, but we talked about so much else that I thought I'd post our entire conversation.

It's long, so I won't waste any more of your time with this introduction.

But if you'd like to turn this into a drinking game, down a shot every time Turner utters a derivation of the word "fuck." You'll likely be loaded before you make it to the end.

Here's our Q&A session:

Steve McLean: You're playing your first few North American dates solo before getting a full band for your stint opening for Flogging Molly. Will you have your British band or will you be picking up players here like when I saw you in Austin last year?
Frank Turner: I always like that you had Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band or Neil Young and Crazy Horse. I want my backing band to be a set group of people so the people who are into my stuff are going to know their names and know who they are. I don't want to have a bunch of sessionistas. The English band played on the last record and they're my friends and they're consummate musicians — much better than I am. This will be the first time that I'll be able to bring them to this side of the Atlantic, and I'm really excited about that. As much as I enjoy playing solo and that is the core of what I do, and will remain the core of what I do, I feel we're going to turn some heads on the Flogging Molly tour because no-one here has seen it before.

Do you have a preference in playing solo or with a band?
It generally depends on what I've been doing more of recently. I think both of them have their own thing. Right now when I'm doing a band show, it realizes the kind of sound I'm trying to make most fully at the moment. The first show I did this year was in Kingston in south London. We made a very cheap ticket price and it was crazy and we sold 1,000 tickets in a week. I played solo on a tiny stage and there were people around, above and behind me. The vibe was just amazing.

You performed in my living room last night. Do you do many shows like that, and why do you do them?
The reason that I'm a lucky and privileged person is that I get to travel the world and I don't have a desk job. But much more important than that is that there's nothing I enjoy more than playing guitar and singing. It's my favourite thing to do in the whole world. As a corollary to that, I really enjoy entertaining a crowd. It's a really fulfilling thing. I don't care if it's for five people or 5,000 people. I've been working with the Epitaph guys for under a year and I'm still convincing them that I'm serious when I say stuff like "Any after-shows or house parties, I'm in."
We have this thing about the number of days I do in a row while I'm on tour. On the Flogging Molly tour, we've been filling in all the off-days and we've reached a stretch now where there are 21 shows in a row. I'd just be sitting around playing guitar on an off-day anyway, so I might as well do it for some people. It's simple for me. I just love playing. If it's at someone's house where they want to hear me play, I'm in. It's all just playing. 

Do you think your profile is growing in North America, and is it reflected in record sales and concert attendance?
In the U.K., things are pretty well established for me now because I've been touring there a lot more. Mainland Europe generally falls in behind what the U.K.'s doing, so things are going pretty well in Europe right now.
North America is a thing unto itself. I feel like there's more work to do here. I did plenty of hand to mouth American tours where I'd play to 20 people in a bar every night. Now I have an L.A. show next week that's sold-out. That's a big fucking difference right there. I want to move it to somewhere bigger because loads of people are e-mailing me. But from a promotional point of view, it's good to be turning people away. And we're doing Coachella now. And the fill shows we're doing on the Flogging Molly tour are 200 or 300 capacity venues, and it looks like we'll be getting good crowds. Things are definitely moving in the right direction.
I don't know if people recognize this over here, but there's this almost terminal obsession in the U.K. music industry with breaking America. They talk about it like it's a black and white thing, as in if you don't go over there and become as big as The Beatles then you might as well not bother going at all. And I'm all, "What the fuck are you talking about?" If I reach a point in my life if my career in North America plateaus out and I'm playing to 200 or 300 people a night, that's amazing. That's fucking great. I'm thousands of miles away from home and 300 people want to hear me play. If it goes further than that, that's brilliant and I'm not going to complain about that. But there's this funny thing in England where you're either fucking interstellarly huge or you're nothing. But you can sort of be medium. I have no problem with being medium.

You posted on your Twitter and you mentioned last night that you've been working on new songs. How are they coming along?
I've got a ton of ideas coming at the moment. I'm quite strict at trying not to be meta-analytical about my songwriting. I try not to sit there and think about what direction I'm going to go in because that feels really contrived to me. I just try to sit down and write a good song. I do my best to try and not put any other angles on that because then it seems like you're forcing it. Having said that, when the next album is starting to coalesce, you can't help but think about what it's going to be like.
Without going into details, I'm recently single again and not in a particularly nice way, and that obviously sets me hurtling down a slightly different path songwriting-wise.
Directionally speaking, my one kind of caveat about the Poetry Of The Deed album is that I think I got a bit over-excited about the fact that I had a band in the studio. I think it's a tiny bit too much of a band record for me. I think it could have done with a little bit more solo stuff on it. Something I'm planning on doing next week is sitting down and making sure I have guitar and vocals done for every song. There are a couple of songs on Poetry Of The Deed that I can't really play without a band, and I feel a bit funny about that retrospectively. It feels like I've broken my own golden rule.
But I'm really excited about some of the new stuff I've got coming up. I think that the first three records fit together in a way, and it's not like I'm going to make a completely left-hand turn and go crazy, but I want to be a bit more experimental lyrically. I've been listening to a lot of Nick Cave. At the risk of doing a Nick Cave-slash-Dylan or whatever, I've been writing about religion quite a bit recently. I'm an atheist, but I come from a very religious family and I find the whole thing fascinating. So we'll see what happens.

Do you have a life philosophy that makes its way into your songs?
I wouldn't have anything so coherent that I could write it down and publish it, but my guiding lights in life are still things I have from growing up with punk rock. I believe in self-reliance and independence and individuality. To a large degree, you make your own luck in life and that through hard work and self-belief you can achieve a lot.
I've always loved the introductory quote from Get In The Van by Henry Rollins where he says, "I'm a man of average intelligence. If I've achieved the things that I've achieved through hard work, imagine what you can do."
I actually had that stuck on my wall for a little while because it's such an inspirational quote. That's my general take on things. Life is short and there's lots to do, so keep busy.
I have so much planned for the next year. There's a live DVD coming out in March, which has got two full shows from London as well as videos and tour diaries. I'm going to be touring all over the world for the rest of the year, and then hopefully in early 2011 I'm going to put out two albums at the same time. One will be the next record, but I'm also going to do a record of traditional English songs. Someone has also asked me to write a book, which I've started working on as well.

What's the book about?
By the end of this year, I'm probably going to be up to 1,000 shows. The idea is to go through those and pick 100 shows and I'm going to write them up as diary entries. I'll pick shows that have an anecdote with them or have a point, so it's not going to be just a straight tour diary. That seemed like a cool premise to write something that wasn't going to be as pretentious as writing an autobiography when I'm 28. It's one of those things where at first it seems daunting and then you say "I can do this," and then you realize that it's an absolute fucking ton of work. That's something that's going to take over for a while.

Is the live DVD coming out through Epitaph as well?
It's coming out through Xtra Mile and I'm not sure if Epitaph is going to fully license it for the states, but they have an online store that they sell shit through, and I think we're going to give them a bunch of copies.
One of the shows on the DVD was at Shepherd's Bush Empire in October, which is thus far the biggest headlining show I've done. It's this amazing venue that holds 2,000 people and, if I may say so myself, it was the show of a fucking lifetime. It was right at the end of a tour, it was a full band show and everyone was so fuckin' tight. The crowd was awesome and everything went like clockwork.
The other show was at Christmas last year at a venue called Union Chapel, which is actually a church that holds about 900 people. We did kind of an unplugged show, so it was with the band but my drummer was using brushes and percussion and my other guitarist was on acoustic and mandolin and we worked up alternative versions of songs and dug out songs that we hadn't done for a long time, and one or two that I'd never played live before. There's a song called "Hold Your Tongue" from The First Three Years that I've totally rediscovered because we recorded it and never played it live. I think it's a really nice DVD package that has a lot of shit on it.

Do you try to find a balance between personal and socio-political, and now maybe religious, songs?
I'm not settled in myself about either my opinions or my relationship with politics as an artist. I never wanted to be a protest singer and I don't consider myself to be one. But it's funny how in putting out three records, each of which has one political song on it, that there are still plenty of people who see me as a protest singer. Imagine if I actually did write protest songs.
The other part of it that I find quite challenging are the assumptions that people make about my politics based on I'm a white kid with a guitar who sounds a bit like Billy Bragg in places. I oscillate between being hugely entertained by them and utterly dismayed by them. Basically people think that I'm a socialist. But I'm not and I never was. In fact I couldn't be any further away from that.
I describe myself as a libertarian. I believe in resisting tyrannical governments, and I think that almost all government is tyrannical by definition. That's where I fall, for what it's worth. The music industry as a whole is sort of a soft left place, and that's fine. But I suddenly realized that I was not saying what I believed in and I kept changing the subject about politics, largely because I just couldn't be fuckin' bothered to have the discussion. But there are a lot of people I know who get slightly offended when I tell them that I think socialism is insanity and slavery.
And then I realized that all of us, myself included, go on and on and on about how we should stand up for what we believe in, and here's me doing the opposite of that. I thought if I have any fucking moral fibre as a human being, I need to write fuckin' songs about this and sing them. "Sons Of Liberty" is sort of down that line, but I want to be a little more explicit about it.
So there's this new song I've finished about Che Guevara T-shirts that I think is going to annoy a lot of people. The guy was a murderous, homophobic thug. What's to be idolized about that? He took great pleasure in shooting people who disagreed with him. I don't care what your political spots are, that makes you a twat.

Do you attribute your way with words, knowledge of history and social awareness more to your formal education or other factors?
I really enjoyed my formal education and I think that academia is where I'm going the minute that I'm not able to make a living out of playing music anymore. History was my subject and I'm very passionate about it and interested in it. I think that history is vastly important. I don't really understand that I have friends who know nothing about history and don't care. I can't understand how they can just exist at all without being inquisitive about it. History explains why we're here and why things are the way they are. How can you not care about that?

So you're an advocate of higher education.
Yeah, but I'm really kind of old-school about it. Languages, science, philosophy, maths, history and stuff like that are good. But I have friends who do degrees in hotel management. That's not a fuckin' degree. That's a skill, which is fine, but it's not a degree. It's a different thing. Particularly in the U.K., there's been a lot of confusion between the polytechnics which teach skills and universities. Basically, I'm in favour of utterly useless knowledge. I want people to go to university and learn nothing that will help them in life. I went to university and I got very fucked off with people in my class who were waiting out their time so they could get a stamp on their CV so they could get a high-paying job. Fuck you. Go and do a business management course or an economics degree.

Are there any songs that you're particularly proud of that you'd like to talk about?
Yes, but it's difficult because it's kind of like having children that you're supposed to equally love. But there are one or two that sort of rise above for me. "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous" said a number of things that I wanted to say as well as I'll ever say them. I was also very pleased with "Journey Of The Magi," because that was lyrically a slight departure and I was a bit nervous about trying my hand with it. But I felt that it came out okay.
I have this new song that I'm working on about Bob Dylan and Patty Hearst standing around on a pirate ship. I'm really, really fucking pleased with how that one's coming.

Old-school pirate ship or new-school Somali pirate ship?
It doesn't really specify. It's about a lot of things, but that's one of the images in it. I figured that those two would make a cool couple sailing around the world and robbing people.

I remember you telling me last year about how everything came together with Epitaph. Can you share that again?
I was on tour with Gaslight Anthem in Europe and I was having a shitty day. You know when you're in one of those moods where you're like the next person who calls me is going to get a fuckin' ear full. It doesn't matter if it's the fuckin' Pope. Then my phone rang and had an unknown American number and I was like, "Who the fuck is this?"
I answered the phone and it was Brett (Gurewitz). I grew up with Bad Religion and Epitaph Records, and it was really funny because he started telling me who he was and I said, "I fucking know who you are."
He said "My name's Brett and I play in a band and I run this little record label," and I was like, "I know."
He was cool and straight-up and said, "I really like your stuff and I'd like you to be on my label."
And I said, "Cool."
We were talking to a lot of other labels at the time, and I did actually hang up the phone on a very, very big major label deal that was worth a lot of money. That was difficult. I'm not particularly morally opposed to major labels. I think that's a false dichotomy.
But my one major condition was that I wasn't going to leave Xtra Mile Recordings in the U.K. because they're like family. Million Dead did records for Xtra Mile as well, and when we broke up and I announced to the world that I was going to do folk stuff, everybody apart from two people just said, "Good luck with that and call us back in six months when you're back in hardcore bands."
One of them was a guy who does a punk show on Radio One called Mike Davies. He said "I get it. I totally fucking get it."
And then there were the guys at Xtra Mile. I don't think they were quite as enthusiastic about it as Mike was, but eventually they said, "Let's see where this goes."
I didn't want to ditch them, and all of these labels that offered big money said they wanted to sign me for the world. And I was like, "Hello. You're not listening to me."
And in that very first conversation with Brett, he was like, "What are you looking for in a deal?"
I told him he could have rights to the whole world outside of the U.K., and he was like, "Cool, that's fine."
It was ridiculously easy. It was about six weeks after that that we signed a deal, which is very fucking fast. It's been great since then and I'm pleased with the way it all worked out.

What was the impetus to make you leave a punk band and embark on a solo career?
There were a lot of different reasons at the time. Part of it was getting older and developing a changing taste in music. I'd started to get heavily into country and folk in the last few years of Million Dead's existence.
The other major factor was that Million Dead was a really, really intense band. We were like willfully intense. We used to beat each other up verbally. We had to be a cross between Black Flag and Refused. Every show had to be the greatest hardcore show ever. I remember Tom, our guitarist, at one show where our bass player missed a note and he walked right over to her and got right in her face and yelled "Fuck you" in front of 500 people.
The whole atmosphere around that was just really fucking intense. I think we were a pretty good band. We made some good records and I think we put on some good shows.
The band nearly broke up over the cover artwork of our first album. It literally got into a fist fight. One of the guys was like, "If you put that fuckin' photo on the cover of the album, I'm out of this fucking band."
When the band broke up, I was like, "I am fucking through with being in bands."
I wanted to keep making music and touring, but I didn't want anything fucking resembling what I'd been through. The farewell tour we did was utterly out of control because I started doing quite a lot of drugs — mainly to piss everyone off because they were all very anti-drugs. So I was like, "Okay, motherfuckers, let's see where this goes."
That last tour was unhinged, but we played the best we'd ever fuckin' played and the crowds were great. But after the show in the dressing room, two members of the band would be punching each other, someone else would be doing massive amounts of cocaine, and somebody else would just be crying. It was just fucking mad. At the time, we all kind of took it in our stride. But looking back at it now, I'm like, "Jesus Christ."
But I didn't want anything at all to do with that, and going out and playing songs on my own made a lot of sense. Even I wasn't sure if I was going to do it forever when I first started doing it, but it very quickly felt like I'd hit my stride.
Being in a band like Million Dead was kind of like we were so bent on making every song so fucking weird and complicated and odd and intense and unhinged and uneasy. To go from that to just going, "G, C, D" was relaxed and I could have fun with it.

Do you consider yourself a punk, a folkie or do you try to distance yourself from such labels?
It's funny that I somehow in life ended up with the two most contentious words in the genre dictionary. I must be some sort of masochist. But I grew up in punk and it will always be the bedrock of what I do. But I've been known to describe what I do as folk because I want it to be considered community music. But at the end of the day, descriptions only exist until you actually hear the band you're talking about.
If I had to pick a word to describe myself, I'd say I'm an entertainer. I'm really adamant that I don't think that anybody can describe themselves as artists. I think that's illegitimate. It's not for you to say about yourself. Other people can tag you as an artist, particularly after you're dead, but my day-to-day job is entertainment. Hand in hand with that statement is the fact that loads of people are disparaging about that word and that concept, which I think is bullshit. What could be a nobler profession than to be an entertainer?
What could be a more fucking wonderful job to have than when people get to the end of their busy week and come down to your show and pay a cover charge to get in and you make sure that they have a good fuckin' time. In saying so, that puts me into the same ballpark as everyone from actors to vaudeville. I like that association. When people come to my shows, it's like if they don't walk away having a good time after I've played, then I'm not doing my job properly.
I get really fucked off the way that Dylan now just seems to be trying to irritate the shit out of everybody at 100 pounds a ticket. If it was a free show, maybe. But fuck you, I've paid a ton of fuckin' money. I saw him and he sat behind the drummer and played piano all night. I was like, "Don't be a cunt. Get up and play some fucking guitar."
The whole self-conscious artist thing just fucking gets my back up.

Campfire Punkrock was the title of your first EP. I think it's a good, succinct description of your music.
I stole that off a guy. I was in Dundee and I'd just finished playing a show and I was outside having a cigarette, because I was smoking at the time, and this catatonically drunk Scottish guy walked up and said, "Ah, you're fucking campfire punk rock you are, you bastard," and then walked off.
I was like, "Thank you very much," and took out my notepad and wrote it down.
In the sleeve for the EP, it says "Thanks to the drunk guy in Dundee who gave me the title for the EP." You have to take your inspiration where you can get it.

Is there anything we haven't touched on that you'd like to talk about?
My ideal kind of night is kind of chaotic, careening around the place, old friends making new friends, playing songs and drinking a lot of whiskey. That's me in my happy place.
It's nice to be in Toronto. As I was saying last night, it was kind of surreal. The first show I played here was in an amphitheatre and the second one was in your house. It's nice that we have this show here (Horseshoe Tavern) tonight. It's like a leveling out.
I've been reading a Neil Young biography and it has a lot to say about the Toronto music scene. We walked past Massey Hall yesterday, and I was excited by that. A lot of people have good things to say about the Canadian music scene and I've always been well-treated in Canada. It's nice to be here and hopefully I'll be back soon.

Three nights with Frank Turner

British folk-punk singer/songwriter Frank Turner launched his current North American tour in my living room on Jan. 25, and then played three more shows in the next two nights at a trio of other Toronto venues. Aside from Turner and Epitaph Canada's Tonni Maruyama and Keith Maurik, I was the only person present for all four performances.

Turner had promised on night one that he'd try to mix up his sets so people who saw him multiple times during his Toronto stay wouldn't get the same songs every time. While there were some repeats, mostly of songs I had no problem hearing over again, the Bahrain-born entertainer lived up to his word.

You can check the set list, and find a download link to about 40 minutes of the performance, from my abode here. 

Here are capsulized reviews of the other three shows:

Horseshoe Tavern, Tues. Jan. 26 

Turner packed the house for a free show at the Horseshoe, during which he opened with the same three songs as the night before: "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous," "Try This At Home" and "Substitute." He followed that with "Isabel" and a Love Ire & Song favourite about the after-effects of a major bender, "The Real Damage." A female member of the audience was recruited to come on stage for a closing harmonica solo on "Dan's Song," and she acquitted herself reasonably well for someone who'd never played before.

"Sunshine State" was introduced by an amusing story about an ex-girlfriend who Turner realized wasn't particularly faithful. "Long Live The Queen" got a lot of people singing and clapping along and Love Ire & Song's title track was particularly strong.

Turner then offered up a cover of what he called the greatest song ever, Half Man Half Biscuit's "Vatican Broadside," which featured the stirring refrain, "Who the fucking hell are Slipknot?" The traditional folk ballad "Barbara Allen" and the Weakerthans' "Watermark," which Turner had performed during a radio interview with Dave Bookman on 102.1 The Edge a night earlier, rounded out the covers portion of the evening.

Turner was sweating profusely by the time he got to Poetry Of The Deed single/video "The Road," which had many in the impressively enthusiastic audience singing along. Things slowed down with "Journey Of The Magi," which he had told me earlier in the day was one of the two favourite songs he's written. Things livened up more for the last two numbers, "Photosynthesis" and "The Ballad Of Me And My Friends."

Gibson Guitar Lounge, Wed. Jan. 27 (early)
This was an invitation-only performance recorded for Punkradiocast.com and held at Gibson's showroom and performance/party space. I arrived early to find Turner in the showroom shredding away on a black electric Epiphone that he'd taken off the wall, something he said he loves but doesn't get the chance to do very often. He then joined us in the lounge where bottles of Steam Whistle beer and shots of Jagermeister were being given away.

Turner opened his set with "Nashville Tennessee." Then, noting his surroundings, he introduced "Romantic Fatigue" by saying, "Anybody that knows how to play guitar had absolutely no friends when they were a teenager." He claimed that "Romantic Fatigue" was the first song he'd written as a solo artist, and it was good to hear something I'd never heard him do before.

"Try This At Home" was next and was followed by another number I'd never heard him play before, "To Take You Home." He then introduced a new and still untitled song that he'd previously told me he was very happy with, which includes references to Bob Dylan and Patty Hearst sailing around on a pirate ship.

A request for "Substitute" was granted, and Turner said the next song was written for his "fuckin' cool" mom. It was "Faithful Son" and another cut I'd never heard live before. There was a request for a Take That cover that Turner had played on BBC Radio and, while he told a story about it, he didn't play the song. He instead covered a much, much better song: Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." It was another first for me.

Turner finished his set with "The Ballad Of Me And My Friends" before rushing off to The Dakota Tavern, where I soon joined him at a table for a pre-show dinner.

The Dakota Tavern, Wed. Jan. 27 (late)
After filling the Horseshoe to capacity for the free show on Tuesday, I thought this smaller venue would be packed like a sardine can by people willing to pay seven bucks to see Turner, local rock hero Ian Blurton and psych-rock band Huron — who also acted as Blurton's accompanists. It was busy, but not as much as I had anticipated.

Turner opened with "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous," the other of the two songs he ranks as his favourites. It was followed by "Father's Day" (during which Turner's voice cracked) and a cover of The Postal Service's "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight," which I didn't know the first time I heard Turner perform it last March in Austin, Texas at the Kerrang! party during the South By Southwest Music Festival.

Turner reprised the Dylan on the pirate ship song and, like on Tuesday night, asked for a volunteer to play harmonica on "Dan's Song." Another woman filled the role admirably. The new and still untitled drinking song that Turner had performed at my place was brought out again, as was "Try This At Home" and "Heartless Bastard Motherfucker" after a request. He played "Jet Lag" and admitted that he was feeling the combined effects of jet lag from his flight from England and fatigue from partying upon his arrival.

"My voice is a little fucked today, which is entirely my fault," Turner said before launching into "Long Live The Queen."

"Back In The Day" and "The Road" kept things rolling before Turner acknowledged, "I can't believe that so many people give a shit about what I do when I haven't spent much time here."

Turner promised to return again soon (though his concert calendar is packed through the first half of the year, so far) and concluded with "The Ballad Of Me And My Friends."

The boisterous crowd demanded an encore, which Turner said would deprive him of time with drugs and supermodels. But he gave in and led a rousing sing-along version of Abba's "Dancing Queen" that had almost everyone in the basement club joining in.

The final installment of my "Turner In Toronto" saga, a Q&A transcript of a conversation recorded at the Horseshoe Tavern on the afternoon of Jan. 26, will appear on this page after an article I wrote about Turner is posted on the Spinner web site.