He's not a flag-waving nationalist, he's just got a few things to say about his country. Folk/punk singer-songwriter Frank Turner talks to TONY CLAYTON-LEA
You’re a bit of a festivals’ favourite, but are they all they’re made out to be? Can they be a blessing and a curse?
“Maybe – you can make new friends at festivals, win new people to the cause, or that’s the idea anyway. It’s a bit of a natural cycle by this stage. I start the festivals in June, and I’m very excited about it, yet at the end of August I’m usually a bit sick of wandering around fields not being entirely sure what’s going on.”
Do you think people define what you do as folk/punk singer-songwriter too easily?
“It depends, really. In many ways having to describe or define music is a shortcut, and for some that’s okay. The people who describe what I do as a mixture of folk and punk rock – on a broad stroke, I’m fine with that. I don’t sit particularly easily within standard genre classifications. Or at least that’s what the Japanese have told me – we’ve been trying to organise a tour of Japan but they tell me I don’t fit into any genre that would sell over there. I try not to spend too much time thinking about the question of definitions.
There is a distinct Englishness to your music – would you be annoyed if I said it reminded me of Tom Robinson?
“I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you very much. Weirdly, I would say that – while I like Tom Robinson – most of my influences are American, people such as Bruce Springsteen.
“I’m not for a moment a no-holds-barred, flag-waving, cheerleading nationalist – I have as many critical as enthusiastic things to say about my country. But I’m quite happy in the way my feelings bleed into what I do. I’m a very English person in my tastes and habits.”
Does your sense of Englishness travel well?
"With England Keeps My BonesI thought for a while about whether it was a good idea to put the word England in the title, and, it's weird, but Americans love it. In my experience, Americans are closet Anglophiles, particularly in the US punk scene because they're all obsessed with Joe Strummer."
Singer-songwriters are self-obsessed, aren’t they?
“I think you’re right, but one of my bugbears, particularly in the world of rock’n’roll, is that there has been, historically, a tendency for forgiving arsehole behaviour by certain people, and I don’t see an excuse for that.
“For every person who throws a television set out of a window, or wrecks a hotel room, there’s someone on minimum wage who is going to have to clean it up. That’s something I do my very best to remember when I go about my business.”
Is honesty always the best policy for a songwriter?
“I think emotional honesty is, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily always have to mean verbatim, factual reports on certain events. I mean, Springsteen is a storyteller, and quite often writes from the point of view of other people, but he pours enough emotional truth into his songs that they work as pieces of art. I tend to write in a more confessional style, but that’s only because, generally, I’m not very good at writing fiction.”
England Keep My Bonesis on release through Xtra Mile Recordings/Epitaph. Frank Turner plays the Set Theatre (Kilkenny, Tuesday, September 13); Cyprus Avenue (Cork, Wednesday September 14); Roisin Dubh (Galway, Thursday 15); and Whelan's (Dublin, Sunday September 18)
