Frank Turner returning to Buffalo with new album, old memories, persisting positivity: interview
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — For almost 20 years and nearly 3,000 shows, singer-songwriter Frank Turner has been circling the globe bringing music, healing and joy to fans of folk and punk music everywhere. He will be playing Town Ballroom on Aug. 25 with his band, The Sleeping Souls. Bedouin Soundclash and Bridge City Sinners will be playing support.
Turner released his 10th record, “Undefeated” on May 3, followed by the acoustic version of the album this past Friday.
“I do sort of like to check myself to make sure I’m not just making a record because that’s what I do, and for the sake of it, and churning one out, all that kind of business,” Turner said of the record. “I want to make sure I have something to say, that I’m not repeating myself.”
He said each album he records represents around two years of his life, between writing, recording demos, the band arrangements, editing and recording. “Undefeated” was the first time Turner’s produced one of his albums himself, as he spent time during the COVID-19 pandemic learning how to engineer and produce music. He cited “Somewhere Inbetween” as his favorite song on the record, though he said each song is important to him for different reasons.
Turner noted that for the acoustic version of “Undefeated,” he took inspiration from Billy Bragg’s acoustic version of “Mr. Love & Justice,” calling what Bragg did a cool idea.
“I like the idea of having acoustic versions of albums out there; it’s a thing I’ve done a few times,” he said. “I play solo shows pretty regularly, and for a lot of the songs, this is how they were born — just me and a guitar before I took them to my band to arrange them into the finished, ‘official’ versions, as it were. Not all of them, I should say actually — some of them came together more organically in the room with my band”
He discussed the relative ease of recording an acoustic album, with less equipment and less takes in recording, compared with a full band setup.
“At the center of what I do, there is this idea of kind of maintaining that ‘spine,’ if you like, of the sort of paradigm of the troubadour — one person with one instrument,” Turner said. “I love my band to pieces, and obviously the way the songs sound on the album proper is how I ultimately envisage them. But it’s a nice thing to share with people.”
Lately, Turner’s been listening to a lot of Nick Cave, whom he said inspired the philosophical ideas on “Undefeated,” as Cave is someone who’s attitude toward art Turner appreciates. Additionally, Turner said his wife Jessica Guise, a psychotherapist, put him onto the work of Irvin Yalom, which he said was also highly influential to the album.
Turner also remarked on his optimistic demeanor, crediting mid-’90s PMA hardcore bands, such as Bad Brains, Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today for being influential on how he thinks about the world.
“I’m not sure that I’m habitually an especially optimistic person,” he said. “It’s more that it seems to me, that if life is what it is — a veil of tears, however you want to put it — where are you going to put your energy? Where are you going to expend your available resources? It’s more worth my time trying to find things to be positive about and focusing on those things than it is bemoaning the dark side.”
He said that his thoughts on positivity are not meant to be a criticism toward those who do happen to bemoan the dark side of things, but rather for him personally to try to lighten the weight of the world off people’s shoulders through his music.
“You wouldn’t need to do that if the world was a lovely, beautiful, perfect place — which I don’t think it is,” he said. “But it’s worth doing that in order to make some positive contribution to the world.”
Turner said he’s very excited to be back in Buffalo next week and apologized to his Buffalo fans for not having played the city in three years.
“I want people to get their rocks off, I want them to have a good time and have a dance and have a sing and feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. That’s certainly what I get out of it,” he said. “The Town Ballroom is such a great gig, so I’m very much looking forward to that.”
Turner said he treats his shows as “participation sports,” attempting to break down the artificial barrier between the performers and the audience to make the show more of a conversation rather than a monologue.
While discussing memories of Buffalo, he recalled a show he played at Mohawk Place with his friend Donny earlier in his career. He said that at the show, he embarrassed himself in front of Daryl Taberski, the bassist and vocalist of Buffalo hardcore band Snapcase.
“As I said, I’m a big hardcore punk fan and Donny invited Daryl from Snapcase to come see me play to about 50 people in a bar,” Turner regaled. “And this is back when I used to drink a lot more than I do now, and certainly, before shows as well. I had had enough to drink that I’d kind of forgotten that Snapcase are a straight edge band. I was about to go onstage, and Daryl’s a lovely guy and I’m a huge fan of his music, and I was pouring out shots of whiskey and I was trying to give him one, and he was being very polite in his refusal.
“I was like, ‘Don’t make me look like an idiot,’ or perhaps a slightly harsher, less radio-friendly word than that. He politely demurred, so I drank both of the shots that I’d poured out, went on and started doing the show, and about three songs in, it suddenly just sort of dawned on me halfway through the song what I’d been doing before the show and that I’d been making a fool of myself.”
Outside of the show, Turner, who hails from the U.K., is excited about returning to the Anchor Bar for wings while in town.
“I’m sure everybody says this, but as an English person, Buffalo wings are not a thing in the U.K. — it’s not a recognized concept,” he said. “On first coming to America and discovering the American embassy, or ‘B-Dubs’ as it’s also known, and sort of getting into the concept, I’ve been to the Anchor Bar and I will be going again.”
Just three weeks after Turner’s Buffalo show — the second stop on the Undefeated North American tour — he and The Sleeping Souls will be back in the continent’s northeast region, hosting the Lost Evenings VII festival in Toronto.
Tickets to Turner’s Town Ballroom show are available at this link. The interview with Frank Turner can be seen in the video player below.
Adam Duke is a digital contributor who joined WIVB in 2021. See more of his work here.
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