The Swellesley Report interviews F-ing Frank Turner at Boston Calling Music Festival

While English punk/folk singer-songwriter Frank Turner is known for being a great guy to interview, we still felt an ice breaker or two might be in order for our chat in the media tent at this past weekend’s Boston Calling Music Festival. Turner and his band, The Sleeping Souls, gave it all during a 1-hour set on Saturday featuring new songs, anxious guitar solos, anthemic sing-a-longs, crowdsourced ballerina dancing, and crowdsurfing by Turner himself.

So we started off by asking Turner if he’d ever even heard of Wellesley. Uh, nope.

How about Wellesley College? Yes, he’d heard of it, and “not just because of Hillary,” he assured.

Ever been interviewed by a father-son combination as he was here by myself and my son Duncan? “Not that I can recall. Let’s say ‘no.'”

Good, we had our bearings, and from there were off to the races, touching on everything from Turner’s new album, “Undefeated” to playing festivals to the dangers of filming a music video with a pro wrestler-turned-UFC fighter. The well-read Turner has an extensive vocabulary, though is partial to a certain curse word that we’ll share in a family-friendly sort of way…

If you’re unfamiliar with his music, Turner started with a hardcore band but switched to a mix of folk, punk and pop, with his first album released in 2007. Some people we know have never heard of him, while others count him among their favorite performers thanks to both his catchy songs, willingness to dive into touchy topics, and special rapport with live audiences. My unabashed devotion to Turner, which goes back to seeing him at the Middle East more than 10 years back, has been passed along to our sons. Even Mrs. Swellesley quotes the musician on a regular basis (“Things didn’t kill me, but I don’t feel stronger…”).

While we didn’t expect that Turner would be familiar with The Swellesley Report, we did ask him how he gets local news in the small U.K. town where he lives. “We have a free local newspaper that gets delivered to our door every 2 weeks—it’s something of a local joke though because nothing happens where I live and that’s kind of why everyone moves there… so they have these increasingly desperate headlines like ‘Racism bad’—OK, I’m glad we’ve caught up on that one….”

“Chatting with my neighbors is the other way we get news,” he adds.

Turner, who takes on political, mental health, drug abuse, immigration, and other serious issues in his songs, did say that the “collapse of high quality local journalism in the last 30 years has been damaging to democracy as a process.”

Now back to the music. The last time we’d seen Turner was in 2023 at Roadrunner as part of his 50 States in 50 Days tour. As he said then and during our interview, we were lucky to have caught him early in the tour, now the subject of a documentary. “It got pretty grueling at the end,” he says. “Things got pretty weird around the Dakotas, but we made it and I lived to tell the tale. We had great shows in the Dakotas, but they are needlessly huge states. It’s like, couldn’t you put these a bit closer to Minneapolis?”

More recently Turner banged out 15 shows in 15 UK towns within 24 hours in a bid to raise funds for the Music Venue Trust and set a world record.

A self-described history nerd, Turner says he has taken time to hit local history trails and museums in Boston when his schedule allows (he has played a series of shows here more than once). He had no time for such dalliances this time around, even squeezing in a late show at Big Night Live the night before his Saturday afternoon gig at Boston Calling.

Cross-generational fans

Duncan asked Turner what he notices about the different generations of fans he now encounters at shows, as about 20 years into his solo career he has been embraced by his original fans and their kids. One thing Turner says is that he understands different fans have been introduced to him through different records, so for most headlining shows he will try to include something on the setlist from most of his albums. “You try to throw everyone a bone, try to keep everyone happy,” he says.

“I like to think there’s a pretty broad spectrum of people that come to my shows, and that’s a source of pride for me,” Turner says, noting that the younger ones tend to “launch themselves” more often at his shows. “I’ve toured with bands that have just like one demographic, say 16-18-year-old dudes with a diagonal haircut or whatever. Ultimately you don’t get to choose your audience, and I’m just grateful for whoever does show up. It does please me to look out and see punks and old fogies and indie kids.”

Asked which album might be the best Frank Turner introductory for a new fan, the singer-songwriter says he’d point to his latest just because “that’s the best representation of where I am now.” Having said that, Turner adds that “I don’t want us to become one of these bands that becomes ostentatiously bored of playing all the songs. I think that’s a complete misunderstanding of what a show is… the whole point of the entire exercise is about interaction. It’s a dialogue, not a monologue.”

Turner says he’s played “Photosynthesis,” written 17 years ago when he was 25, about 11 million times. But he says it’s different every time because of the different people, excitement, and energy in front of him and the band.

On his new album, Turner has a song called “Show People” that celebrates those who love performing, with a passing reference to a singer named John Otway who had a hit song in the ’70s called “Really Free” and who is still touring. “I love this term ‘show people,'” Turner says. “It’s not punk, it’s not rock ‘n roll, but there’s a continuity between all the performing arts that I really, really like.

“And I like the fact that there’s been moments when that term’s been an insult, like the word punk. Well right, f— off, we’re carnies or show people,” he says.

World’s most family friendly mosh pit at @frankturner show at @bostoncalling pic.twitter.com/VeSf8llKNX

— swellesley (@swellesley) May 28, 2024

More: Boston Calling Musical Festival ’24: A celebratory mix of pop, country, hip-hop, indie rock & you name it

Playing the festival circuit

Turner clearly was introduced to a new audience at Boston Calling this year, especially given the country-heavy line-up surrounding him on Saturday. In fact, Turner says other than a few acts like the Killers, Red Clay Strays, and Ed Sheeran, he wasn’t familiar with many of the other performers.

“Festivals are interesting, it’s a bit like speed dating,” Turner says. “Everybody’s going to see a lot of bands that day. It’s not really the time for the 8-minute experimental song.”

Turner said there’s also “the question of, the rude term would be ‘pandering,’ but how much do you tailor what you do the the expectations of an audience.” He says he’s gone back and forth on this over the years. In opening for Jason Isbell in the past, Turner has catered more to that audience. But for a festival like this, his attitude is “f— everybody, we’re just going to do the show we’re going to do… maybe you haven’t seen a punk rock show before, but here’s how it goes.” He recalled playing the Newport Folk Festival a few years back, and even though they toned it down a bit, Turner says there were “people with fingers in their ears.”

Responding to my question about rock concerts becoming a bit too tidy over the years, with predictable setlists and banter, Turner picked up on that, agreeing there’s been a sort of “nice-ification of punk rock in recent years, and sorry, I’ve probably had something to do with that.” Still, he said, referencing one of his favorites, the Butthole Surfers, that “punk is also supposed to be challenging and confrontational…. sometimes younger bands these days will tell off punk bands for being offensive, and you know, it is punk rock. It’s not supposed to make you feel good all the time.”

Music interpretation

I was a little surprised on Turner’s Youtube channel that he has posted short videos explaining each of the songs on his new “Undefeated” album. Oftentimes artists will defer on song explanations, suggesting it’s really up to the listener, and Turner says he does also subscribe to that way of thinking.

“Interpretation is king or queen,” he says.

Turner is amused that his “The Way I Tend to Be” is used by some as a wedding song even though it’s a song about “everything collapsing and going wrong in a relationship… but it doesn’t really matter what I think it’s about. It’s about whatever anybody thinks it’s about.” Turner referenced our conversation about this before the band played this song later in the day.

We also asked about his video for the song “The Next Storm,” in which he dukes it out with CM Punk of pro wrestling and mixed martial arts fame. “I got beaten up by a wrestler… it sucked… it was f—ing terrifying,” he laughs. “I did a training day for it. Everybody says wrestling’s fake: It is and it isn’t.”

Turner makes various cultural references in his songs, and notable are those to T.S. Eliot works. Just how many? “Probably too many,” he says, adding that the poet’s earlier work spoke to Turner when he was younger, and now Eliot’s later work means more to him.

You may or may not pick up on the poetry references in Turner’s songs (and he actually has a a 2009 album called “Poetry of the Deed”), but if you catch his act live, you’ll certainly pick up on the poetry in his work.

Thanks for indulging us on this Beyond Wellesley topic. Now back to the local news…