Interview: Franz Nicolay and Ben Marwood
Another month, another non-stop whirlwind tour for England’s folk-punk figurehead, Mr Frank Turner.
And, as ever, we’ve blagged our way onto tour dates #18 & #19 to have a chat with ex Hold Steady keyboardist and all around musical maestro, Franz Nicolay, as well as wit fuelled anti-folker, and friend of Blagsound , Ben Marwood ‚Äì who join the tour as Frank’s main support acts.
-
Hello, Ben and Franz! How have both of you found the tour so far?
Ben : Yeah it’s been really good. Last night I had a bit of a grumble because I was in a terrible mood, but today I’m in a good mood. So yes! It’s been good!
Franz : It’s been great. If you had asked me last night I would have all ‚Äòblehhhh’ (-stumbles-). Yeah, we got into the whiskey, so that was fun!
Have there been any standout shows?
Franz : Bristol was great!
Ben : Yeah Bristol was good – it was in a church type place, and Franz went out wandering into the crowd! It was really good because it was the only seated show we’ve done so far. I didn’t really know if there would be anybody there for my set, because in front of me all I could see was like empty seats. But then I went out and up on the balconies it was quite full. Then everybody eventually just decided to all stand up at the end of Frank’s set, which was good.
Franz : It was a nice change of pace because a lot of these shows have been the really noisy, rowdy bar crowds which is great, but for an acoustic tour to have one sort of seated venue was a nice change o pace.
Ben : We’ve been doing a lot of the toilet circuit venues on this tour, so it’s been really interesting. There the kind of places that normally I’d be a little apprehensive to play but everyone’s been really nice on the tour and I don’t think we’ve had a crowd that’s been too difficult
Do you like a lot crowd participation, because sometimes that can kind of spill over into more of a disrespectful kind of talking, and so do you ever just want to be like ‘could you please be a bit quite and listen to the songs’?
Franz : Well yeah, I have a couple different ideas about that. One of them is that if they’re not paying attention then I fell to a certain extent it is my responsibility to make them pay attention, so I can’t get mad at them exactly. However, I think there are two kinds of participation, there’s quiet participation and loud participation. If they are engaged and responding and capping or shouting, anything like that is all good, that’s just as good and sometimes better then quiet reverie, which sometime creeps me out!
Ben : Actually, as we’ve come further down south, it’s become a lot harder to tell whether people are having fun or not. There’s a lot of crossed arms, nodding and politeness, whereas up north you can tell when they’re enjoying themselves! Here it kind of like you’re not allowed to be heard laughing or having fun. As for crowd participation, I like them to loud in the loud bits and quiet in the quiet bits ya know. Just going back to what Franz said about having to make people pay attention, there are times when sometimes you will get a crowd that will not even shut up when you play the first note, so I think there’s certain level of politeness that you do have to expect from a crowd. But if you don’t get that, what are you going to do? I don’t like asking people to be quite cos they are allowed to make noise, they’ve paid their money for tickets so, fair dues.
You’re touring here with Frank Turner as part of the build up to his near album – when did you guys first meet?
Franz : I opened for him in San Francisco and we hit it off! We also have a lot of friends in common, so sort of just kept in touch.
Ben : And I met Frank, in 2006, which thinking about it is more than 5 years ago, which is just ridiculous! It was around the time when I was just beginning to take things seriously with the music instead of pottering around doing nothing and being generally a bit rubbish! I met him in Devizes in Wiltshire, it was kind of the first proper tour he’d put together after Million Dead.
This is a tough question, but if you could take credit for any song written by someone else what song would that be?
Ben : Man that’s hard, I might have to think about that one, can you come back to me at the end?
Oh, alright… and you Franz?
Franz : Well there’s so many! But the first one that popped into my head was Rainbow Connection (watch The Muppet Movie, you’ll understand)
Ben : Yes! But then there’s loads – Bohemian rhapsody, Sweet Home Alabama. Hah, why not!
Both you released albums recently ‚Äì ‚ÄòOutside There’s A Curse’ (Xtra Mile) back in January from you Ben, and ‚ÄòLuck and Courage’ (Team Science) last year from you Franz. What are your plans now? Are either of you working on new albums, writing etc?
Franz : Working on one yeah, but ‘Luck and Courage’ hasn’t even been out for a year yet, I’ve got about half an album written, but it probably won’t be out until next spring I expect.
Speaking of which, how does the song writing process work with you both? Are you quite prolific writers – writing many and picking the ones you like best – or do songs form slowly?
Franz : I think it is nice to have the option to edit out some songs, I think the big difference between my first record ‘Major General’ and ‘Luck and Courage’ is that with the first one I put all the songs that I had that were up from the album on it, where as with ‘Luck and Courage’ I demoed 16 and recorded 11. So to me, that makes it seem like a stronger record. So I had to discard some of the songs, but they’ll always find another home.
Ben : That’s more or less how I do it as well – I normally start off with about 20 songs and then I’d ditch about 4 or 5 of them and assume they’re not going to be very good. That’s why there’s only 10 songs on my album because you prune and prune until eventually you have the best that you could have.
Franz : And honestly a 35min record is about the right length to keep people attention on the music.
Quite right too. Could you also explain a little about your organisation Anti-Social Music, for those out there who don’t know what it is?
Franz : Yeah, Anti-Social Music is a composer/performer collective organisation which I found in around 2000. It’s basically an organisation which brings, what is generically called ‘new music’ new chamber, classical music that type of thing into unconventional venue. It’s played by people who are classically trained in one way or the other, but are also in punk bands and such things. It’ all original music by young composers and we perform it in basement shows and rooftop parties and so forth. We’ve actually just celebrated are 10th anniversary too.
That’s based predominantly in New York, would you ever think about bringing it to London or abroad?
Franz : Yeah we actually did our first international tour in Ukraine back in the fall. We’re lucky in a sense that since we are a non-profit organisation we can get grant funds from cultural exchange programs. However, that kind of funding is harder to get to come to a place like England which is already quite well served culturally!
You seem able to play nearly every instrument under the sun Franz. Is there anything you can’t play? Or anything you’d love to learn?
Franz : I’m a terrible drummer! And I’ve never been able to wrap by brain, or my mouth more correctly around reed instruments. But I’m a shockingly bad drummer, I actually went out of my way to try and improve. I bought a practice pad and did rudiments for a whole tour, before sound checks and things, but I just couldn’t do it.
And anything you wish you could play Ben?
Ben : I wish I could play the piano, I really do. The concept of being able to hit both ends of a scale at the same time, which is something you can’t really do on a guitar. That would be really nice, and it’s just a lovely sounding instrument. For a second Franz, I thought you were going to say that you wish you could ‘rap’! I was kind of imagining Franz Nicolay the hip hop artist! We should start that! Actually I’d love to be able to play the accordion because that looks like an incredible instrument. I can’t quite fathom how it actually works yet. Maybe one day…
Franz : You should pick mine up and try it out, haha.
Oh and Ben … you still haven’t told us that song!
Ben : Oh yeah… haha. Probably an Elliott Smith song… ‚ÄòAngeles’ maybe!
And there you have it. Cheers Guys!
-
Be sure to check out Ben and Franz at their own show tomorrow night (June 1st) at The Windmill in Brixton. Tickets are available here.
