Interview by Priya Gill @priyangill
Last month, Bedford’s very own Esquires played host to Frankie and the Heartstrings, in support of Independent Venue Week 2015.
Now in its second year, Independent Venue Week is a collaboration between music venues, artists, promoters and partners; which aims to raise awareness of the importance of the live music scene throughout the UK.
The feisty indie-five piece, led by Frankie Francis – a former pub landlord – released their second album The Days Run Away today in 2013.
The Sunderland natives have long been hailed the hardest working band in pop – this paid off when in 2013 they won the title of Hardest Working Band at the AIM Independent Music Awards.
The melody making quintet opened Pop Recs Ltd, a record shop in their hometown in 2014. Pop Recs Ltd began life as a pop-up shop; now it flourishes at the site of former a tourist office.
Before they hit the road – we caught up with Frankie and he completed a morning of full on rock ‘n’ roll excess… he’d been doing tax returns.
How did you get involved with Independent Venue Week 2015?
F: It was completely by accident to be honest. We were offered a gig which Huw Stephens of Radio 1 was putting on, he said he’d offer us a gig at The Social in London. He got back to us and said it’s actually for Independent Venue Week, are you up for doing any more dates anywhere, we were like tell us a bit more about it, because I actually didn’t know anything about it. I knew there were campaigns and some music press to celebrate independent venues, but I wasn’t aware of the week that celebrated that.
Have you been to any of these venues before?
F: We’ve been to some of the towns before – even some of the towns we haven’t been to – we haven’t been to Bedford before. We’ve played Leicester, and obviously London – but never played the Social where we’re playing – but I’ve been on a date there once. It’s completely new territory for us, all the venues. But it’s a really good cause, if we can draw any attention to the importance of independent venues, that can only be a good thing.
It’s shocking to see music venues close, but you don’t realise until it happens. What do you think?
F: The writing’s on the wall to a certain extent, it’s pretty difficult to make ends meet. Until the industry finds a way of raising revenue from making music again, so the money is coming back to the artist, it’s going to be a tricky time. The artist can’t afford to take a hit when they’re going out and about doing gigs. Playing live is very important for a band such as ours. It’s just getting increasingly harder to manage and get out there. It goes down to simple running costs, price of the hotels, fuel, van hire, you’ve got to have a tour manager, a tech.
It’s hard for venues to then offer a fee that breaks even with what the bands requirement is to just break even. So we’re not losing out, but the venues have taken a huge gamble on getting that money back from booking an artist. It’s an unfortunate situation, because 90% of gigs aren’t guaranteed to sell out and that’s the only way the promoters and venues can make their money back. It’s a very tricky time. As long as we as artists try to keep our costs down, we’re more available to be booked.
How are you keeping the costs down?
F: For instance on this tour, we haven’t taken a sound man with us, we’re gonna use in-house sound people. The in-house sound engineer will know that room better than anyone. That puts our faith in independent venues at the gate (6:09). We’re not prima donnas, there are certain gigs that we need help, but on this occasion we’re not taking anyone, we’re setting all our gear up ourselves. If more people are like that, more gigs would be possible to put on…just plug in and play. If we keep the door prices down, it attracts more people as well, it makes for a better gig doesn’t it?
Tell me about Pop Records Ltd, and how it’s changed over the last year?
F: Well, I guess we own our independent venue – it’s a record shop, café by day and in the night time it converts into a 300 capacity venue. All our gigs we put on are free to attend, we subsidise them or bands play for free. The bands use that as way of playing in front of an audience they would never necessarily play in front of before. But also doing merchandise, people who get into a gig for free tend buy merchandise as a thank-you for playing, so there is money going back to the band. The only reason Pop Recs exists is out of necessity, Sunderland needed a venue that size, we wanted gigs to be accessible for everyone.
How many of the band work there?
F: We all run and work in it, four of five members work at Pop Recs. We’re working on a weekly basis to secure big bands. We’ve had people from the Kaiser Chiefs visit the shop, Badly Drawn, Edwyn Collins, Tim Burgess from The Charlatans, we’ve had Franz Ferdinand play. They all came to us and said we love what you’re doing, we want to support you, can we come play in the shop for free. We made things happen. We’ve kind of a strange culture a little bit. In Europe there’s a gig culture, you all get looked after. In a town like Sunderland, it’s not the norm to go to a gig, it’s certainly not the norm to put a gig on and look after the band who come to visit your city. That’s what we’re trying to do with Pop Rec, we’re trying to change the mentality, might take a mile but we’re getting there.
It sounds like you’re bringing about a change that people want. I’ve read some comments and one guy said you should be given the Freedom of the City. How much of an effect do you think you’re having?
F: It’s nice that people say that, but we’re not trying to do it to be local heroes. We see the need for it in our town, our town is starved of culture. We want people to have access. We want to use our platform to expose other people – we could change someone’s life by putting a band on, someone stumbles upon it and they could be in a band. If we change one person’s life, it’s been worth it.
Are you releasing a new album?
F: We’ve been working very hard on a new record in the last year. It should be out before the summer – our third record. We recorded it with a guy called MJ, a DIY producer of sorts; he’s got a little studio in Leeds. We had a completely different mind-set for this record; the last one took two years to make before it came out. MJ has produced some of our favourite records; he’s in Hookworms, one of our favourite bands. He was ideal for capturing a moment time with our sound. This Saturday we’re going down to put the finishing touches on it. It should be a busy year for us. We think we’ve made our best record to date; it’s a bit of a nod back to our first record. It also shows an evolution of sound, some indie anthems on there. I’m very excited to see what we can do with it.
What’s the deal with the Simon Farage and Simon Cowell ‘fucking’ mugs?
F: We decided we wanted to make some mugs and we thought who shall we put on the side of a mug? How about a mug. We’re of the persuasion that Nigel Farage and Simon Cowell are fucking mugs. We sold out of the Farage ones.
To find out more about the band, visit: http://frankieandtheheartstrings.com/
Find out more about Independent Venue Week: www.independentvenueweek.com
www.facebook.com/independentvenueweek
Twitter: @IVW_UK
