Silke Jasso
As the Trump team has struggled to put together notable talent for his inauguration this week, a popular English folk/punk musician, Frank Turner, who made a career on politically divisive lyrics, finds himself stuck in the Beltway.
Videos by Rare
“I don’t think…it really occurred to anyone, the significance of that,” Turner said of the timing of his show in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland the night before the inauguration.
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For much of the last decade, Turner has found himself in small towns, clubs, and concert halls across the United States, and has paid close watch to the rise of Donald Trump. According to Turner, this has caused him to begin injecting politics back into his songwriting, something he had not done for several years.
For a long time Turner admits that he found writing songs with an overt political statement “tedious,” and not “artistically inspiring.”
[post_callout image=”https://rare.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/screen-shot-2017-01-17-at-1-36-33-pm.png” text=”I felt like as an artist and a writer that the world started demanding something of a more immediate comment.” min-height=”600″]
“I felt quite strongly that the politics in the music scene at that time…in the last five years or more…mainly involved quite comfortable, middle class people, finding reasons to be pissed off at each other on Twitter,” Turner explains to Rare by phone, on the day of his first U.S. show of 2017.
Before he took a step back from politics and music, Turner made headlines thanks to his song “Thatcher Fucked the Kids,” written about the impact former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had left on a generation of Britons.
“Thatcher”, well, that song was me dipping my toe into a certain stream of political songwriting, and I did not enjoy what came back from that, at all – even the positive responses,” Turner tells Rare. “I’m not sure I’d make the same analysis now of that situation – it’s seems achingly immature to me now– but it’s mostly to do with the kind of reactions that song created,both positive and negative. It was not to my taste at all.
Thanks to the current political climate, Turner has put material for his next record on the back burner. Songs about women who history has forgotten will come out at some point, but for right now, Turner’s songs are getting back their political spark.
“I felt like as an artist and a writer that the world started demanding something of a more immediate comment,” Turner explains.
“It’s something I’ve shied away deliberately from the last couple of albums.”
According to Turner, political music had devolved into something that he simply did not find very interesting.
Then that all changed.
Like many artists, Turner has found himself in a personal and professional conundrum; how much politick is too much politick, and do people really care?
Turner, who has played over 2,000 shows in the last decade by himself or with his band the Sleeping Souls, describes himself as a politics nerd who has had to come to grip with the reality of a Donald Trump presidency.
“It’s something I think about quite a lot. As a writer, an artist, or even a human being, it’s something I feel driven to comment on. America is the world’s hyper-power…I am painfully aware that there are issues about being an outsider, I’m not an American citizen, I don’t live here…I want to be careful about any statement I make and make it clear that,” Turner explains.
[post_callout image=”https://rare.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/screen-shot-2017-01-17-at-1-39-20-pm.png” text=”I’m extremely unsure of what is going to come next…There is potential for something very dramatic to happen.” min-height=”800″]
“The world is changing a lot, and very quickly and not in a particularly positive or inspiring way in my point of view.”
When asked about what kind of America he has seen at his shows, Turner cautions that his experience as a touring musician may not be reflective of others.
“Poor whites in the rust belt may not be the people are coming to my shows, so I don’t want to be too ambitious with my sociology,” he says.
“I suspect that there are more Bernie Sanders fans than Donald Trump fans.”
One thing that Turner did learn in his travels throughout 2016, is that many Americans really did not like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“I’m surprised at the kind of visceral hatred directed at Hillary Clinton,” Turner notes.
Once he gets to Washington, D.C. for his show at The Fillmore Silver Spring on Thursday, Turner will decide whether he will stick around and join the masses in protest on election day. What happens next for the country? He’s not sure.
“For the first time in my adult life, and I say this as someone who marched against the Iraq War and lived through all of that. For the first time in my adult life I feel that the world is subject to malignant historical courses of which I have no possible control, I’m extremely unsure of what is going to come next,” Turner explains.
“There is potential for something very dramatic to happen, but there is also the possibility that it’s just kind of a depressing, damp squid. I wouldn’t venture to put my money on which one is more likely.
Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls will play The Fillmore Silver Spring, in Silver Spring Maryland on Thursday January 19, 2017. His latest album, “Positive Songs for Negative People,” is available for purchase.
