Interview Frank Turner will meet you in the parking lot

A former member of hardcore band Million Dead, Frank Turner has since traded the breakneck speed of angry-man anthems for the poetic precision of an acoustic guitar. But while he’s more Billy Bragg than Black Flag these days, the London-based 28-year-old’s folkier leanings haven’t turned him into an old softie just yet. As the lyrics to “Try This At Home” (from 2009’s Poetry Of The Deed) demonstrate, Turner is not only firmly rooted in punk’s DIY ethos, but also particularly candid about his disdain for self-important musicians: "Because the only thing that punk rock should ever really mean / is not sitting round and waiting for the lights to go green / and not thinking that you’re better because you’re stood up on a stage." Before his March 12 support slot for Flogging Molly at The Rave, The A.V. Club talked with Turner about rockstar pretentiousness, drunkenly playing in the Turner Hall parking lot last October, and why playing 24 shows in 24 hours is never a good idea.

The A.V. Club: Last time you were in Milwaukee, you opened for The Gaslight Anthem at Turner Hall. Rumor has it that post-show, you started playing in the parking lot. What prompted that?

Frank Turner: Well, that was really the combination of whiskey and the fact that this guy had traveled quite a long way to see me and missed my set.

AVC: How big of a fan could he have been to not show up in time?

FT: I guess he didn’t know what time I was going to be on, so he came down, missed my set and saw me since I run my own merch table. And he asked, “You didn’t play, did you?” and I was all, “Yeah, sorry dude.” And I felt kind of bad that he made the effort and came, apparently, a great distance. So I figured, “Hey, I’ll just play a few songs outside.” And I actually had a really good time of it. But I must say, I was also pretty hammered.

AVC: You’ve been touring the U.S. for the first time with your band, but you’ll be playing solo with Flogging Molly. Why?

FT: Yeah, the super annoying thing is that we literally just announced a U.K. tour the day I got the offer for the Flogging Molly tour. So it’s an insanely tight turnaround time between the two. So my band will have to go back to the U.K. and take care of production details for that tour. I’ll be flying out of Chicago, flying home overnight and then playing in the U.K. the next day, which is kind of insane.

AVC: That would seem to fit your reputation for touring nonstop. Didn’t you play 24 house shows in 24 hours for “The Road” video?

FT: We really did. We didn’t cheat, either.

AVC: Where did that idea come from, and what made you think you could do it?

FT: It was just a late-night conversation with the director of the video, and it kind of escalated from, “Let’s play 10 shows and put them in the video” to “Let’s do 24 shows” to “Let’s do 24 in 24 hours.” It just got ridiculous. It was really fun for awhile, then it got really grueling, then it got fun again at the end. The worst part was probably after the video shoot. I stayed out drinking with some friends and got about four hours' sleep before I had to get on a flight to Finland. I was playing a festival there, and I remember arriving at the Helsinki airport and being picked up by someone with the festival. And I was on another planet completely. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

AVC: Do your hardcore roots drive the work ethic you’ve maintained as a folk artist?

FT: A lot of it comes from that original sort of idea, the kind of iconoclasm of punk. I remember my first hardcore show, and the first band finished, jumped down to the crowd and the next band hopped up from the crowd. The guy who was standing next to me was the bass player in the band going on, and at that time, it sort of blew my mind. It broke down that whole corporate-rock structure. It’s a very real and very vivid memory, the fact that this community was talking to each other, doing things their own way.

AVC: You’re pretty open in your lyrics about hating the idea of a barrier between rock star and fan. Are there certain bands you take issue with?

FT: I wouldn’t get that political about it. A lot of bands, I guess, there’s just sort of this thing within the traditional rock ‘n’ roll world that I think is slightly insulting to the people listening to the music. For instance, I don’t really like the word “artist.” That’s not a good description for what I choose to do. We’re entertainers, not artists. Or at least, if we are artists, I don’t think you can self describe yourself as an artist. Calling yourself that sounds rather ridiculous to me.

Music is more interesting when it’s a communal activity, when there’s a dialogue there. When it just becomes a bunch of overprivileged and overpaid cokeheads just sort of dictating what they want to say to the room—this idea that the audience should just lap it up and go home without any kind of interaction there—I just don’t find that very interesting.

AVC: NME made a reference to you being Billy Bragg for the Facebook generation. Do you tire of that comparison?

FT: Everyone sort of gets compared with someone else like that. It’s a necessary evil. But at the end of the day, I don’t mind it because the Billy Bragg comparison is a relatively fair cop. Look, it’s much better than someone constantly telling me I’m like James Blunt. I enjoy Billy Bragg a lot, but in all honestly, I only started to listen to him once everyone started to tell me I sounded a lot like him. But he’s a great songwriter, so at the end of the day, I take that as a major compliment.

AVC: What’s been the biggest difference in proving yourself Stateside as opposed to in the U.K.?

FT: I find it very hard to say this without sounding like an asshole, but my “success,” my level of success in the U.K. is bigger than in the States. Which is really the result of touring nonstop there all these years. I’m sort of old-fashioned as a musician that way. I know that touring is the only way I’m going to build a fanbase in the States, so that’s the No. 1 thing I think I should do. But the main difference is that a lot of people know me from the band I used to be in because we did okay in the U.K. And sometimes that’s cool, but other times, I almost always have to deal with people who ask about that band. I’m not at all down on the band I used to be in, but it can be really quite refreshing to have a clean slate in a way and not constantly be compared like, “Oh, well, you were angrier when you were 21.” So what? It can be nice to sort of be judged on the merits of what I’m doing now rather than constantly referencing something I did when I was 19, you know? There’s life after hardcore, I guess.