When the first Frank Black and the Catholics LP came out, you said that it was the best recording you’d ever participated in. Would you revise that in light of a record like ‘Dog in the Sand’?
Yeah, I suppose, it’s my new record so it always feels the best, but I think my enthusiasm for the first Catholics record is because I felt like I had stumbled on to something that was really exciting for me, like I’d really found a special niche. Recording live, you know? It’s a really great way to make records and I have no desire to stray from that.
Did you discuss the kind of sound you wanted much with the band before you made the record?
No, only a little bit. We’d added keyboards, and there was the suggestion that we were gonna be a bit more Stonesy. Not that we were going to study the Stones like some kind of a manual, but we wanted to be a little more classic rock sounding. We also had done something that we’d intended to do for a couple of years, and that’s introducing pedal steel guitar to the mix, which is a country kinda thing, as well as a country rock kind of thing, and also something that’s associated with 50s music, which I’ve always loved.
What is (new Catholics member) Dave Phillips’ musical history?
I met him through Joey Santiago, and he’s just a really nice guy who moved to LA from New Orleans. Originally he was from Athens, Georgia and he played in country rock bands, and rock bands. He recently played with Tommy Stinson from the Replacements, too. He plays a great pedal steel guitar, though he only plays it a little on the record he plays it quite a bit in the live shows because Rich (Gilbert) has been covering a lot of Eric Drew Feldman’s keyboard parts.
Are you going to be playing with Eric again any time soon?
Well he’s playing with PJ Harvey right now, but when her tour comes to a close maybe we’ll hook up again.
I hear you’ve got a couple of new songs ready for the next record like ’21 Reasons’ and ‘In His Kingly Cave’ ready for the next lp. Are you close to making another record?
No, not close, but we’re talking about it. We’re just figuring out how many songs we have, and I guess I’ve gotta write some more.
There were some stories that you were going to be playing with an orchestra on the next record.
Yeah, we’d love to record with an orchestra, but it’s a bit of an undertaking-mostly financially. But if we can get the money then it may well go ahead.
There have been some pretty great reviews of your recent shows, and I wondered if you’d considered putting out another live concert record, even though you’re making all your records live in the studio?
Sure we’ve talked about it, and we’re working on it, but I don’t know when we’re gonna get around to doing it. It’d be nice to do, because we’re real happy with the shows we’re playing at the moment.
Didn’t you say you wanted 100 songs in rotation to play with the Catholics?
Yeah, I think our currently rehearsed batch that we can play is about 50 or 60, including a lot of older stuff we’re only just starting to play live now.
Any plans to come back to Australia any time soon?
We’d love to come as soon as we get the invitation from a promoter. Everything tasted really good last time. It doesn’t matter if it was Italian, or Australian, or Thai or whatever. You could eat a tomato and it would be amazing.
Do you have a favourite place to play?
All of them, in a way. We all like playing in this place in Eugene, Oregon called the W.O.W Hall-it stands for woodworkers of the world. The gigs are always good there, and I remember one gig in particular where the stage sound was just so great; it was one of those amazing gigs.
Any thoughts on the new Pixies b-sides record? Anything that stands up well or not so well?
Plenty that don’t stand up very well! I mean they’re b-sides, and these things are very hit and miss. I always liked the song ‘Dancing the Manta Ray’, and we play that one a lot with the Catholics now.
So what happened to the unreleased record you made right after ‘Dog’?
I don’t think ‘Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day’ sounds very good. And there were some mistakes on a couple of the takes, and some of the songs needed a lyric re-write, so there were a few things we weren’t happy with. It doesn’t really sound like a record; it’s just a session, I think.
I heard it for the first time just this afternoon. I really enjoyed it a lot. It’s pretty loose.
Well, yeah, it has its moments. Most of it actually is coming out in some form or another, like on b-sides and compilations.
Do Frank Black songs come from a different place than Black Francis songs did?
No, not really. There’s a bunch of reasons for whatever differences there are. There’s the influence of different musicians, different producers as well as my attitude towards things, which, of course, is going to shift over time.
When the music press, particularly the English press, was at their most critical of you in 93/94, there were a number of fairly negative reviews. Is it easy to start doubting what you do when you’re facing that kind of criticism?
Yeah, bad reviews always hurt, that’s why I try not to read them. If they don’t like the records, fair enough, but in my press you see a few writers who simply aren’t good at what they do. You get straight out factual errors, which can kinda make you feel better about a bad review because the writers don’t really know what they’re talking about.
A lot of the ‘Dog’ reviews I read said something along the lines of ‘Joey Santiago works with Frank for the first time since the Pixies’!
Exactly, that kind of thing, which is just such bullshit. Hello! They don’t give a shit that he was playing with me on my first two solo records, and now they’re all ‘Oh, he’s BACK,man’!
In your bio for the latest record you mentioned a Dylan influence, which I’d never really heard you mention before. Have you only discovered Dylan records recently?
I suppose it’s a recent thing, I have been listening to his records a lot in the past few years. He’s certainly not one of the first rock ‘n’ roll performers that I heard when I was younger, but the influence of Bob Dylan is pretty much there all the time in other performers. And it’s not just his talent as a lyricist or vocalist that’s inspiring, but there’s something else about Bob Dylan. There’s the attitude, you know? The attitude is mysterious. And rock music isn’t very mysterious these days, because it’s constantly talked about and over analysed and there’s rockumentaries galore on TV, and Dylan himself seems to be distanced from that, which is inspiring.
On certain more direct songs you’ve been compared to people like Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks. Is there anyone in particular you find inspiring when writing more cryptic lyrics?
Well we mentioned Dylan, of course. He’s the main one. But there’s lots of people. There’s this Christian rock guy called Larry Norman, and a lot of his lyrics are really cryptic and interesting, and that was certainly an influence when I was younger. Probably the things that inspire my lyrics the most are things that don’t have anything to do with rock music. There’s my personal life, there’s creative writing and poetry. But there’s the Beatles, I suppose, who became one of the first super cryptic kind of groups. There’s people who talk to me and say ‘Fraaaaank, you’re lyrics are, like, so weird’, but have they ever tried to analyse a couple of psychedelic period Beatles songs? There are many who have come before me, including the Beatles!
When I found out about the acrostic pattern in ‘Robert Onion’ (from the latest lp) it reminded me of something I was reading about Johnny Ace’s lyrics. He used to do things like make each new line shorter than the last, and he liked to play with the shape and length of his lines. I thought that was interesting, and I suppose you’ve been known to mess around with language in similar ways.
Right, that’s what a lot of people forget about. People that talk about rock music, write about rock music, or play rock music-they forget about playing around with language, playing with words, and all sorts of games and schemes. All that stuff to me is a big part of creative writing, and so much music has become so serious with diary rock, you know? Like, ‘what are you trying to say’? That’s not what it’s all about; it’s also how you’re saying it. It’s not incidental, it’s really crucial. That’s why it’s poetic, that’s why it’s lyrical. It’s just awful listening to bands who are so consumed with saying something important. Saying something is nice, but c’mon man!
-Sam Worrad