Frank Turner and Newski chat about their weirdest travels, Frank's worst 24 hours on the road, mental health, overcoming substance abuse, and not being a fashionable band. Dirt from the Road podcast…
EXCERPT:
Brett: Here’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time—you seem like you never get tired.
Frank: *laughs*
Brett: I feel like you’re on all the time. What do the lows look like for Frank Turner?
Frank: The thing is I get tired. And I get homesick. And I get bored of touring. All these kinds of things. I just tend to not broadcast that information to the world. With the way our world works, with social media, you can be quite selective about what you put out into the world. And I’m not sure I need to do a Facebook update saying, “I fucking hate my job right now.” You know what I mean? Because that happens, it happens to every single person in every job in the entire world.
Brett: Yeah. And that’s a cultural problem now, because you get reinforced for posting things on Instagram, saying, “I’m depressed, I’m real bummed” and people will like your post, they’ll comment on it saying they’re rooting for you, so it’s kind of like this cyclical encouragement of being sad. I do feel like, maybe, that’s why mental health seems like it’s perhaps at an all-time low.
Frank & Newski live on zoom.
Frank: That’s an interesting discussion topic. I think that, on the one hand, something I’ve seen in my time, and especially in the music industry, is that mental health is much easier to talk about now than it’s ever been.
I’ve been through the ringer with mental health issues, and therapy, and the rest of that in the last decade of my life, and I try to be very upfront in talking about that. The idea that I would have done that when I was in Million Dead, it wouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t even conceivable that a musician would talk about those kinds of things.
So on some levels, the fact that it’s a wider and broader and freer discussion is a good thing. But I do know what you mean. I do think social media generally tends to be an extremism factory for everything. What’s the point of having a moderate political opinion on Twitter? Given that Twitter’s currency is attention, if you have a moderate political opinion, who gives a shit?
Brett: Right
Frank: Crank it up a bit, and people are listening now. That’s how it works, and that’s a fucking disaster for our culture and for our politics. But that is how it works.
Brett: So, riddle me this, Frank. You may have just answered this question, but is social media a net gain or a net loss for the world?
Frank: Social media is a tool. Much like fire, with which you can either cook food or burn down your house, you can do good and bad things with it. I think we’re at a point with our history and culture right now that, on balance, people are using it more for negative ends. And I think that’s true across the political spectrum, incidentally. Everyone’s very keen about endorsing that statement as long as they’re talking about their opponents. Look to yourself as well.
And I look to myself! Fuck me, I’m 100% guilty of all of this shit. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I remember using social to organize secret shows, and charity shows, that kind of thing. That was really cool. And indeed, in the start of lockdown, we were doing livestream shows, that was very much facilitated by social media, and that raised a lot of money for good causes.
There’s potential for good! I don’t think most people are awful actually.
Brett: I agree.
Frank: I think we kind of built a machine that amplifies the awful people. *laughs* And that sucks!
Brett: I agree, totally, and I think our social media literacy really needs to start gaining some steam. Maybe it needs to be taught in grade school, even, or middle school. It can be poisonous. And the more we’re aware of it, and how the algorithm works, and how it’s built, and how it exploits us when we’re feeling vulnerable, I feel the more power we’ll have to stay in control of our emotions and to just be happier and more peaceful on our planet.
Frank: I agree. I think one of the things that personally took me way too long to figure out is that it’s not really real. The very best thing you can is to turn it off and walk away for a time. I’ve found myself in various shitstorms on social media in my time, some of which was my fault some of which wasn’t, and when they’re really bad they’re awful for my mental health. I don’t sleep for days, I don’t eat, it’s fucking horrible.
The lesson I learned is that if you turn off your computer and your phone, and just walk outside, and walk down the street, not a single person you walk by has any idea this is happening. And if you try to explain to them that it was happening, they’d think you were a crazy person.
You know what I mean? “There are people saying horrible things about me somewhere in the ether out there.” Just fucking turn it off. Walk away.
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More on Frank: https://frank-turner.com/
