By Stuart Coupe
Frazey Ford has a dog. It’s a French bulldog that lives with her at her home on an island not far from Vancouver in Canada. The dog – I should have asked its name – doesn’t like Ford doing interviews. It can’t stand it when she is on the phone period. It barks. Loudly. Plays up. Interrupts.
The end result is that a conversation with Ford is extremely interesting, fun, enlightening – and punctuated with “stop it” and “I won’t be long” and “hang on, I’m doing to need to take the dog out.”
When we chatted Ford was taking a short break from a fairly heavy touring schedule which has followed from the return to live gigs and touring after the world’s enforced two year break from such activities.
Ford has been backwards and forwards to Europe a few times, done a bunch of dates in North America – and is heading back to Australia with her band for her third visit to this country late in September/early October.
Like so many artists Ford had mixed feelings about the two years when touring was not an option.
“I think it was partly good for me – and partly really frustrating,” she says between barks.
“I really enjoyed the peace. I think I needed it. I’d lost a couple of family members in the year and a half previous to that so I think I needed some down time. But on the other hand it was kind of strange to make an album, release it and then not tour it. I found that I just couldn’t write music at all. I did a lot of ceramics and designing clothing, but I couldn’t do music for some reason.”
The album in question is Ford’s third post Be Good Tanyas outing – U kin B the Sun, which follows from Obadiab (2010) and Indian Ocean (2014).
For Ford, not touring a new album completely threw her. This was not what she was used to.
“It felt really strange,” she says. “I couldn’t write music at all during the Covid period as I usually take a big break when I finish an album and I think I was in that phase. It was just weird not touring. It was really like a miscarriage, like I’d really lost something.
“I had a really strange time. I had to remind myself that I’d actually made a record. I was also reminded what an important part of the process of making a record the live performance is. That’s when the record really starts to make sense to me when I’m performing it. It’s like the completion of the spiritual process, the outward part of sharing something I do largely by myself with other people.”
One thing that distinguishes each of Ford’s albums is the musical diversity of them. For starters she doesn’t feel any need to falling into the cycle of an album every year or two.
“I have lots of other ways to be creative so I tend to take big breaks from music,” she says. “But when I’m back in the mode of doing music I’ll be working on things for maybe a few years before I record. It’s not like everything I do during that period goes into the next record, but I’m definitely doing things in that direction.”
And then there’s Ford’s approach to recording which tends to differ from album to album.
“I just love exploring different ways of writing,” she says. “I love the Be Good Tanyas but it was all very genre specific and so with my own records I find I can really stretch out and explore, and take folk writing and try recording it in different genres and styles.
“I hadn’t written much for the last record until I went into the studio. I got the band to come up with chords and I was singing and writing to what they were doing and only then did I really start writing lyrics. It was almost the reverse to the usual process.
“I try and switch up how I approach things. I like not really knowing what I’m doing. If you’re too formulaic it’s not great. I really like searching in the dark because I think that’s what great art is all about – searching and wondering if it’s actually going to happen and sensing that it might not. I think it needs to be a little terrifying.”
And what about recording with Al Green’s band, the Hi Rhythm Section on Indian Ocean?
“It was wild,” Ford says. “Wild. I was just asked out of the blue if I wanted to record with these guys.
“I mean, if I have any heroes in the world it’s the guys in that band. It was a little bit terrifying to be working with these people that I was obsessed with. I think I knew every single note these people have played. I had an Al Green tribute band long before the Be Good Tanyas.
“I’ve always been driven by that aesthetic, that soul music feel and approach. It was amazing to meet them and they were just so cool.”
Tour dates
Thursday, 29th September – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC
Friday, 30th September – Caravan Music Club, Archies Creek, VIC
Saturday, 1st October – Dashville Skyline, Hunter Valley, NSW
Tuesday, 4th October – The Vanguard, Sydney, NSW
Thursday, 6th October – Eltham Hotel, Eltham, NSW
Saturday, 8th October – Sol Bar, Maroochydore, QLD
Sunday, 9th October – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD