Redbrick meets… Get Frank

13th Mar 2010

Just embark­ing on her quest to shed some much needed light on locals bands, Ellen Tout chat­ted to lead singer Frankie…

IT’S a shame that there are so many Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham stu­dent bands that barely get a look-in. Take Get Frank, for exam­ple, who is, in the words of my flat­mate, like Flo­rence and the Machine but better!

Get Frank vocal­ist, Frankie Ward, stud­ies Drama and The­atre Arts. She has per­formed at Vale Fes­ti­val, helped man­age BurnFM and even blagged her way on stage with The Mys­tery Jets. Her con­fi­dent and talk­a­tive nature shone through, a qual­ity which worked to her advan­tage dur­ing her recent per­for­mance at The Bris­tol Pear’s ‘Help Haiti’ gig.

To start with I asked Frankie to describe her musi­cal style in three words. With a smirk she replied, ‘hon­est, ram­shackle fun’. What does hon­est, ram­shackle fun sound like I hear you ask? When I first lis­tened to Get Frank I imme­di­ately thought of Laura Mar­ling and Regina Spek­tor. Frankie’s own inspi­ra­tion and icons, how­ever, were the ever so slightly more tra­di­tional Kirsty Mac­Cole and Billy Bragg.

‘Blur were my favourite band from the age of six, Great Escape was the first album I ever owned. It was a present for my eighth birth­day, but then so was Spice Girls’ Spice, so maybe they influ­enced me too!’ On the con­trary ‘some of my favourite songs are by unsigned bands.’ This seems a great atti­tude to uphold; Frankie is a fan and ‘offi­cial chore­o­g­ra­pher’ of fel­low stu­dent band The July Days.

Talk­ing to Frankie, it was obvi­ous how pas­sion­ately she felt about her music, as well as that of oth­ers. Not only can Frankie sing, but she also plays the ukulele, glock­en­spiel, flute and pan­pipes, to name a few. ‘I make music with what­ever I’ve got.’ She described the out­come as often sound­ing blunt and admit­ted that ‘some peo­ple might think I’m just this idiot’

‘I’m not anti-men, I just write mean things about them’ she con­fessed. How­ever, with a closer lis­ten to her music, it is clear that Get Frank is far from just another Lily Allen. Her voice is strik­ingly beau­ti­ful, whilst the accom­pa­ni­ments sound like they have tum­bled out of a fairytale.

So, what does the future hold for Get Frank? Frankie hopes to one day have finan­cial back­ing and to ‘tour and have peo­ple turn up’. She plans to con­tinue to write ‘music that peo­ple can dance to’ and talks opti­misti­cally about the future. Look­ing to the very near future, Get Frank will be per­form­ing at The Bulls Head on the 24th March, as well as Oxjam fes­ti­val in April. If her set at the Bris­tol Pear was any­thing to judge by, then fans are in for a treat.

You can find Get Frank online at www.myspace.com/getfrankmusic