a conversation with… THE DEAD FREIGHTS
Crowded round a table at Chaplin’s, Rachel had a chat with The Dead Freights ahead of their support slot for The Libertines in Bournemouth.
FIRST OF ALL, COULD YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELVES?
FRANKLIN: I’m Franklin! I play guitar and do a bit of singing.
CHARLIE: You do other things as well like you tend to a garden and keep tropical fish!
FRANKLIN: Ah yes, I am newly the owner of a fish tank.
CHARLIE: Hi my name is Charlie, I play guitar also and sing and write a lot of the lyrics. Captain of the fucking pirate ship. * laughs * Actually, I am the one who has my shit together the least.
FRANKLIN: He is the kind of captain where you let him think he’s captain but really there’s all sorts going on around him that he has no idea about
DAN: I’m Dan, I’m the bass player. Also keep tropical fish.
CHARLIE: And we have Louis who is still eating salmon at the venue. He’d probably say something like “I’m Louis, I play drums and fuck yeah” * laughs *
HOW WOULD YOU BEST DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC?
CHARLIE: At the moment the music is quite lyrical. The music forms around the lyrics. The sound is quite dark and heavy, but we try to have a lot of poetry in there. It’s a bit of a dichotomy of sometimes quite nice words with quite grubby music. When we last recorded with Gary, the stuff we came out with there was heavy with a lower-case h.
CHARLIE: Of course, it’s still quite dirty. Dirty guitars with nice Keats references in there. How pretentious can you be? * laughs *
WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING ON TOUR WITH THE LIBERTINES?
DAN: It’s intense! We’ve never done anything like this before, have we? It’s been at points overwhelming but also fucking brilliant and the most fun I’ve ever had.
CHARLIE: This is our third night. We did two nights in Glasgow. Like Dan said, it’s been quite intense, we’ve never done anything like this before and the first few nights I have felt a bit out of my depth. Like a rabbit in the headlights but we’re starting now to find our rhythm. Even little things like you learn people’s names and you go to a different city and it’s the same guy that you saw before. We’re getting into a pattern of familiarity. The Libertines themselves have been really lovely and making us feel comfortable. Obviously, we know Gary well and it’s been great watching the soundchecks and things like that, so it’s been good.
FRANKLIN: It’s been nice showing up to the different venues but having the same people around you. We always come in at about three in the afternoon and they’re always on stage doing the same stuff but it’s quite nice being in different places.
CHARLIE: There’s still a pattern there even though it’s a new experience and we’re in different cities. I’d never been to Glasgow before! I’ve been to Bournemouth a few times.
FRANKLIN: we’ve been here! (Chaplin’s Bar)
Charlie: Oh yeah! We’ve sat on this very spot *laughs*
FRANKLIN: We have, but it was warmer then!
WHAT IS THE DEAD FREIGHTS ORGIN STORY? HOW DID YOU FORM THE BAND?
CHARLIE: The band started when I met Franklin in school. The only way my mum could convince me to go to secondary school was that I might be able to start a band because I really wasn’t up for it. Didn’t think I was going to get on with it and she understood but she was like you’ll probably meet a band if you go. I got there on the first day and was like right, I need a band then, and went round asking people.
FRANKLIN: He came up to me and went “are you Franklin? Do you wanna be in my band?” And I was like “yeah alright then” and that was that!
CHARLIE: That’s pretty much how we met. Our musical styles fell in love first before we did. It’s taken time because we’re the opposite guy. We met Louis when he recorded for our old band and Dan, we knew from playing around in other bands in Southampton and we knew that he played really well and looked the part as well.
DAN: I joined in January! This is my sixth gig with the band tonight.
FRANKLIN: The third show you played with us happened to be the start of the LIBS tour!
WHAT IS ONE SONG THAT YOU WISH YOU HAD WRITTEN YOURSELF?
CHARLIE: Probably ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by The Kinks!
DAN: I knew that was coming *laughs*
CHARLIE: It’s timeless and it sounds English! But not in a Brexit eggs and beans kind of way! In a nice Shakespearean quintessentially English way. London Chimney tops comes to mind. Something about London Chimney tops feel romantic for some reason. Show me a chimney top in London mate I’m all over it! How bout you Franklin?
FRANKLIN: I don’t know..
CHARLIE: Probably wish you’d written the riff for Batman! *laughs*
FRANKLIN: Probably ‘Weird Fishes’ by Radiohead! I find myself playing it quite a lot.
CHARLIE: I would have liked if you had written that so I could have sung it! If we could have fobbed it off as our own, we could afford a patio heater for the next time we do an interview.
— — — LOUIS APPEARS — — —
LOUIS: ‘Sup Motherfuckers!
CHARLIE: Told you, didn’t I?*laughs*
LOUIS: What has he been saying? It’s not true *laughs*
CHARLIE: Louis, what song do you wish you’d written?
LOUIS: Well, you did write ‘Waterloo Sunset’! *laughs* So I wish I had written the song you’d written: ‘Waterloo Sunset’
CHARLIE: that’s two for ‘Waterloo Sunset’!
WHICH TRACKS ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF AND WHY?
CHARLIE: There’s a new song we’ve been playing on this tour called ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ which I really like the lyrics for. It’s a set of words I’d had for quite a while and I tried to crowbar them into lots of songs. Franklin had this riff and when we sang the words over it, it worked really well! We arranged it in a practise room and lyrically it’s a bit Frankenstein like! There are loads of different bits and when I sing it, I don’t really know how I feel because there wasn’t one emotion I had when I wrote it.
DAN: Like a bit of an emotional rollercoaster in one little song.
CHARLIE: Yes, exactly and it goes double time after the chorus and it sounds fycking killer. It’s been great playing it live as well! The first time we played it was on this tour, so it’s been great to test drive songs out.
DAN: For me i't’s ‘Who Said Scares’ . It started with the bass line which is pretty killer. It started with me showing Charlie how hard it is to play and he went “let’s put that into a song!”
LOUIS: And now you’ve got to play that every night for three minutes!
WHO ARE YOUR BIGGEST INFLUENCES?
CHARLIE: Biggest influences musically, I’d say The Beatles, and lyrically, Father John Misty and Kurt Cobain.
LOUIS: We all like different stuff really. We all listen to a huge range of music, and we all bring it together which creates a real interesting sound. I listen to quite a lot of punk music and Franklin listens to quite a lot of electronic music!
CHARLIE: Liquid D&B in the house! *laughs*
LOUIS: Dan listens to quite a lot of sleezy disgusting music *laughs*. So, we fuse it all together. Our Instagram bio used to say Nirvana John Misty, didn’t it? Quite arrogantly.
CHARLIE: So Bold!!!
DAN: It was The Beatles of Death Mental once too.
CHARLIE: You’d phone me up and we’d laugh over puns and put them in our bio.
DAN: ABBA of Black Sabbath was another one.
CHARLIE: Nirvana John Misty was definitely our boldest claim.
LOUIS: You’ve got one of the greatest lyricists of all time and Nirvana one of the greatest bands ever. So that’s us I recon.
CHARLIE: Seeing as at the time we had no music released, it was a shameless display of arrogance. When you wrap arrogance around a good pun there isn’t much you can’t get away with.
FRANKLIN: It’s a shame that we’re always behind with what we’re putting up on Instagram. The stuff that we’re writing is usually a couple of years later than what we have on record, so it will be exciting to get some new music out next year.
LOUIS: But then we’ll have more new stuff and be like ‘that shit’s old!’
IN MY EXPERIENCE OF SPEAKING TO MUSICiANS, MOST ARTISTS HAVE THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL WAY OF HOW THEY ENVISION THEIR FANS LISTENING TO THEIR MUSIC FOR THE FIRST TIME - SUCH AS IN THE CAR STARING OUT THE WINDOW OR SOMETHING MORE MUNDANE LIKE MAKING PASTA. SO, I AM WONDERING WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL WAY OF YOUR AUDIENCE EXPERIENCING YOUR MUSIC FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME?
CHARLIE: I’d say definitely at a gig, especially at the moment. I want, for my personal performance, 50 percent of the audience to think “Hey this kid’s the best” and the other 50 percent to think “What an arsehole, who does he think he is?” *laughs*
FRANKLIN: I also recon hearing it in a car!
CHARLIE: What with you driving?
FRANKLIN: No! I think most of the music I love I discovered on a car journey and then gone ‘I really like that, I’m going to listen to that later.’
LOUIS: All I am imagining is you in one of those cars that bounces around like in a Snoop Dog music video.
FRANKLIN: Yeah yeah yeah, cruising down the high street with one arm out the window *laughs*
LOUIS: Don’t lie, Franklin, you’d have both hands on the wheel.
WHAT DO YOU HOPE YOUR AUDIENCE WILL TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR MUSIC?
LOUIS: Hopefully a couple of t-shirts and a CD *laughs*
CHARLIE: I suppose they can take what they want from it!
LOUIS: I would imagine it appeals to a range of people, but the lyrics explore quite deep and dark ideas. I’d hope they’d think it’s a fucking banger, but get a bit of solace from it as well. I feel connected to musicians through their songs and it’s putting the message out there that someone might feel the same as you.
CHARLIE: That’s a good answer, Louis.
LOUIS: I know I’m the joker of the pack, but I can sometimes surprise you *laughs*
WHAT WOULD YOU LOVE TO ACHIEVE OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS?
CHARLIE: We’d like to get some more music out! That’s how I feel about it. Definitely want to release tracks that are a good representation of what we are delivering live at the moment which I know is something so many bands struggle with. Its definitely getting there, I can feel it. We record live and when we play live that’s when we’re giving it the most and where we are thinking most about the songs and the lyrics because you have to perform them as well as just sing them.
LOUIS: Exactly! It will be really nice to be able to expand our reach a little bit so we can do our own tour. Not on this sort of scale but…
CHARLIE: We won’t have fresh salmon cooked up for us in the dressing room…
LOUIS: No, but to be able to play areas outside of where we live and have people show up would be nice.