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Taken from Vanguard Online (December, 2003)
MICHAEL FRANTI IN INTERVIEW
by ROSS MCGIBBON
 Spearhead have existed as a project for nearly ten years. Before that, Michael Franti was active in The Disposable Heroes of Hiphopracy and The Beatnigs. He's a man with a message wrapped up in a sugarcoated groove. Little known amongst the wider public in this country, they manage to sell out venues to rabid fans.
When I meet Franti, he's imposingly tall; dreads wrapped up in a big woolly hat. He's got a bit of a cold and not at his best. Nevertheless, later that evening, he transforms into a skyscraper of fiery energy. There's a sense of seriousness to the man, a feeling that he is here for a purpose and that purpose is to make a better world. When I look at his website I see that he's an adept businessman too, seeking ways to go beyond the soul and hiphop scenes to reach other audiences - fans of US West Coast hippie jam bands and devotees of music downloading.
At the time that we met up, George Bush Jr. had just been over to stay in Buckingham Palace and London had been full of protesters.
How's it going?
The touring is going good. It's an interesting time to be out in the world
right now.
I heard you are having to change the tour a bit.
There is a lot of fear. We, as a band are going to play in Istanbul and some of our band members have opted not to go. (The British Embassy there had just been bombed). It's been a big question in the band; what's the right thing to do? What are the risks associated with travelling and playing music.
I think it's the bands second time over. Michael puts me right with a smile.
We've been here so many times. We started coming here in 1988 with The Beatnigs. We toured Europe twice with the Beatnigs and three times with The Disposable Heroes and I've probably done twelve tours with Spearhead over here.
Is it worthwhile touring here or are you trying to build a fanbase?
It's both. We don't have to rely on our record label for tour support so we can tour anywhere we want. But we're a group that is not on the radio twenty-four hours a day or on MTV twenty-four hours a day so we're always trying to build what we do through word of mouth and through touring.
I'd seen the band as a dance band but, having visited the official website I see a jam-band angle. Is that deliberate?
We're a hiphop jamband. We allow fans to tape our shows and we incorporate improvisational music into what we do and people travel far to see us but it's all still within the dance framework.
For the uninitiated, I should explain. Michael Franti is from the West Coast of the US and, over there, there is a tradition, since the late sixties, of bands that improvise and vary their sets a great deal, leading to a fanbase that will follow a band around so as to catch all the different performances. It's become a US phenomenon again in recent years, with bands such as Phish, Widespread Panic, String Cheese Incident, etc, having barely scratched at commercial exposure on the media, yet drawing large crowds to series of shows.
We talk about people following the band round and I wonder what is in it for them. Michael tells me they have a rotating setlist.
When we go to places we don't go to very often we don't change it so much because we want to play the strongest songs to people we can. But, in America, we like to change it up every night even if that means that sometimes it's not the greatest set, at least it's different.
Later, an American who's over following the support band around (Keller William's one man band) tells me that the Spearhead setlist varies by no more than four songs or so per night.
I ask about what is happening for the band.
Well, this year we have a lot of different releases that are coming out, a couple of DVDs, a live album, a couple of books. We'll start work on a new studio album in the spring. We're really busy just keeping the business aspect of it alive, especially as an independent group on an independent label.
I ask about bands selling concert recordings off their websites.
We're going to start doing that probably. We haven't worked out yet how to make it quality that it's worth people paying for. Some groups just sell the board tapes and I don't really like doing that.
I wonder how much money is really in that. How many people want to hear a good night out over and over again.
It depends what you do. If your music is improvisational and it changes from night to night then people like it for collecting. But, regardless, we're not a group that operates on millions of dollars of budget. We operate on thousands of dollars of budget so, just to supplement that with whatever people will pay for means a lot to us.
To what degree is the music about entertainment and to what degree is it about education? I hear a lot of advice in the lyrics. Michael thinks about that one.
Hmmm, I don't know if I hand out advice..
Of course, I can't think of examples on the spot.
To me, anyone who does art knows you find some truth to begin with, whether it's romantic truth, spiritual truth, political truth, sexual truth then you create something that is a visual or aural representation of that. And so that's what I do; I read the world. As I read the world I see and hear and feel things that become important to me and then that's what becomes my art. Now we're in a great time of trouble and there's a lot of change that's occurring and it's an opportunity for all of us to decide how we want that change to go, because change is going to occur whether we like it or not. Do we want to turn into a world that's increasingly about militarism and high tech security and fearing other nations and fearing other religious bodies or do we want to live in a world that works towards breaking down those barriers. Do we want to live in a world that's about consumerism as a religion or do we want to live in a world that's about humanism and naturalism as the guiding force.
How do you engage people in that change?
When I first started writing, all my lyrics were angry because I felt powerless in the world but since that time, as I've grown in music and grown as a person, I've gotten involved on a day to day level in a lot of different things so I work in prisons, in schools, I put on a concert every year in San Francisco - the Power To The Peaceful festival. The more I become involved in working in life, the less powerless I feel, the easier it becomes to make music that's inspirational - to keep on, to keep on living from our hearts, to keep following what we see as our destiny.
How easy, do you think, is it to draw people into that?
You make art that's engaging to people. At our shows it's a party, it's not a political rally. It's a celebration - we make people dance and enjoy themselves and try to create a safe space for people to emote. If you feel like crying, if you feel like hugging, if you feel like jumping up and down, it's all okay.
What is your typical audience?
[Long pause] Hip-hoppers, roots rockers and woodstockers. People who are more interested in hearing songs than they are in what genre they come from. Because we cross through a lot of musical genres.
I noticed that. Where does that come from?
I'm a music fan. In my music collection I've got Jimi Hendrix, Metallica and I've got The Clash and Linton Kwesi Johnson. I've got Run DMC and I've got Nelly. I've got. everything, y'know - I love music and when I want to make something to dance to I'll think: 'let's go and listen to something in my dance collection and I'll pull out some great house tracks and I'll think 'this is good, this is interesting, let's take some inspiration from this'. And when I want to write some thing that's personal I'll pull out Bill Withers or Phoebe Snow and just listen to the sound of the guitar and the voice. I just have a deep record collection.
We talk about the simultaneous influence of The Clash and Chic on his work. I mention a track that has a riff similar to The Clashes The Return Of The Magnificent Seven and he puts me right, tracing the riff's history back to Chic and works back up, telling me who else used that riff. Quite a knowledge!
Talking about the support act, Keller Williams, we discuss how different the two are and Franti tells me that's how he likes it. He likes a contrast.
When I first played here I opened for Billy Bragg, with The Beatnigs.
Is there any message that he has?
I guess my main message is that music probably won't change the world overnight but music can help us make it through a difficult time. The times that we're living in are really hard - it's chaotic and it's frustrating. I wish ease of heart for people in this difficult world. Maybe the world will never be perfect but through music, through friends, through continuing to be creative we can find ease of heart.
How does Michael Franti feel, as a US citizen, in the wake of the protests against Bushes visit to the UK?
I support the demonstrations. It's good to see that and I wish there were more of them happening in America. I don't feel like an American - I feel like a citizen of this planet. Just because I have a little ink that's squiggled one way on my passport doesn't make me any less part of this planet than anybody else that has another bit of ink on their passport. What Bush has done is he's created a new role. The president of the United States used to rule the United States and be one leader amongst many in the world that help shape the world. Now Bush has said we have the strongest military in the world and we're going to do whatever we feel like doing and any nation that doesn't like it is going to suffer. He's blackmailed Tony Blair, he's blackmailed a lot of other leaders around the world. It's the same way American people felt when the King Of England was ruling the colonies. We have to live as subjects - we don't have a say in who the leader is - and it's the same way for much of the world, they feel like they're subjects to the American monarchy. So I feel an obligation and a responsibility to do everything I can to vote and see that Bush is not in office anymore.
Thanks Michael, for your time, your commitment and, mostly for the major boogieing that took place later.
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