Musician Adam Franklin has never been one to sit still. The man has about three dozen releases through the revered Swervedriver,  Magnetic Morning and his own solo projects, including Bolts of Melody, his latest endeavor.

The Oxford-based Franklin put the final touches on an upcoming album -- "I Could Sleep a Thousand Years" -- just before boarding a plane to start his US tour, his third time touring the states in less than two years. You can click here to listen to his song "Champs" off Spent Bullets while reading!

Holly Lang/Pine Magazine: Tell me about your upcoming tour... Is it a national tour?

Adam Franklin: Yes, starting and finishing in NYC. We have only toured the Spent Bullets album once so far and that was as special guests of The Church but, the thing is, some of the ticket prices were high on that tour so I know that not everyone could come out to those shows. Plus of course we didn't play some places such as Atlanta. It will be great to be back.

HL: How long since you were playing in the city? Last fall with Magnetic Morning?

AF: Yeah, I think that must have been November of 2008 and before that was June 2008 with Swervedriver I think

HL: The Swervedriver show is easily one of my favorites, as I’m sure it was with many others. And speaking of, how has the resurgence, of sorts, of Swervie been, as far as shows and reissues?

AF: It's been great really. That US tour was amazingly well received and that continued onto the UK shows. This year we just played some more shows -- a couple in London, one in Oxford where the band formed and we played the All Tomorrows Parties festival that My Bloody Valentine curated. The great thing about that was that a lot of the bands Swervedriver was into when we started were playing also - Sonic Youth, J Mascis, Bob Mould, Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3, the Valentines, etc. So we played a good set and J Mascis and Bob Mould came up to me afterwards saying it sounded great so that was nice.

HL: That's fun! So was it sort of a homecoming of sorts, being around the influences, possibly, of some of your earlier years?

AF: Exactly. In fact, another way of looking at it is that most of the bands on the bill were, in fact, 40-somethings but that didn't mean that the kids weren't there! But yeah, it was really cool to be on that bill because when we did our very first demo I made a mixtape of my favorite bands at the time and snuck our songs on there to see how it sounded and then there we were playing with all those bands!

HL: And did the fit as well on the stage as it did on the mixtape?

AF: I think so, yeah. A Place To Bury Strangers were on before us and there were bands like Serena Maneesh on the bill also. There has been a kind of revival of that kind of music in recent years with younger bands playing perhaps a similar kind of rock and those guys are all really nice as well. Serena Maneesh said that when they saw that Swervedriver had been added to the bill, that's when they decided they wanted to do it.

HL: That's awesome, though, to bring something back somewhat full circle in several ways, through both the revival, as you said, of this style, but the realization of your own revival with it on stage with those who helped bring it all about.

AF: Let me just say that people said we sounded great and we felt we did. Plus playing a festival was really good because there would have been people there that hadn't seen us for years and wouldn't necessarily have gone to our own shows but would have been curious and so we ended up playing to about 3,000 people and they were noisy, but then so were we.

HL: Do you feel this resurgence of Swervedriver shows bear any sort of influence on your solo style, meaning that, by revisiting live some of the songs that served as a such a watershed musically, do you feel your current solo effort has been affected stylistically?

AF: It's been interesting seeing how much more people are responding to that older sound, like when I went to Australia at the start of 2008 and met a lot of folks who are really into that kind of sound and scene but had never seen many of those bands play live, and I think that in a way I’ve gone back to that kind of a sound a little.

I suppose the Toshack Highway album in 2000 that was more electronic in some ways and then I did some releases that were more acoustic-based because I was doing solo acoustic shows at the time. But eventually I started embracing the electric guitar again which is really more what people want to hear from me anyway and in fact we just recorded a new album which is definitely more under the influence of my old band and that sound than anything else I’ve done of late.

HL: And this is I Could Sleep for a Thousand Years?

AF: Yes.

HL: How was the recording? Was it as global as Spent Bullets?

AF: Pretty much. We recorded the basic tracks and got the drums, bass and rough guitars down in NYC at Stratosphere studio. We then went up to Toronto again to do guitars, keyboards, singing etc. I mixed in Cardiff and tomorrow we're mastering in Oxford, so the same as last time essentially, just New York instead of London

HL: Who all is a part of this album?

AF: Mikey Jones played drums on The Church tour and he also plays drums in Josh Stoddard, the bass player's band The Still Out. Mikey was really into the idea of recording back in NYC after the tour since we were starting to really sort of lock-in and rock-out at the end of the tour.

The thing is, though, that Josh broke his foot quite early on during that tour, like after the sixth show or something so we had The Church's touring keyboardist Craig Wilson step in so at the end of the tour we didn't have a bass player. But our friend Matt Sumrow played bass on the recordings and he had played keys with us before but only ever in rehearsal and he also plays guitar with The Still Out as well as with Dean & Britta and he plays piano with Ambulance Ltd also. Of course, Locksley Taylor has played guitar with Bolts of Melody for some time now. This next album is actually going to be credited to AF & Bolts of Melody, in fact.

HL: I think many are curious about this album, as your style can be a shape shifter of sorts, at times, which I imagine is what lends towards having such a rabid fan base. Not very predictable, which is a good thing.

AF: I think this new album has quite a variation of songs but it's weird because you can never tell how people are gonna react. Like with the last album (Spent Bullets), which is quite heavy in my mind, whether it's the lyrics or the music itself, and yet some people said they thought it was light and didn't rock! Or people said that they thought that the album might be more like Swervedriver because it was recorded right after the Swerve tour, well this one probably does have some more Swervesque songs but then others that are pulling in a different direction, but then it's difficult to critique it when it's your own music, I suppose.

HL: You seem to be able to distance yourself from your music to some degree. I do have to say, though, that what is easily one of my most favorite descriptors of an album, or at least a few songs on an album as: Scott Walker sound tracking a French spy movie.

AF: Ah yes, well, there was a big Scott Walker influence on both Spent Bullets and the Magnetic Morning album A.M., but whether you would actually pick up on it if you didn't know Scott Walker's music is another thing. It's not like I was crooning or anything but the influence of the song “It's Raining Today” is audible in different ways on about five of those songs, I would say!

HL: Well, it is a rather lovely song.

AF: It most certainly is. But there are lyrical nods to that song and others of his as well as sonic and melodic swipes

HL: From where did he come in your musical world? Someone of whom you've always been a fan, or a musician you came about recently?

AF: More recently, I knew the three big Walker Brothers tunes (“The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, “ “Make It Easy On Yourself”and “My Ship Is Coming In”) and then some people tried to get me into his solo albums but I couldn't get past the voice and it was too rich for me. Then at some point I was able to take it and really got into it last year, read a couple of books and stuff.

He's a very interesting character because a lot of the music is almost middle of the road sounding, on the surface, but then the lyrics are about not being able to pay your rent or the music gets actually quite psychedelic or avant-garde in places. I met someone at the Swervedriver show in L.A. Stephen Kijak, the guy that made the Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man, and he told me Scott is a big fan of shoegaze music!

HL: Maybe there will be some rare recent tracks that somehow pop up and you'll hear an Adam Franklin influence in there!

AF:  I hope so!

HL:  When do we get to hear your new album?

AF: It should be in the spring around May 2010.

HL: Another tour in support of that, possibly?

AF: Absolutely. In fact we may be back over for the SXSW festival.

HL: You know we'll all want you to make another Atlanta stop somewhere in there, right?
 
AF: We won't do it if there isn't an Atlanta show in there!