The title of Frank Turner’s most recent album, Positive Songs for Negative People, could be needlepointed into a sampler to exemplify his personal and professional philosophy. Through six albums with the Sleeping Souls, his gifted and almost supernaturally talented backing band, Turner has used his energetic Folk Punk style to bear witness to some of life’s most tragic situations, like addiction, suicide, poverty and loss. While reflecting on such grief and sadness, the U.K. native also regularly reveals the silver linings that human beings cling to in order to survive.
Turner didn’t come up in a hardscrabble English tenement. His investment banker father gave him the leg up necessary to be educated at Windsor’s Eton College, where Prince William was a classmate. Turner seemingly found his musical calling there with Punk bands like Kneejerk and Million Dead. When Million Dead’s four-year run ended, it fatefully coincided with Turner’s introduction to Bruce Springsteen’s stark, acoustic Nebraska album. The lo-fi cult favorite showed Turner a clear path to a solo career.
Turner’s first solo EP, Campfire Punkrock, was released in 2006. The group Dive Dive backed him on the EP, and three of that band’s members (Ben Lloyd, Tarrant Anderson and Nigel Powell) became the core of his longtime crew, The Sleeping Souls. Turner’s debut full-length, 2007’s Sleep is For the Week, was the singer/songwriter’s official introduction to a broader audience, with critics and fans connecting with the Billy Bragg-like observational skills, righteous indignation and heightened melodic senses.
While Turner recorded his early releases with minimal accompaniment in the studio, The Sleeping Souls joined him for tour dates, which included the clustered festival circuit and opening slots for The Gaslight Anthem, among others. In 2009, Epitaph Records became Turner’s American label home and the imprint released Poetry of the Deed, which was the first band-recorded album. The following year he was tapped as the opener for some Green Day stadium shows.
In the past five years, Turner has gone from strength to strength, releasing a string of ecstatically received albums — England Keep My Bones, Tape Deck Heart and Positive Songs For Negative People — and a relentless live itinerary. The constant touring has made Turner a frequent visitor to Cincinnati; at last fall’s MidPoint Music Festival, he and the Souls left their audience a hugging, sweaty mess, literally (the hug-pit is something that must be witnessed/experienced to fully understand). That was just a preview of the band’s potential to embrace and connect with fans and anyone else that happens by.
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This article appears in Jan 18-25, 2017.