The group’s new album — which FFN gives the release-party treatment Friday, Nov. 29 at Southgate House Revival — is about becoming who you are without losing who you were
Frontier Folk Nebraska: The High School YearsPhotos provided by FFNFour years ago, Northern Kentucky’s Frontier Folk Nebraska booked two shows at the Southgate House Revival in Newport with the intent of recording the performances for their 2016 live album, This One’s for the Kid in the Back. Then there was the album’s actual release and the supporting tours that had to dovetail with the quartet’s daily work and family schedules.
After that, Frontier Folk Nebraska released a pair of cassette EPs, 2017’s Warpig and 2018’s Foolish Frank, named for the skull figure, drawn by vocalist/guitarist Michael Hensley, that occasionally appears in band materials (“He’s our Eddie,” jokes guitarist Travis Talbert, referring to Iron Maiden’s mascot). As Hensley was conceiving new material, he noticed a significant difference and an interesting pattern in some songs. He held back the ones that hung together and grouped the others into the EPs.
“There was definitely connective tissue,” Hensley says. “‘Freaks’ wasn’t the first thing that popped in my head, but there was definitely the aura of that concept — of telling the story of your life through the process of how far you’ve lived it and then realizing it’s about to be flipped on its head with a new direction.”
Frontier Folk Nebraska’s ‘Freaks’Hensley’s oddball songs became Frontier Folk Nebraska’s imminent new studio album, Freaks. The band was recording the album’s instrumental tracks in Point Pleasant, West Virginia with producer Bud Carroll at his Trackside Studios when longtime drummer Mark Becknell opted out of the band. Carroll sat in on drums for three tracks (Becknell had already played on four) while Frontier Folk Nebraska began the search for a new rhythmatist, which quickly culminated in the hiring of Elijah Batson.
Batson’s youth is not wasted on him. In addition to being enrolled at the University of Kentucky, the multi-instrumentalist fronts his own solo project, Blueprints and Elements, and drums with Queerpunk band Creamboy, whose debut album is completed and slated for release in 2020.
Batson came to the band’s attention through bassist Matt McCormick, who gave Batson guitar lessons at Covington’s Baker Hunt Art & Cultural Center. One of Batson’s bands at the time played the center’s year-end recital, which was attended by McCormick and Hensley. It was there they first saw Batson’s skills as a drummer and vocalist. After Becknell’s departure, Frontier Folk Nebraska auditioned drummers and Batson got the call.
“Six months or so later when Mark quit, they asked me to fill in for a couple of shows, and I guess I did OK because here I am,” Batson says. “That was actually most of the way through the recording process for this new record.”
“It was obvious that he was an awesome musician,” McCormick says. “We tried multiple great drummers and I don’t want to say he was the best drummer, but he was the best fit.”
“A band is about a vibe and he gets along with us,” Talbert adds. “A lot of it is he’s really quiet. He was there the day we tracked three of the songs in West Virginia. We were doing a run to play shows and record, and Elijah came with us to play the shows, but we didn’t want to put him under the microscope (for the recording) right away. What he did was agree to the horrible terms of learning all the songs and not having a setlist. If you agree with that, you’re kind of stuck in the band.”
FFN’s gear from the music video shoot for the new album’s first single, “Teenage Freaks”Provided by FFNLeading up to the recording and as the band tracked Freaks, discussions turned to an obvious question — was Frontier Folk Nebraska making a concept album? It’s a question that remains even after the album’s completion.
“I don’t know that the four of us ever sat down and said, ‘Are we making a concept album?’ ” McCormick says. “I don’t think ‘concept album’ ever came up.”
“It did — in the van a lot,” Talbert says. “I feel like we talked about it as we were doing it.”
“There was definitely a conversation,” Hensley confirms. “A lot of the dynamic talk came up too because the pacing of the album had to be perfect. It was a process of multiple years of conversations of what worked and what didn’t. That’s why the EPs came out, that’s when Elijah joined and that changed the dynamic itself.”
“I must have fallen asleep in the van a lot,” McCormick says with a laugh. “I don’t remember any conversations about concept albums. But I don’t remember a lot of things.”
A large part of the differentiation in these new Frontier Folk Nebraska songs is the mature reflection that anchors them. The dichotomy and irony that Hensley has written a mature song called “Teenage Freaks” is not lost on him.
Watch the music video for the new album’s “Teenage Freaks” here.
“That’s what happened!” he says, laughing. “I can think clearly about what happened at that time, how it felt when we were 17. ‘Teenage Freaks’ and ‘All Systems Go’ were the first songs that were starting to feel more mature and thought out, like there was more to the songs than we’d done before, and they were more interesting to play.”
An important part of Freaks as a conceptual piece is framing the songs with the tracks “Freaks Prologue” and “Freaks Epilogue,” which were recorded with Grant Husselman in Covington. Hensley originally wanted to end the album with a song provisionally titled “Joy,” but ultimately he didn’t like it. Talbert had written a brief piece called “Freaks,” with spoken word passages about old times spent hanging out in the basement, watching movies and jamming, which he emailed to Hensley for his consideration. With its vivid details and reflective musings, along with giving the album a title, it ended up setting the tone for Freaks, conceptually.
“He emailed me back something like, ‘I really like that. Can you do one where they’ve all grown up?’” Talbert says. “He prompted me to do (‘Prologue’).”
The earliest and best review of Freaks came from longtime band compadre Justin Chalfant, who, Hensley says, “gets mail as J.T. Money.” Chalfant played drums for Hensley and Talbert when they were in high school and still learning guitar. Their old pal gave the album “the J.T. Money stamp of approval,” particularly enjoying the lyrical reference to “watching Guns ‘N’ Roses live in Tokyo” in the prologue.
“I said to him, ‘You’re the target audience to me,’ ” Talbert says. “If Justin didn’t like, it’s useless.”
There’s a strong dose of nostalgia in Freaks, but it’s thoughtfully and creatively connected to the present day. It’s about becoming who you are without losing who you were.
“The Freaks concept is that I’m sitting here at 34 and I want to do the same stuff,” Hensley says. “I watch my grandfather still watching Andy Griffith, and I guess I’m going to still watch the stuff that made me mature and grow up. With the album, every time I’ve listened to it, I’m like, ‘What does this mean to me in the lyrics?’ And it all tied together perfectly. In certain sections, it’s like, ‘Here’s the landscape for the majority of this section of my life.’ You dive back down into childhood, and growing up, and then hitting that wall called 30, where it’s ‘Something has to change, something has to die off.’ When you get to (the songs) ‘Hovering’ and ‘Crazy Like Foxes,’ it’s like you’re reborn or something.”
Frontier Folk Nebraska celebrates the release of Freaks Friday, Nov. 29 at the Southgate House Revival. Tickets/more show info: southgatehouse.com. You’ll be able to download the album beginning Friday at FFN’s Bandcamp page, where you can also order it on CD and vinyl.