UNCLE FRANK PT.1
- Jan 3, 2016
- 4 min read
Image curtosy of http://eloisecraventodd.com
This is the first part of a personal and hilariously honest, (and uncensored) interview with duo Uncle Frank during their tour for the Coffee House Session. You might know Frank Benbini as he is also the drummer of Fun Lovin’ Criminals (amongst other musical pursuits), whilst Naim Cortazzi is also a producer and instrumentalist, so both have separate musical careers on the go.
How are you guys?
NAIM: Great, its great to be back (Nottingham Trent University)
What did you study?
N: I studied Contemporary Arts, and that was a loose term. I specialised in music and did a bit of dancing and a bit of performance. I was told 'Naim is obviously untrained but has a unique style'.
Where has been your favourite place during the tour so far?
FRANK: There have been a couple, Bath Spa was nice.
N: There have been a couple of tough spots. Being in a coffee shop was tough because you don’t want to abuse a few people (although Frank’s done it a couple of times!)
F: We had one complaint! Because I didn’t pay for the drink I was drinking, but someone else deals with that. Not the fact that I might have shouted at someone.
N: This tour isn’t for the faint hearted, you have to interact and engage with people
You have been very good at interacting with the audience
F: I was very tame today. I got bol*@!ed for shouting at someone
You did a cover of Frozens, Do You Want to Build a Snowman, what made you chose it?
N: It was Franks Idea! He said we should do our own version, played it me on his phone, I scrambled the chords together and there you go, its not the exact version but its our own.
F: We played it on a live session at BBC Radio Bristol, and they have big glass pains between the studios. When I sing a song like that, with a lot of feeling I tend to close my eyes, so I opened them up and all the girls were crying and teared up, saying oh my god that’s so nice. So I thought, right this is going well, so we continued with it. And at the time it was snowing as well!
How did you album Smiles for Miles come about?
F: That was quite an intense record, at the time we were working quite hard. I was on tour with another ban and Naim was with another band. We have always had Uncle Frank, but sometimes you need to go off and do other things to bring your money in. We wrote the album over the winter period and it was non-stop, it made us ill. I ended up in hospital; it was a rough time and really intense.
N: It is actually our second album. The first one took a couple of years and was sprawled out. But this time Frank said lets just get it done in two weeks. I had a bedroom studio, but it took its toll. When you’re living in a place where you are working, and you have the session musicians coming and going and the pressure of time. But it has come out like this and we are dead chuffed.
We have already recorded the follow up album.
You recorded it yourself and it was mixed by Tim Latham is that right?
F: It was mixed by Tim Latham and produce it all ourselves. We right it all apart from the one cover on the album. We play all the instruments ourselves; the only things we don’t play are brass. So we will bring a brass section in if we want a brass on. Now and then we have a guest keyboard player from New York. Naim and me do everything, write, produce, compose and arrange.
What brought us together and what we have in common is we are massive Prince fans. If you look at every Prince record (when I was growing up I used to think it was so cool) along the bottom there is a huge line with the Warner Brothers Crescent, and then this line that says Written, Arranged, Composed, Produced, Mixed, Engineered by Prince. I thought when I start making records I want to put that on everything I do. However as the years go on you do find there are a few people who might be better at certain things than you, so we give that to Tim Latham. He’s unbelievable.
N: We got to the stage where we thought, give certain jobs to the pro’s they know what they are doing.
F: It wasn’t as easy as that, we didn’t want to do it as we thought we knew best, and still now we do our own mixes, send them to Tim, and say this is how we think it should sound. And sometimes Naim thinks, yeah I like that part there, Tim will send it back, and what we liked there will not be there any more and it has been moved. Sometimes we will have a little bicker because we want to use it where it originally was. So there’s a bit of trust in yourself that you have to give up. Its like when you’re to dancing and someone cuts in, you kind of have to say yes, when really your thinking get your hands off!
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