Role Models: Michael Franti

We spoke with rocker and activist Michael Franti about his new album, All People, his approach to songwriting and his connection with his fans for the November/December issue.

On This Issue’s Guest Editors, The Avett Brothers

I’ve done some shows with them, and I’m a big fan of their music. Their music is very roots-y and organic and almost bluegrass, and other times it can be straight rock, or it can be funky, or reggae, and then they’ve got cello in there. It’s uplifting, inspiring music. They’re great performers. They’re also cool guys to hang out with.

Making All People

I wasn’t intending for there to be a theme, but if there is one it’s the classic existential question: I only have x amount of days to live – what do I want to do with them? What’s the mark I want to leave behind? There’s songs about my relationship with the love of my life, Sara, songs about the world and seeing the world from far away, or up close. It’s a combination of dance and guitar music – acoustic guitars, electric guitars. I love acoustic guitar driven music that makes people stomp their feet – like Irish music, gypsy music, flamenco, bluegrass.

“I’m Alive (Life Sounds Like)”

The first thing that inspired it was the melody. I was in the studio and I said, “We need a song that sounds like a bunch of people strumming acoustic guitars and screaming at the top of their lungs.” It’s a song about being yourself and not being told by anyone else in the world that you should be anything but who you are.

Get Them Hooked

I usually write songs from the hook first. If you don’t have a good chorus it’s tough to work backwards and create one from the verse. This is the first record that I’ve ever co-written songs with anybody outside of my band. I always thought, “If I co-write a song with somebody, it’s going to be less personal.” And writing a song for me is the most personal thing that I do. I stay up late and sit down with my guitar and write lyrics. I find that when I’m really tired there’s less filtration in my mind and I sort of blurt things out and it flows more naturally. It’s a really intimate process for me. To share that with somebody that you don’t know, to me it’s like walking into a room and saying, “Hi, I’m Michael. Let’s get naked and have sex.” It’s that intimate. But what I’ve found is that working with other people, it’s like a film director putting together the best writer, the best set designer … sometimes I’d be looking for a chord, the pre-chorus or chorus or something and couldn’t find it and the other person is like, “I’ve got it. Hear this.” And it’s more magical that way. So I found the songs ended up becoming more personal because I had somebody else to help get what was inside my heart out.

Navigating The Music Biz

At the end of the day it all comes down to the song. You can write songs that people can sing along to and have great beats and have words that mean something and resonate in peoples’ minds and more and more people find out about what you do. I’ve been making records since 1985, but it wasn’t until 2010 that we had our first “top 20” hit. Having songs on the radio was never a goal of mine. It just happened. “Hey (I Love You)” just took off. As a band, we’ve really developed a sound that works with my voice and it doesn’t sound like anything that they have on the radio.

Inspiring Lives

People come up to me after the show and tell me how a lyric has meant something to them. Someone told me that they were close to suicide and listened to my music for a long time and it brought them out of a very dark place. It’s the most rewarding thing, better than record sales, or a song on the radio. We were in Columbus, Ohio and we had this guy who had lung and brain cancer and we brought him out onto the stage and he sang “I Don’t Know Why” and I looked at him and thought, “This song has taken on a whole new meaning from what I thought of it.” He said that when he first heard the song he was leaving a chemotherapy treatment and he thought, “Yeah, I’m alive, I’m still doing this. I’m a fighter. I’ve been fighting. And I’m with the people I love.” It’s beautiful the way that music touches people in different ways. A song that meant something to you can be completely interpreted in another way by someone else.

Music With A Message

 I think the songs that really touch people are songs that make a personal connection. I went to Iraq in 2004 and played music on the street for Iraqi civilians and played for US soldiers that night, it was a great time. And the Iraqi people said, “We don’t want to hear songs about war. We want to hear songs that make us laugh, dance, sing, cry, hug our friends, transport us to someplace we aren’t.” I think those songs are just as important. One of my all-time favorite songwriters is John Lennon. I love him because he was able to put “Imagine,” which is about this utopian hope and vision for the world, right next to a song like “Beautiful Boy” which is about how much he loved being a father and loved Yoko. To me those songs about the world take on so much more meaning when you hear his concern about his son being brought into this world. It’s the same thing for Bob Marley. Johnny Cash, he was about singing songs for people who were not heard … giving a voice to the voiceless.