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| THE ANATOMY OF FRANK ON FULL DISPLAY |
It's a warm Thursday afternoon in mid-October, and Anatomy of Frank frontman Kyle Woolard appears remarkably fresh-faced, bright-eyed, and just plain chipper for a guy who just spent three months criss-crossing the continent on an 80-date solo tour. He pops out of his road-tested minivan wearing multi-colored neon high-tops, cut-offs, and a well worn t-shirt bearing gifts — a large cookie and a copy of the Anatomy of Frank's three-song debut EP, the cryptically titled "relax, there's nothing here but old pictures." Oh, and Woolard, who's bringing the full Anatomy of Frank line-up — guitarist Erik Larsen, keyboardist Jimmy Bulls, bassist George Faulknier, and drummer Chris Garay — to Lynchburg this Friday for a Rivermont Pizza gig, was up well into the a.m. the night before, he informs me, after a celebratory homecoming show in Charlottesville. Let's just say the guy's got a certain energy about him, an infectious kind of enthusiasm that radiates from his pores.
A small-town Virginia native who turned up at U.Va with pre-med in mind a half-dozen years ago, Woolard eventually gravitated toward astronomy and, poetically enough, was drafted to play guitar in the Charlottesville band Astronomers. But Woolard had musical ideas of his own and last November he played his final Astronomers gig, took a bunch of songs he'd written, and found a band to flesh out Frank's anatomy.
If "relax" is any indication, Woolard draws on an eclectic palette. "Saturday Morning," the EP's opening track, brings to mind Pavement on a banjo binge, with Woolard laconically delivering slanted enchantments like "If I could bend you with my powers/I'd make you fall asleep for hours." As the track builds toward an exuberant chorus, keyboards, horns, and a whole lot of other voices and instruments join the party until it resembles an art-skewed hootenanny. Track two, "Bill Murray," is a more straightforward number with piano chordings and earnest vocals that seem to be headed in the general direction of Coldplay melodrama until the synths arrive and drive the affair into neo-new wave terrain. And Woolard tops things off with a bittersweet, fingerpicked acoustic rumination on "cities made of solitude" and headlights that "drift like lanterns through kaleidoscopes.”
Over a pizza lunch at RP, a gregarious Woolard offered insights into the genesis of Frank, his musical vision, and an odd collection of strange instruments he collected on the road. Here's some of what he had to say. . .
Q: Is there a real Frank?
A: Well, I drew this picture of Frank — it's on our website. He has a shag haircut, trimmed mustache, dashing smile, and a v-neck sweater. He made me chuckle, but he also had this universal charm to him. The name is kind of ideal for me because it's ambiguous. People aren't sure what to make of it. But I think once they start listening, they start to get it. I've had people tell me that if we get a record deal they're going to make us change the name. This may sound silly, and it may sound like I'm a sensitive artist, but I won't do that.
Q: Is the ambiguity a reflection of the eclectic nature of the band? If I didn't know better, I'd think the three songs on the EP were by three different bands.
A: That's something I worry about. I really don't have a method, and I never write songs the same way. But I want to stress that we're not trying to sound any particular way. I do think our sound will come together, and I'm at peace with that. We're a young band, and as five people we're going to find a more consistent sound because we're not trying to be a variety act.
Q: But there is a tongue-in-cheek quality to what you do. I mean "Bill Murray" doesn't really have anything to do with the real Bill Murray, right?
A: I was originally writing that for Astronomers, but I couldn't think of a name for it. Then, I was up with a friend one night, and I told him I was going to call it 'Bill Murray Lost My Virginity.' Not like he took it, but he actually lost it, like in Sweden or somewhere. So that's what we called it, except it got shortened to 'Bill Murray.' I guess deep down we're a little sarcastic at times. We're young and cynical. We'll grow out of it eventually.
Q: What is the difference between the Anatomy of Frank when it's just you and when it’s a full band?
A: We’re a band. But it would be hard to ask the guys to quit their jobs just to go on the road with me when I can create something that has the full-band energy by myself and do the grunt work by going to these cities, and laying down a foundation. Then when we go back to these places as a full band, we'll have more people, better guarantees, and I'll be able to offer them more of a living.
Q: So you didn't just grab a guitar and hit the road?
A: No, I didn't want to do an acoustic tour. That can be nice, but it's kind of boring. You have to expect people to sit down and really listen to you. Whereas when you have something that can get loud, it has the ability to overtake people, and whether they want to listen or not they get drawn in. So, I got a keyboard, a sampler, a laptop, acoustic guitar, some drums, toy piano, melodica, a loop station, and delay pedals. I took the band's songs, deconstructed them, and put them back together as an electronic show. I think it would have been cheesy to take all the parts the band usually plays, put them in Garage Band, and just play along with that. My big thing was that I wanted to create all the sounds myself. It let me get inside the songs and see what was possible. And, throughout the tour I collected little instruments like a thumb piano and a toy piano. It's a good way to come up with ideas that you might not think of on your regular instrument.
Q: How did you go from being an astronomy major to an Astronomer to the face of Frank?
A: I wanted to be a doctor, but I figured out that that wasn't going to make me happy. I've always had this feeling that, no matter what I'm doing, I'm wasting my time. . . like I should be doing something else. When I was little, I figured there must be something that would be the biggest purpose I could have in life. And astrophysics interested me a lot. So I switched. I thought it was a way of dealing with the biggest questions in the world. But even that didn't do it. What I've found is that despite astronomy being a big endeavor, the biggest endeavor of all is being happy, because that's all we have. So now I can sit and do music for 16 hours a day and go to bed at night feeling like I've had a great day. That was my college experience. Some people might say that I wasted four years. But those were the four years it took for me to really find what I wanted to do. . . even if it doesn't really require a college degree.
