On the Clock with Frank Stacy

Interview by Kenny Cabello  |  Additional Words by Max Gardener

We started off at the foot of a church at the end of an alley. Our evening kicked into gear as we started packing up the car. We gave Frank the aux and he hit it on the head immediately. Right as we hit Ocean Boulevard, Junior Murvin’s “Police & Thieves” came over the speakers, loud. The thought of Joe Strummer hearing this song for the first time came to mind. We headed towards a field near the Queen Mary and circled the area before landing on our spot, passing the near-polished bones of what is to (and has since this interview) become the city’s latest amphitheater. “I hope they work with some of the younger artists out here,” Frank muttered, somewhat hopefully.

Frank and I (Max) are brothers. No secret there, and now you know. I’ve always admired our differences when it came to our music tastes. Not only what we listened to, but how we work as artists. How music comes to us. So, Kenny and I saw an opportunity to have Frank be the first person we interviewed for real. I was curious to give Frank the floor and let him talk about his art in a way that wasn’t just dinner table talk. We wondered, what would he do if we cared enough to ask?

Kenny: So I guess we’ll start it off with: where did the concept for escapism come from?

Frank: The whole thing came when I realized that I don’t need to escape all the time. It’s really just a case study of what my life was and is. What it’s been before. I was trying to get out of my own head and just observe myself.

Kenny: There’s a lot of narration running through it, which I like. What led you to adding that to this album?

Frank: I got the homegirl to do it. It’s a little intense, what I have her saying, but I wanted people to turn toward introspection a little more… To feel introspective, I guess. To ask themselves how they escape. Everybody has an escape, and a lot of people rely on them. Maybe they have a bad relationship with it. Or they only escape.

The narration helps make the songs feel like they can be made your own. It’s familiar, subconsciously, to have what feels like internal dialogue being spoken to you over tracks that have been endlessly (and manually) fiddled with by Frank himself. I’ve seen the way Frank works in Logic, and it’s obvious that the work is tedious, but he likes it that way.

Kenny: What can you tell us about the cover art?

Frank: Do you know the Cramps?

Kenny: Not well, but I’ve heard the name.

Frank: They’re an old punk band. They’ve got a cover that’s bright yellow with a nasty looking dude on the front. It’s really eye-catching. I was like, that’s hard. It’s not just aesthetically pleasing, it draws your eyes, you know?

Kenny: What about yours? How’d you take that and run with it?

Frank: Mine’s basically referencing the duality of everything. The sun and moon in the corners, me in between. The angels at the bottom, the dragon in the back… it’s the duality of good and evil, playing at the same time.

Kenny: Would you say this is a nighttime album or a daytime album?

Frank: More night time in the beginning for sure, but I like to think it runs into the morning after.

Kenny: The tempos really stood out to me too. It feels upbeat but relaxed at the same time. How intentional was all of that?

Frank: My shit’s very ambient. The moment I’ve always appreciated in the music I like is, say you’re smoking in a car or whatever and you play something good. It can fully take you out of the realm you’re in. That’s what I’ve always looked for. Ambient shit is really good at that, and escapism is that.

Kenny: How much time did you spend working on the way the album flowed?

Frank: I really spent a lot of time perfecting it honestly. The flow of the songs. It’s important. As a producer that’s something I have (and like having) full control over, so I always make sure that I know everything inside and out. You have to.

Kenny: There’s a lot of collaborations here. Did they come after each track was produced, or did you make them with those people in mind?

Frank: I’m pretty sure 90% of the songs were already written before I ever thought to have them on the album. I got to pick and choose which ones really fit into what I was going for. Everyone on it is a really good friend of mine. They’re all people I wanted to bring into the moment I was in.

Kenny: They felt really complementary to the production.

Frank: I’m honestly just looking for the best song. Whether I’m on it or not. I’m not pressed on being on every track. I don’t even need to have my vocals on an album. But that’s what I’m looking for, figuring out how to bring the best out of all of us, because we’ve all got it. I see beauty in it all.

Kenny: Was there anything that was particularly hard for you on this project, or that stuck out?

Frank: Mixing was pretty hard, just because the original songs weren’t always recorded very well. But other than that, it was sticking to the idea for a long period of time and seeing it through from the beginning. I had visions of the complete project at first, and it took maybe a month and a half, two months to fully go through it. Keeping myself in that mindset was the difficult part, because escapism isn’t necessarily a great trait I want to bring with me everywhere. But in order to finish it I had to completely dive into it and be in it for a while, and stay there, before I moved past it. Everything’s intentional.

Max: You chose not to master the album, right? I ask because you seem confident about having made that decision.

Frank: I enjoy demos, listening to myself. That first version of an idea. It was hard to decide what was good enough for a mix. What you put in my head was, you don’t want to drop something that’s a terrible mix and come back to it later like, fuck. So I kept that in mind. It needs to be good enough to be replayable, of course. But I wasn’t going to take the raw emotions out of anything. That’s what I loved about it.

Frank: A big thing too, because it was a real, full album and I had a lot of features, was making sure everyone was happy. I could take their stuff and mess it up because it was mine now, sure. But I also wanted to make sure they felt great about it just as much as I did. And that comes with the raw emotions. The fuck-ups. I want that to come through. I think people can relate to that more now. If it was perfect it’d be a little less relatable.

Max: That’s interesting. Understanding that the quality of it is part of what makes it good.

Kenny: Did you come out of it a better engineer, doing it yourself?

Frank: I don’t really use any specific mixing skills, I kind of just used what I knew. I wanted to make sure the bass was hitting right and the vocals weren’t overpowering. That it could sit well in the back. I wanted to make it so you could play it at max volume.

Max: What’s your secret sauce? Everyone’s got a secret sauce.

Frank: I almost always put overdrive on the master. It depends, because it could really mess up your mix, but the thing is it makes your bass sound, oh my god, perfect.

Kenny: Where was this album made?

Frank: In my room. In my fucking bedroom, right after work.

Kenny: You think your environment played a part in how it feels?

Frank: The apartment I lived in was on the second floor of this apartment complex in Long Beach, and I only had one neighbor, so I had three sides of my studio apartment free. I had four windows and I could see sunsets coming through above all my neighbors’ houses. I’d get off work and close the windows so my neighbors weren’t on my ass while I worked on the album. It was beautiful. It was very Long Beach. I felt like I was in a little pod.

Kenny: Do you prefer working alone?

Frank: So far, yeah. I prefer working alone, but I do want to work in studios more often for sure.

Max: What are you doing to get by right now?

Frank: Getting by isn’t easy right now for anyone, and it hasn’t been the easiest for me. I was working an overnight security job while writing the album. I was working shifts from 8pm to 4am, basically overnight. It gave me a lot of time to collect my thoughts. I made the album cover on a shift. I made a lot of the music on those shifts actually. I mixed a lot of it many times on that job. Holy shit, I had janitors tripping on me, they thought I was a cop on my laptop or something.

Max: I think that’s the name of this segment. On the Clock with Frank Stacy.

Frank: Yeah, a lot of this was made on the clock. I’m blessed for that job, and I picked that job for that reason.

Kenny: Are you still there?

Frank: I still pick up shifts here and there.

Kenny: There’s a song that came straight out of that job, right?

Frank: “exxtra Pt 2.” That one was made around Halloween last year, I had a shift that night. I pulled up at 8pm and had to wait til 11 for the next guard. When he came, I told him I’d get him In-N-Out if he’d do my scans for me so I could leave and go to a party. I mean, it’s Halloween night, so I left, drove to LA, partied all night, and came back right before 4am and clocked back in. The guard came out and I was just bumping this song.

Kenny: What’s your philosophy on getting by and being creative at the same time?

Frank: As far as I’ve found, they don’t really work well together. At least for me, so far. The creative brain and the staying-on-top-of-it brain are two separate parts. It’s always a different process when I lock in, and it doesn’t really make sense. I’m still figuring it out. This album is part of that. The music is part of the escape, it’s what I run to when I don’t know what to do. As an artist, I think it’s important to have time to sit and do nothing. But I understand how that’s not really feasible as a human being on this planet.

Kenny: For a lot of artists that balance is really hard. It seems like you can’t go one way more than the other.

Frank: It’s really a battle of feminine versus masculine mind, and I don’t mean anything deeper than that. The feminine mind, when you’re creating, is more active. You’re more sensitive to things, you catch ideas more specifically. With the masculine mind you’re more analytical, less emotional about things. Both are important to finishing an idea. It’s just hard to keep them both fully activated at the same time.

Max: Who’s got you inspired lately?

Frank: 03 Greedo. Like old 03 Greedo.

Max: I ask because I think your music taste is funny, in a good way. In the car you’re playing Junior Murvin, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, then modern R&B.

Frank: Yeah, I’m all over the place. I don’t know how to explain it. I constantly contradict myself in my taste. I’ll be like, this is ass, then I’ll make something that sounds like it. But I get it. It’s just a different feeling when you make your own music versus when you’re enjoying someone else’s.

Max: What do you like about listening to the Beatles?

Frank: The nostalgia. I’m looking to feel like a kid again. That’s really what it is.

Max: Why do you want to feel like a kid again?

Frank: Because that’s the purest you can feel. That’s the purest you’ve ever been, you know? That inner child is the most important thing for us to be nurturing.

Max: No responsibilities.

Frank: No! Well, you know what I mean. I think the most intense memories you have are from when you were a kid.

Max: Do you have a favorite album start to finish? A go-to, and why?

Frank: Frank Ocean’s Blonde was super important in relation to what I was going for, and what I’m still going for. The rawness of the Frank Ocean shit is great, but it’s still professional, and there’s still so much of that pure emotion coming through. That’s what I’m looking for. It really feels like life. It’s not just a song.

Kenny: Tell me about “Steak BLT.”

Frank: So I made that song in Max’s office. I walked to Olive’s, got a steak BLT, walked back, made that shit while I was eating it. That song was way simpler before I got Max to play on it. It was just a loop of the intro, really. I thought it wasn’t enough, so I wanted Max on it.

Max: It’s sick, it turned into a kind of cinematic piece.

Kenny: That one stood out to me a lot.

Frank: You know when you have to show an adult one of your songs? That’s the one my friends would show their parents.

Kenny: You got any other favorite tracks on the album?

Frank: Honestly, every single one of those was my shit.

Max: You don’t have one that’s like, that’s my fucking baby?

Frank: “Somehowsomewhatsomewhere.” I think that’s one of the hits. All of them have funny stories.

Max: What do you think when someone asks about your five-year plan?

Frank: That’s a hard question to answer. I have trouble envisioning it, and I think that’s something holding me back, being able to see it in 3D. I don’t know exactly what I want or how I want it to go. I want to be in another country.

Kenny: You moved to LA recently. Is a big part of that move about meeting new people and seeing what’s going on out there with different artists?

Frank: Yeah, most definitely. Getting away from Long Beach for a while will allow more space in my life for new things. I’m excited for that. I know I’ll meet new people, and I already know a lot of people in that area.

Max: What’s your take on producing for other people?

Frank: I’m super down, and I really want to. I don’t want to force it. That’s my answer.

Kenny: Have you started thinking about your next project?

Frank: Nah. I got B-sides for this one that I just dropped too.

Kenny: Something you haven’t done yet musically that you want to try?

Frank: I think I’ll drop a solo project at some point soon. That’s the next step, the next big one for me. Just seeing whatever I can do with my vocals.

Max: I don’t know if this is the kind of question we want to be asking, but what’s your perspective on how artists are supposed to be these days? Doing every single part of every single thing. Figuring out how your content relates to your music, promoting yourself on social media. How are you thinking about all of that?

Frank: That’s the weirdest part, because it’s never been like that before. But also, if you want it bad enough, it’s right there for you.

Max: You’re not against it?

Frank: I could sit here and fight it, but it would be a waste of energy. What am I looking for, really? I don’t even know. I think it allows people to shoot infinite shots. But I’ll say the system is built for certain types of people to succeed. The most respectable artists I know, people who make really good art, they’re not built for this. Not built for the public eye, in your face all day. Presenting it visually while the music is just as complicated to make, those work against each other.

Kenny: It’s ironic, circling back, you wouldn’t have gotten this project if you weren’t off your phone. And anybody who’s anybody now will tell you you have to use your phone to push it.

Frank: The phone just breeds a lot of negative thoughts naturally. It’s a highlight reel, constantly. That’s been discussed by a lot of people, but it’s designed to make you feel a way. Being on that shit all day is going to eat your soul.

Max: I feel like the Beatles would’ve played the game. Paul would’ve been on Reels every day.

Frank: It’s a weird paradox.