Announces Expansive Spring Tour
Fran’s debut album “A Private Picture” saw release late last year and today we’re excited to share a new video for stand out track “Desert Wanderer”. The track much like the video is winding and expansive, an epic album closer that carries the whole weight of the record on it’s shoulders. Shot and directed by Warren Cockerham in Tampa, Florida with help from film studients from the University of Tampa the video reflects on this reality of climate change and celebrates some of the beauty that still remains.
Fran has this to say about the track & video:
“When I originally wrote Desert Wanderer it was to process a ghostly end of a love affair, an ode to a disappearer. This song, like everything in my life, has been recontextualized by the climate crisis. I have felt immense sadness and disillusionment about humanity’s uncertain future and the rapid loss of natural resources, plants, animals. We have ruined it for everyone. To think that the creatures we were fascinated by as children—bugs, dolphins, birds— are disappearing at an unprecedented rate is a reality too painful to bear. I shot this video with director Warren Cockerham in Tampa, Florida —with the help of film students from the University of Tampa— to try and reflect on this reality and to celebrate some of the beauty that still remains.”
The trick is to make a confession entertaining. A Private Picture, the debut album by Chicago’s Fran, delivers a collection of extremely personal experiences that have been distilled and abstracted to the point that you can see yourself in their imagery, find analogs to your own emotional history in their scenarios –when you hear them, it’s a conversation. It’s therapy, if therapy was allowed to turn you on and make you shake what you got.
Maria Jacobson began writing songs during a time of great personal upheaval. Working as an actor at a summer repertory theatre in rural Indiana after a disillusioning stint in the Chicago theatre scene and a series of failed relationships, she bought a guitar and taught herself to play. Through this instrument and her voice, she discovered a way to process the pain of recent events and draw ambiguities closer to conclusions.
Landing an English teaching job with sparse hours in a small city in Mexico afforded the time and space to develop as a songwriter: playing and writing all night until it became clear that a body of work was forming.
Maria returned to Chicago and kept a cool head while navigating the general hassle that is getting your first band together. She employed the help of friend and bassist Atticus Lazenby to form the band and arrange their first EP called More Enough. It was through the release of the EP on Chicago tape label Lake Paradise that she met Jake Acosta. Jacobson remembers, “We met for beers at this weird bar that doesn’t exist anymore in Humboldt Park and were so happy to have met each other. That is sort of where everything changed.”
At its core, Fran’s music is about sharing a truth -–telling it, confessing it, yelling it—in the service of human connection. Or, as Jacobson puts it,
“I feel that I am a songwriter for the same reason I wanted to be an actor. I want to tell the truth. I want to challenge myself to get closer and closer to the core of an experience, an emotion- I want to say it, sing it, in a way that says exactly what it is. I cry when I write songs because I am constantly making discoveries, about myself, about the world, about the best way to convey and connect and get closer.”
Fran – A Private Picture
Street: November 15th 2019
Stream via Soundcloud
Download via Dropbox
Pre Order: https://ffm.to/franaprivatepicture
Track List
01. Now
02. Company
03. So Surreal
04. Time and Place
05. In My Own Time
06. (I Don’t Want You to Think) I’ve Moved On
07. A Private Picture
08. Desert Wanderer
Fran On Tour Dates
03/14 – Chicago, iL @ Hideout
03/15 – St. Louis, MO @ The Nest
03/16 – Kansas City, MO @ Colonial Club
03/17 – Fayetteville, AR @ Backspace
03/18 – Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
03/19-3/21 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/22 – Houston, TX @ Dan Electro’s
03/23 – New Orleans, LA @ Bank’s St. Bar
03/24 – Birmingham, AL @ Mom’s Basement
03/25 – Atlanta, GA @ Murmur
03/26 – Indianapolis, IN @ Healer
03/30 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
05/07 – Bologna, IT @ Mikasa
05/08 – San Salvo, IT @ Beat Cafe
05/09 – Sora, IT @ Deliri Cafe
05/13 – Colle Val d’Elsa, IT @ 1001
05/14 – Montecarotto, IT @ Osteria sotto le Mura
05/15 – Santa Margherita, IT @ Arci Orchidea
05/16 – Pinerolo, IT @ Espresso
05/21 – Mannheim, DE @ Alter Beach Buhne
05/23 – Offenbach, DE
@ Hafen 2
05/26 – Glasgow, UK @
The Hug and the Pint
06/02 – Unna, DE @
Monochromat
06/05 -Bamberg, DE @
Affenmensch
