Growing Up (1981–1996)

Francis Edward Turner was born in Bahrain on 28 December 1981. When the family came back to England they settled in Winchester and then the village of Meonstoke in Hampshire. He played piano as a kid, and went to school at Summer Fields and then, on a scholarship, Eton College.

In 1985, aged three, he met Chris Blake at the village primary school in Meonstoke. They lived on the same street and bonded over Action Force toys. Then music arrived: "I fell for Iron Maiden, Chris for Metallica." Frank had seen an Iron Maiden poster on a friend's bedroom wall while they were playing Warhammer, and talked his parents into buying him Killers. "I got a guitar and amp from Argos for Christmas, Chris got a drumkit," and he taught himself to play at eleven. (He's still a devoted Maiden fan: in 2014 he won Celebrity Mastermind with Iron Maiden as his specialist subject.)

Set up in Chris's bedroom, aged 11 and 13, they started their first band: "a million different names, all terrible". They covered AC/DC and Nirvana, wrote "some truly dreadful original songs", and played birthday parties for Frank's older sister and their bass player Toby, "both medium disastrous events".

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Kneejerk (1997–2000)

At school Frank, drummer Ben Dawson, guitarist Chris and a friend called Cheng started a pop-punk band called Badger Doritos. In Frank's words: "(cringe), and we were fucking appalling. but hey, it was fun". They once played a school assembly "with ben half naked, chris in a dress, cheng with a communist get up and me with 'victim' daubed on my chest in black lipstick".

As they got more serious, Cheng left and the other three became Kneejerk, an emo/hardcore band with Frank "on bass and most vocals". Their first CD, Helpless I Cry, came out early in 1999 on Now We Must Records. That summer they went on their first tour, with Abjure, to Dundee, Leeds, Edinburgh and Peterborough: "one of the most amazing times of my life," Frank said, adding that he'd been "yearning to do a tour or something like that since i was 11 years old".

"it's about not making profit, and about not being in this for money." — Frank on DIY culture, February 2000

In January 2000 came a split with Abjure, Don't Clap It Startles Me, on Skipworth Records, then a four-day tour with Symbiosis, driven around by friends from Norwich. "We actually broke even financially at the end, which was cool." Frank built and ran the band's GeoCities site himself, and it still survives (see Other Bands).

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Million Dead (2001–2004)

Kneejerk's only full-length, The Half-Life of Kissing, came out in early 2001 on the Yorkshire DIY label Sakari Empire, and the band broke up that November. Frank was studying at the London School of Economics by then, and at 19 he was also drumming in an instrumental post-rock band, Record Buying Public.

In 2001 Ben Dawson invited Frank to join a new London post-hardcore band. Cameron Dean and Julia Ruzicka had come over from Australia "with forming a band in mind"; with Frank and Ben they became Million Dead. Their first single, "Smiling At Strangers On Trains", was backed by John Peel, Mary Anne Hobbs and Steve Lamacq, and their debut album, A Song to Ruin, followed in 2003.

Frank was already trying something else on the side. His first solo show was a set at the Smalltown America all-dayer at 93 Feet East in London on 18 September 2004: show #1. Around then he got a tape of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska:

"That was a really big moment for me hearing that record in terms of a turn around in my music career, from hardcore punk bands to what I'm doing now."

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Going Solo (2005–2008)

In 2005 Million Dead released Harmony No Harmony, then announced they were splitting up. They played their last show at the Joiners in Southampton on 23 September 2005. Twenty years later, in 2025, they reunited for 2000 Trees and a tour that ended at the Electric Ballroom in London.

"When Million Dead finished, I wanted to stay on tour, but I didn't want the hassle of putting a band together." So Frank went solo. In October 2005 he blogged that he was "venturing into the scary new world of STANDING UP" with an acoustic guitar. His Early Days demo CD-R was "recorded in bedrooms and squats around the UK on my laptop, self-released, burned and hand-marked", about 500 copies of it.

After a split EP with Reuben, the Campfire Punkrock EP came out on Xtra Mile in May 2006, recorded with the Oxford band Dive Dive, whom Frank had met on tour with Reuben. Three of them — Ben Lloyd, Tarrant Anderson and Nigel Powell — became his band from then on. Show #100 was in Paris that May; in September he was the last act to appear on Steve Lamacq's Lamacq Live on BBC Radio 1.

The debut album Sleep Is for the Week (January 2007) was recorded at Dive Dive's studio, produced by Ben Lloyd. Then came supports with yourcodenameis:milo and Biffy Clyro, a trip to SXSW, The Real Damage EP, and the All About the Destination DVD.

Love Ire & Song (31 March 2008) reached UK #72 and later went gold. That summer he played everywhere from Glastonbury and Truck to Cambridge Folk Festival and Reading & Leeds, with Chris T-T joining on keys. Show #500 followed in September at Lexapalooza in London. By December there was already a rarities collection, The First Three Years.

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Poetry of the Deed (2009–2010)

2009 began supporting the Gaslight Anthem across the UK and Europe. The third album was made as a proper band record, with Matt Nasir now on keys, produced by Alex Newport at Leeders Farm in Norwich and in Brooklyn. Frank spent the summer supporting the Offspring in the US ("Smash was one of the first punk records I ever bought") and signed to Epitaph for releases outside the UK.

Poetry of the Deed (7 September 2009) reached UK #36, and "The Road" was Zane Lowe's Hottest Record in the World on Radio 1. The autumn tour sold out the Shepherd's Bush Empire; in November he joined the Revival Tour across the US with Chuck Ragan, Tim Barry, Dave Hause and others, and saw out the year at the Spiegeltent in Gloucester.

2010 went global: the Revival Tour in Australia, a six-city tour of China, and in June, stadium supports for Green Day, including Wembley Stadium, plus his first Kerrang! cover. At 2000 Trees, which he headlined, he played a new song called "I Still Believe". He finished the year with Buddies, an album made with Jon Snodgrass in Colorado while they were on tour together.

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England Keep My Bones & Wembley (2011–2012)

The band got its name, The Sleeping Souls, from a lyric in "I Am Disappeared". The fourth album was recorded in ten days in January 2011. Frank wanted it "to feel more like a solo record made with a band", and England Keep My Bones (6 June 2011) entered the chart at #12, his highest yet.

On 21 April 2011 he played show #1000 at the Strummerville Spring Sessions in Shoreditch. That summer he stepped up to the main stage at Reading & Leeds.

On 13 April 2012 he headlined Wembley Arena in front of a sold-out 12,000, with Billy Bragg, Beans on Toast and dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip in support. That July he and the Sleeping Souls played the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony pre-show. In August he unveiled Möngöl Hörde, a hardcore band with Ben Dawson and Matt Nasir.

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Tape Deck Heart to Show #2000 (2013–2016)

For Tape Deck Heart Frank went to Burbank, California, because producer Rich Costey wouldn't ship all his equipment to England. It came out in April 2013, reached UK #2 and went gold; "Recovery" was the lead single. It led to an arena tour, including London's O2.

In 2014 Möngöl Hörde released their album, and Frank toured town halls and other places that don't usually get gigs. His tour memoir The Road Beneath My Feet came out in March 2015 and went straight into the bestseller charts.

Positive Songs for Negative People (2015), produced by Butch Walker in Nashville, also reached UK #2; the video for "The Next Storm" features CM Punk. On 26 August 2016 he played Reading for the tenth year in a row, a record, and on 15 December 2016 show #2000 at Rock City in Nottingham, later released as Show 2000.

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Lost Evenings (2017–2019)

In May 2017 Frank started his own festival. Lost Evenings took over the Roundhouse in London for four nights: two greatest-hits sets, the whole of Sleep Is for the Week, and a second stage named after Nick Alexander, Frank's friend and merch manager, who was killed in the Bataclan attack in 2015. That September it won Best Independent Festival at the AIM awards. It has moved around ever since: Boston, Berlin, Anaheim, Toronto, Edinburgh, Dallas.

In March 2017 Frank visited Sierra Leone with the Joe Strummer Foundation, teaching guitar at Way Out Arts. He went back in 2019 and 2020.

Be More Kind, recorded in Fort Worth, Texas, came out in May 2018 (UK #3). His songwriting book Try This at Home followed in 2019, then No Man's Land (August 2019, UK #3), an album of songs about women from history with a companion podcast, Tales from No Man's Land. He toured it with seated two-part shows, ending at Alexandra Palace Theatre that December.

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Lockdown & FTHC (2020–2022)

When the pandemic shut venues, Frank played Independent Venue Love: weekly livestreams from his home, each a full album, raising money for grassroots venues. Across 23 shows he raised more than £260,000, and repeated only one song, "Silent Key". Show #2500 happened at "Vans for Bands" in Oxford in August 2020.

"None of us would have a career without these venues existing. None of us would have the music we love, so pay something back."

2020 also brought West Coast vs. Wessex, a split with NOFX where each covered five of the other's songs, and Buddies II, the first album Frank recorded, mixed and mastered himself. Nigel Powell left the band and Callum Green took over on drums. In 2021 "The Gathering" (with Muse's Dominic Howard and Jason Isbell) celebrated people coming back together, and Lost Evenings returned to the Roundhouse.

FTHC (11 February 2022) became his first UK number one album. Frank talked openly about anxiety and addiction during its release, and it includes "A Wave Across A Bay", for Frightened Rabbit's Scott Hutchison. That year Möngöl Hörde became Mïngle Härde, and Frank made an album with his first bandmate Chris Blake as Eating Before Swimming.

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Undefeated & Show #3000 (2023–)

In May 2024 Frank set a Music Venue Trust world record, verified by Guinness, by playing 15 gigs in 24 hours, each in a different UK town or city. The same month came Undefeated (UK #3), recorded at his home studio and his first entirely self-produced album, and the first with Callum Green on drums.

On 22 February 2025 he played show #3000 at the 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace in London, later released as Show 3000. Lost Evenings kept travelling, to Toronto in 2024 (raising $76,000 for charities), Edinburgh in 2025 and Dallas in 2026. The Next Ten Years, another rarities collection, arrived in November 2025, and Campfire Punkrock Twenty marked twenty years since the first EP.

Then, on 28 September 2026, Frank announced that the tenth Lost Evenings, at OVO Arena Wembley on 4–7 November 2027, would be his last shows for the foreseeable future. "I genuinely don't know when I'll play shows again in the future," he told NME. "Certainly not for a good while."

"I want to leave the stage with my head high."

Year by Year