DB - Hello Francis, it’s good to talk with you again (laughter)

FD – (laughter) Yeah, yeah, I bet it is (laughter)

DB – OK, for this interview I want to ask you some questions about House Concerts, is that all right?

FD -  Yep, no problem  ….. (pause)

DB – Sorry, just give me a minute… I have to find the questions…… OK, here they are ….. OK, here goes…… Don’t you feel like a loser playing in someone’s front room after playing places like Madison Square Garden and Wembley Arena? (laughter)

FD – (laughter and Long Pause) actually, No I don’t.

DB – How come? I think I would if I was you.

FD – Well you’re not me are you? (pause) What sort of a question is that?
Dude, come on, you can’t just use this interview to wind me up and look like a hero in front of all your online hate mail buddies. You’re too obvious. Have a bit of respect. (Pause) You obviously made a bit of a name for yourself since our last conversation did you?

DB – You said I could ask anything I want so I asked what everyone wanted to hear.

FD – Then let me ask you this, why do you think that House Concerts are a lesser thing than Stadium concerts?

DB – Well it’s obvious isn’t it, one of them has 40 people and the other has 10,000. Anyone can see that.

FD – Dude, you’re so nineties!  (laughter) You can’t say that some guy who runs a family business is unsuccessful or a loser because he doesn’t generate the amount of income a massive coorperation generates. He offers a different service, he gives his customers what the coorperation cannot and vice versa. He is incredibly successful in his own right.

DB – yeah but I bet given half the chance he would rather be a massive Corperation

FD –So ‘More’ is better and more valid…… is that what you are saying?

DB – What do you mean?

FD – I’m saying do you think that ‘More’ people is better than ‘Less’ people? Like if you had a plate of food and there was fucking tons of it, it automatically makes the food better? Is that what you are saying?

DB – No, obviously the quality of the food makes a difference and ……..

FD – Thank you

DB – What do you mean?

FD – I mean that the emotional quality of the experience in a House Concert far exceeds a 10,000 seat stadium. You cannot even put the two experiences in the same category.  I’m certainly not suggesting that stadiums are wrong or invalid but the same also applies to things that aren’t in stadiums.  Some pieces of art are not appropriate for stadiums and some pieces of art are not appropriate for a house concert.

DB – Like what?

FD  - Well I would imagine Freddie Mercury running up and down someone’s house making all those Rock God poses and gestures would look pretty weird in someone’s front room but put him in front of 20,000 people and it becomes extremely appropriate because the movements he made were designed for mass consumption. The drum beat for ‘We Will Rock You’ is not designed to be intimate, it’s a huge mass market rhythm that contains absolutely no intimacy. Freddie wasn’t about intimacy, he was better at making 20,000 people sing and clap to his songs.  

DB -  Yeah but don’t you think that’s just an excuse  because you can’t sell out Madison Square Garden?(laughter)

FD – Well I suppose from that perspective you are correct, I would definitely like all the cash that goes with 20,000 tickets sales and being idolized by 20,000 is definitely not something I would complain about. But from another perspective, you cannot communicate a message in a stadium with the same depth and intimacy that you can in a smaller setting. Believe it or not there are many things in life that are fantastic because they are NOT mass marketed.

DB – Like what?

FD – Wynton Marsellis, John Coltrane , bands like The Blue Nile or Prefab Sprout. I actually caught a Bradford Marsellis concert on PBS the other day and they were playing the most beautiful music in front of about 100 people. It was really high grade stuff. Incredibly skillful. I flicked the station and Weezer were on the other channel playing a concert. Now I have nothing against Weezer, truly I don’t. God bless them, in fact I don’t even know their music but so far as musicality is concerned, I can tell you it was embarrassing next to Wynton Marssellis. They were so exposed for what they were. Old Wynton and his band were playing real music, they were the real deal. They were grade A musicians.  In absolute contrast, the Weezer  experience  was a bunch of posing and some low grade, hang your guitar low pretending….. but the crowd was much bigger at the Weezer concert! (laughter)

DB – but people love Weezer

FD – Yes I know but it doesn’t make them musically talented which is what we are talking about. Somewhere along the line the masses realized that they could pretend to be talented. It was quicker. They didn’t like being left out. They wanted a piece of this music ‘thing’. They took over the music industry and basically killed the art of musicianship  at the same time. Even back in Sinatras day you had to be really, really talented otherwise you didn’t get a look in. You had to know your craft. Ninety percent of todays bands wouldn’t have gotten any work back then because basically they aren’t  skilled craftsman.   I mean look at Maddonna?  If you were that bad at fixing cars you would never get a job. Madonna is a great pretender but she has nothing to do with music. It's the WWF wrestling theater.

DB – Why do you say pretending?

FD – Well lets face it, Rock and roll is basically a whole bunch of pretending, it has nothing to do with music in the same way that Jesus has nothing to do with Christianity.  It makes me sad when I hear people talk about Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page or Jimmy Hendrix as the greatest guitarists in the world. It’s such a ridiculous concept. I had an old Spanish guy who was teaching me classical guitar and he was playing shit that Clapton, Page and Hendrix couldn’t play in a million years but he is unheard of because he doesn’t look good in a devil suit. He made me look like a fucking idiot.

DB – What about Prince?

FD – Prince has about three songs that he repeats over and over. His guitar playing is very average although he plays it in a way that cons the public into thinking he’s doing something phoenominal. It’s actually just a bunch of blues licks that most kids in their bedrooms could pull off.   It’s hard to really like Prince because of all that creepy sex stuff he does, it  freaks me out. If I was a women and I was in bed with him and he started licking his fingers I would set fire to the little fucker and throw him to fuck out. I did love some of the songs he wrote. Sign of the times, what an incredible piece of work.  What a performance. The guy has written some incredible stuff but if you sat next to him in the house on a Saturday morning his guitar playing wouldn’t be any better than Bernard Manning.

DB – (laughter) You can’t say that, (laughter) you can’t talk about those guys like that. You’re winding me up……..

FD – I’m not saying it to wind you up, it’s simply a true statement. I’m not suggesting that Clapton, Hendix, Page or Prince aren’t great in their own right, they have all contributed in their own way but it was more to do with fashion than musical ability.  Put them next to Wayne Shorter or Joe Zawinal or any real musician and they are very quickly exposed for their lack of musicality. Keith Richards? Please!  Keith looked great, he looked the part, he was an excellent pop star. He stole a few great riffs and made fortunes off them. The Stones were a bunch of middle class kids whose parents got them guitars and they pretended to be black blues musicians…… they are still doing it now.  All the so called ‘bad ass’ musicians all come from upper middle class homes. Hardley any of them are from rough neighbourhoods. They are all pretenders. Put 99% of them in a fist fight and they would run a fucking mile.

DB – How can you insult those people, they are legends

FD - I’m not saying it as an insult. I know Jimmy, I’m not going to sit here and slag him off. They all had some interesting ideas and managed to express them in a time when the world needed some guitar Gods. They looked great, they were narcissists and they found a great big mirror called the public. Most of us are pretending. The ego by definition is a pretender. Keith Richards was eaten alive by his own ego. He believed what he saw in the mirror was real and because he couldn’t get away from his own image of himself. He was forced to drink alcohol and take drugs. He didn’t realize he had a choice. It never dawned on him that the ‘thing’ in the mirror wasn’t who he was. I learned about my own shortcomings when I played with David Sanscious. The guy was a fucking outstanding musician. Like the song said, lets tell it how it is.

DB – so are you saying that Clapton, Page and Hendrix were shite?

FD – No, I’m simply saying that Just because someone is popular with the public doesn’t mean to say that they are the most skilled in what they do. Sometimes you can find the coolest stuff hidden from the public. There are loads of relatively unknown artists who remain incredibly dear to those who love them.  Even the classical guys such as Vaughn Williams, Gustav Holtz, they were incredible but they are not household names.  I mean are the Spice Girls better than David Sylvian?

DB – Yes (laughter)

FD – Well actually they are not, they are just different and require a different part of your attention.

DB – Yeah but who’s got the time to take in a David Sylvian CD?

FD – Well, people who are interested in musical texture…. as opposed to real art conniseurs  like yourself who want nothing more than fifteen pints of lager, a loud rock band and an opportunity to have sex with your best mates girlfriend at 2.00 am. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have sex with your best friends wife at 2.00 am but it doesn’t make David Sylvian wrong either.  It actually says more about you as a person than it does about David Sylvian.

DB – But what has all this got to do with house Concerts?

FD – The point is that a house concert is not in competition with a Rock Concert. Its success is not based upon the amount of people that are there. One has nothing to do with the other. It’s like saying “what is the best, a flower or mountain?” You cannot compare them because they are two different things.

DB – Do you think that House Concerts are the last straw as far as your music career is concerned?

FD -  I don’t  see House Concerts as the tail end of my musical career, I see House Concerts as a brand new development. I’m not performing house concerts for my career, I’m performing House Concerts to express other parts of my person that didn’t get to see the light of day when I was in the music industry. I thought even you would be smart enough to see that the House Concerts are my introduction into theater and performance based art.

DB – I don’t even know what all that means?

FD – It means you’re a little fucking asshole. (laughter)

DB – but where can you go with House Concerts? All you can do is play a bigger House.

FD – It's not Rock n roll , it's theater. Anyway, It’s not about that. There is something extremely unique and valuable about the House Concert experience that you just cannot get at a Rock Concert. If you wanted to catagorise it I would say that a House Concert has more to do with Church than it does with a smoke filled bar room.

DB – Church?

FD – Yes,  a House Concert is like Church……….. with swearing! (Laughter)

DB – I found the House Concert you did very weird. Sometimes it was hilarious and other times I didn’t know what you were talking about.

FD – That’s because you’re too thick to understand it and you were probably waiting for the giant Iron maiden ‘Eddie’ monster to come out from behind me. (Laughter) House Concerts do not fall solely in the ‘entertainment’ section. If House Concerts were in a library you would also find them in the ‘Exploration’ section, ‘psychology’ section or ‘self help’.  A House concert is a night at the museum. Shit comes alive when you go to a House Concert. (Laughter) For some people they discover Sacagawea  and others leave the house being chased by Attilla the Hun. You never know who is going to show up once the stories start.

DB – I find it weird that you don’t see House Concerts  as a part of your musical career. Why did you say that?

FD –  Sadly, I don’t think the music industry has any energy left compared to how it used to be. My musical career died along with my last ego. I’m not that person anymore. I’ve moved on. I’m not at the mercy of the music industry so I can do whatever the fuck  I like. I can do interviews about my bald head or videos about sheep shagging. It won’t make any difference to my musical career because I haven’t got one. I’m beyond a musical career at this point. That ego is dead. I'm a mulit dimensional 'thing', I'm not limited to running across a stage shouting 'we're gonna kick ass tonight'.

DB – Are you saying you don’t have an ego? I find that hard to believe.

FD –  I don’t think you know what an ego really is.

DB – OK, I suppose you want me to ask you what is an ego?

FD – Yes, that's right. An ego is simply a role you play. Francis Dunnery the rock guy is not who I am, it was someone I pretended to be for a while. We go through characters like we go through clothing. One minute you are dressed up like a mod and riding a scooter, you are very clean, you are listening to Madness and Selector and you keep riding to Seaside  Piers in various holiday resorts like Blackpool or Brighton.  The next year you have long, greasy hair and you’re riding a BSA 750cc, you haven’t been washed for weeks, you listen to Black Sabbath and the Stones and you spend most of your time polishing your bike. Who you truly are has little or nothing to do with either of these Ego roles.  You are not a Mod and you are not a Biker.

DB – Well who are you?

FD – Exactly! (laughter) That’s my whole point. I don’t want to talk too much about this because my new House Concert is all about this stuff.

DB – Is this the It Bites one?

FD – Yes, I will be performing it in the UK in October just before the New Progressives tour

DB – what made you think of doing an It Bites House Concert?

FD – I just think it will be interesting and it adds another show to my growing list.

DB – So it has nothing to do with cashing in? (laughter)

FD – (Laughter) Yes, I’m cashing in. (Laughter) Someone’s got to do it, it may as well be me.  

DB – I noticed you have booked about fifty House Concerts for July and August. Is this because you have no money?

FD – No, it’s to pay for your sorry arse when we go out on tour.

DB – Seriously , are the House Concerts your main source of cash? You must be loaded?

FD – That’s a very personal question Dominic…….. but I will answer it. For your information I don’t actually make a lot of money from House Concerts.

DB – Then how do you survive?

FD –Lets face it Dominic, I hate to drop this on you but people actually  like my music! (laughter)

DB – Well some people do, I know some people who can’t stand you

FD – I’m sure you do……  Next!

DB – What about the people who host the concerts, how do you get along with them?

FD – really great.

DB.-  Do you ever have terrible nights?

FD - 99% of the time it’s a love fest!  We haven’t had a weird night for ages. In reality I cannot expect every single House Concert host to be warm and fuzzy. Sometimes people are nervous and don’t know what to say, sometimes they are just quiet personalities. Sometimes it’s the moon and sometimes my energy may be a little low. I think out of 1000 House concert Hosts I would marry 995 of them and the remaining five I would like to do an astrological reading for them and then have a House Concert.

DB – I hear there are strict guidelines. Is this true?

FD – We set the guidelines in place for the sake of the House Concert hosts themselves. It is mainly to do with alcohol consumption. We put in a guideline stipulating no alcohol before or during the show. After the show you can inject whatever you want into wherever you want, you can blow the dog or shit in a cup, it’s none of my business…… just wait until the Concert is finished. It’s only ninety minutes for fucks sake.

DB – But why guidelines? I thought you were all love and peace?

FD – In the beginning we had people steaming drunk and it was inappropriate due to the philosophical nature of the evening. We used to have people turning up for a piss up and the House Concerts are not about that. There was one particular evening in Wales where three drunks were giving me a hard time and I had to stop. The House Concert host was mortified and so was I. He had been planning it for a long time and they totally ruined it for him. I felt really terrible. After that we sat down and devised a list of things that would take all the risk out of the House Concerts. It is more for the Hosts sake than for mine.

DB – Do you have any thing you regret about the House Concerts?

FD – I think there are about three or four instances in the five years that I would love to do again.

DB – Like what?

FD – When we first started none of us really knew how the House concerts would look. We had no template because we had never done them before and I was still learning my trade as a story teller. To cut a long story short, I ended up standing in someone’s House performing  for a peanut allergies charity night and a four  year olds birthday at the same time. (laughter)

DB – (hysterical Laughter) You’re joking

FD – It was tough because I couldn’t stop or say anything otherwise I would ruin the kids birthday and I didn’t want to do that. I was standing there telling the story of the death of my father and there were kids running around all over the place, people were drinking beer and everyone was talking, it was pretty degrading. I felt like an asshole.

DB – so what did you do?

FD – I just kept going. At the end of the night I mentioned to the hosts that it was pretty disrespectful to put me in that environment. They weren’t very happy about it. In fact they went out of their fucking mind. (Laughter)

DB – So what would you do that is different?

FD – I suppose I would make sure that the environment was appropriate before I started. The people weren’t bad or mean, none of us really knew how to react. I had never been put in that situation before in my life. There are no training camps for peanut allergy evenings with kids running all over the place while you talk about the death of your Father. (laughter)

DB – Are there any other horror stories.

FD – There was one night in the Isle of Weight that I regret.

DB – Why?

FD – I felt really terrible about it afterwards.

DB – In what way?

FD – I had just finished a few House Concerts where there was a lot of alcohol and I had some  very difficult nights. I was in low energy. In fact I had bumped the front of my car in the Marriot hotel parking Lot and I had a terrible day.  I was talking to Erica on the way to the Isle of Weight saying if the House Concerts continue to be out of control with alcohol then I wouldn’t be able to continue. I wasn’t enjoying the experience. So I showed up at a home on the Isle of Weight and the sweetest girl and her husband were there to meet me. They were incredibly nice. I went up stairs to warm up and all of a sudden I hear all this screaming downstairs. There was some guy on a guitar screaming songs. I thought he was steaming drunk, in fact it sounded like the whole downstairs room were steaming drunk.  I wanted to cry. I said to the girl I cannot do it. I wanted to go home. The truth is that I am too sensitive to continually deal with these exhausting episodes. I may seem like a big fat insensitive bastard but I actually get really exhausted trying to make things alright. I was exhausted trying to stop everyone from drinking, I was trying to talk about meaningful things. When I first started doing House Concerts I would show up and the guests were always drinking even though we asked them not to and then they would be getting up to go to the toilet every seven minutes. Anyway, After a bit of drama I ended up playing the concert and we had a great night but the look on the poor girls face when I said I want to leave is something that still hasn’t left me. It was a mean thing to do on my part. I was an asshole. Granted I was at the end of my tether but it certainly wasn’t her fault. I think that is the biggest regret I have.

DB – did you speak to her about it?

FD – Well I said I was sorry but it was too late for that. I would love to send her and her husband on holiday to Barbados and have them both blown by eighteen year old Puerto Rican Girls. Well, I’m sure he would enjoy it.

DB – (Laughter) Why don’t you contact them and do something about it? It sounds like you are pretty weirded out by the whole thing.

FD – Yeah, you are right. I should contact them. They are the nicest people. Oh well, old big head does it again! That’s the thing about intimate evenings, its not like a gig, you are actually in someone’s house, its personal. You can't escape.

DB – But I suppose it’s the same the other way, when it goes well its incredible. The House concert I was at everyone was freaking out saying it was the best thing they had ever seen.

FD – It’s like that nearly every night. I have learned a lot over the years.

DB – A lot of people on the forums say that when you are nice you are very, very nice but when you are bad you’re a real asshole ( laughter)

FD – It’s true. I’m not trying to pretend I’m nice. I see people on talk shows and they are always trying to pretend they are cute yet the same people are incredibly aggressive about their careers. They would cut their own Mothers throat to get on the David Letterman show. I’m not trying to pretend I’m any nicer than I am, I’m a real live human being. I get really sad and I get really happy and a few things in between.

DB - What about your concert at  Sheffield Boardwalk? What were you angry about?

FD – I was angry because I had gone to hell and back getting everyone on board to commit to the Welcome to the Wild Country Tour. We had rehearsed, flown in from the USA, the UK and Sweden, put a band together and tried to play honest music. We showed up at the Sheffield boardwalk and Peter Vitesse was playing the coolest solo in Jackal in your mind and some fucking asshole was standing at the front of the stage talking some drunken bullshit all the way throughout Peters solo. I just thought what’s the fucking point. The atmosphere at Sheffield was awful, none of the audience contributed to the show, they just stood back and refused to engage with us emotionally. I just did the same thing back.

DB – It’s been said that it is not enough for your audience to just come and watch the show.

FD – Certainly, I want people to come to the concerts and contribute emotionally to the show. Come and jump in the water with us. That’s what a great show is. If people come and sit back and don’t contribute then how can you expect me to deliver a great show? If my energy is pourning off the stage and nothing is coming back I’m going to get real flat real quick. The audience will siphon all my energy and I will be left feeling empty and exhausted. You need to take responsibility for being at a show. You can’t come and just watch, you gotta give your energy. You have to create a sense of togetherness.

DB. Thank you for your time

FD. No problem.