Michael Franti: ‘Measure Your Protest By Your Progress’

“It’s really important.”

Michael Franti sits on the couch in his hotel room in Los Angeles as he says this. Clad in a T-shirt, long hair tied back behind him, a ball cap on his head. The sun streams in around him, and despite the reason he’s on the west coast (visiting his ill mother), he’s calm, and as he’s always seemed over a career spanning almost four decades, confident.

We’re talking about the concept of togetherness, of unity and strength in numbers; this is what Franti sees as important right now. So much so that, when he and longtime band Spearhead travel to Australia in November, the tour has been dubbed the Togetherness Tour.

“In my country right now, leading up to this election, there’s so much division,” he goes on, using the looming US presidential election as a prime example. “If you read social media, what the politicians are espousing... and on the street, you talk to people and you realise that we’re not really these red and blue labels. We’re people.

“This is why we called this the Togetherness Tour, because I believe that it’s important to have reasons for people to be together in the same spaces, and to feel a sense of unity. And one thing I’ve learned about togetherness, in my travels around the world to many, many countries and having many thousands of conversations with people, is that 90 plus percent, we’re the same – we all need a roof over our heads, food, opportunity and healthcare and education and basic things. And [then] contained within that [other] small percent [are the different things]: our foods, languages, dance, our spiritual beliefs – and that’s the most beautiful part of the world, those differences.

“And so, if difference is the thing that’s the most beautiful part of the world, rather than trying to connect on all the things that make us the same, it’s more important to try to connect on the things that make us different. And be open to those things, and have a curiosity about those things, as opposed to a fear of those things.”

It’s this theme that will define Spearhead’s upcoming tour, and indeed, a theme which has defined a great deal of Franti’s music ever since he first appeared as part of The Beatnigs back in the mid-‘80s. With Spearhead, which he formed in 1994, and over the course of the band’s 13 albums (the latest of which was 2023’s Big Big Love), togetherness, acceptance, equality and unity have formed the basis of how the band has rolled, so essentially, the Togetherness Tour is an extension of Michael Franti’s long and storied career.

Over the course of said career, Franti has cultivated for himself (as most every artist and musician has), a platform from which to speak; he’s in a position to speak to inequality, injustice, non-togetherness, looking to hold the powerful to account, through the medium of music and song. Indeed, Franti knows this, and the responsibility it holds is not lost on him.

“It does play on my mind a lot,” he confesses. “I have this expression – measure your protest by your progress. There have been times when I felt like I was screaming out about some social justice issue, and the people who agreed with me were the ones who pumped their fist in the air. The people who didn’t agree with me were the ones who turned the other way and didn’t listen or care about what I had to say. Or were hurt or rejected by what I had to say.

“And so I’ve found that that might not always be the best way to create progress in the world. And that people really vote about things from their heart, and I don’t just mean voting at the ballot box, I mean the everyday decisions that they make in their lives.

“And if you can appeal to people’s values and emotions and make people find curiosity about learning, then I can be more successful than if I’m just putting someone on blast for disagreeing with me. I find the more you can listen to someone else and share their experience and share your experience, the further along we get in bridging those gaps.”

Looking to bridge gaps using music is something Franti has strived to do his entire career. Big Big Love was the latest effort, released late last year, and despite the fact it was Spearhead’s 13th studio record, for Franti it brought the same joy as making his earlier work, whether with Spearhead or any of the other acts he’s been a part of.

“You know,” he smiles, “I remember making the first Spearhead record (Home, 1994) with Joe ‘The Butcher’ Nicolo at Ruffhouse Studios in Philadelphia – at that time, there was this incredible line of bands that were coming through Ruffhouse like Cypress Hill, House Of Pain, Kris Kross, The Roots, Scott Storch... he played keys on my record. It was this crazy time of all these different people’s creativities coming together, and I had no frame of reference to how special or unique it was to be in that place at that time.

“And today, when I write, I feel just as curious about the process as I did then, you know? I have my methods of trying to get a song started, but I never know where it’s going to go, and I never know what it’s going to end up being.”

And as to whether or not this curiosity is still running, running toward a 14th Spearhead album? “I’m, always writing,” Franti laughs in closing. “I’ve written a bunch of songs for the next record, yes, and we’ll be performing some of them out on the road.” Out on the road, where we can all enjoy them, together.

MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD

2024 AUSTRALIAN TOUR

Wednesday November 16 – Brisbane, The Tivoli
Sunday November 20 – Sydney, Enmore Theatre
Tuesday November 22 – Queenscliff, Queenscliff Music Festival

Tickets: michaelfranti.com