Nice guys don’t always finish last.

A case in point is Frank Turner – probably one of the nicest and most genuine guys in the UK music industry - who has finally, in 2009, found the critical and commercial success he’s long deserved.

And while we’re bandying clichés around, here’s another one – this time one that he proves – success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. For Turner is the folk punk troubadour who’s traversed the UK, Europe and America, playing hundreds of shows since striking out as a solo artist; much of which he did on his own, with just a rucksack, guitar and laptop in hand.

It was those many lonely nights on the road over the past four years (and many more nights spent on people’s floors and in cramped vans as lead singer of hardcore punk outfit Million Dead before that) that has tonight brought Frank Turner to his sold-out headlining gig at London Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

Success, he says, “feels great. I’ve wanted to be a successful musician, through various different prisms, whether it’s punk rock or what, since I was 10 years old. And to show up at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a venue where, just looking at the pictures on the wall of people who’ve played here – I’ve seen some amazing bands play here – it’s just mind blowing, to know that we’re playing here and it’s sold out and all the rest of it...”

And making the success all the more sweet is the knowledge that he didn’t jump on the latest passing musical bandwagon, he carved this niche for himself.

“I don’t ever want to sound conceited, but I do feel like I can hold my head up and say I’ve done this on my own terms, and the right way, and all that kinda shit. It’s funny actually, because in the last few years this kinda folk punk thing is sorta happening, which is fine and cool and great, but it’s just like, I don’t really want to say it, but at the same time, it wasn’t happening when I started doing what I’m doing, and it is now. I’m not for a second saying there’s any connection between those two things, but it’s just like ‘I was doing this ages ago, dammit’. But it feels great, and I think that’s something that I can say – most people that come to my show recognise that it’s been an organic thing, I’ve never had the major label or magazine hype pushing it, it’s just been hard graft really, and it feels good.”

Frank Turner as solo punk folkie first raised his head in April 2005 at a birthday party for Million Dead’s independent record label, Xtra Mile, playing tracks including a cover of The Lemonheads’ ‘Outdoor Type’.  It was just five months later, coming to the end of a triumphant sold-out headlining UK tour that Million Dead announced they were splitting up.

“Million Dead was great, I was proud of the music that we made and I think that we were a good band. The problem was we were horrendously passive aggressive. It was literally four people in the back of the van going ‘no, everything’s fine’, then muttering under their breath, for years,” Frank explains, “And that meant that basically, by the end of it all, we all hated each other’s guts. And I’ll take as much of the blame as anyone else. The band came apart and I was just so sick of band politics that the idea of putting another band together filled me with fear and revulsion. I knew that I wanted to keep touring, but I didn’t want to be in a band,” he says.

Coincidentally, the break-up occurred not long after Frank had moved out of the flat where he’d been living and put all his belongings in storage, after deciding he was “going to be a road warrior forever”, so the one-man-and-his-guitar format was an ideal next step.

“I had an acoustic guitar that I used to play all the time when I was a kid, so it just kinda all made sense. Plus, I had developed a terminal obsession for folk and country music, and everything just came together in a way that made me think I’d try my hand at doing some solo shows.

“I’m not convinced that I thought it was going to be a long term thing at first, but I felt like I found my stride, my niche, very quickly. I did my first solo show about two weeks after Million Dead broke up, and I haven’t really stopped since then.”

‘Since then’ includes three highly-acclaimed album releases – ‘Sleep Is For The Week’, ‘Love, Ire And Song’ and ‘Poetry Of The Deed’ - , the prestigious Radio 1 play-listing of singles including ‘Long Live The Queen’ (no, not that one), more than 750 shows (“which is some, but not enough, not enough”) in almost all corners of the globe, and the garnering of fan base stronger than even the ever-popular Million Dead could command. Oh, and an international record deal offer from one of the most influential punk labels in the world.

But back in 2005 did he dare to dream that things would turn out this well?

“I worked from the assumption that absolutely no one that was into Million Dead would be into what I’m doing now, because it’s a radical stylistic change. And I’ve actually been pleased over the years that as many people have come along as have done. That’s made me feel pretty good. And I think it also made me feel quite good about the calibre of Million Dead fans because they’re obviously very open-minded people. So hooray.”

And that kind of devotion, adulation (and intelligence) of fans is, in due in part, no doubt, to the attitude with which Frank treats them.

“First of all, it’s very nice, it’s very flattering, it’s very good, (but) I must say I shy away from the word ‘fan’ because it implies a sort of hierarchal division – like ‘the little people’ – I’m not interested in that, I don’t want to be removed from my audience.

“I harp on about this all the time, but to me if you are removed from the audience, then what you’re engaged in is much less interesting, because you’re essentially dictating, rather than having a conversation. And I’m much more interested in conversations. I think that the reason why people get into my music, in the way that they do, is because I’m trying to communicate with people on an equal level. As soon as I’m off stage I don’t hold myself at any remove from the people that came to the show.”

But an audience doesn’t come from nowhere and as almost every successful musical artist can attest, fan bases are built through relentless gigging to as many or as little people as turn out.

“When I started out it was all very Woody Guthrie – I was on the train with my rucksack and my guitar case, and I was burning off CDRs from my laptop and selling them for £2 and stuff like that. And it was very punk, but it was pretty horrible a lot of the time as well, just being dirt poor and uncomfortable, and on my own,” he recalls.

“I’d go like four or five weeks at a time without seeing a single person that I’d ever met before, and that’s actually quite socially dislocating. I was quite blasé about it at the time, I was like ‘it’s fine, I can take it’, but I think it was a pretty weird time in my life, I guess. But I’m glad I did it.”

Some of the worst times included travelling miles to play to just three people – “that’s always a bit gutting. I’m never going to Wigan ever again, ever” – but he says “they’re always outnumbered by the good experiences”, like playing house parties where everyone knows the words, and a particular New Year’s Eve gig in Moscow that “took me about six months to recover from – it was absolute carnage but it was great”.

“The reason I love touring, and I think I’m privileged to live the life that I do, is that it’s more often than not a total blast. There are shit days, but nine times out of 10 it’s just awesome, basically,” he says.

“I mean, (and I’m thinking of earlier stuff here), I did about 18 months solid after Million Dead broke up, and right at the end, I came back from a run of shows in Eastern Europe, and I’d been out of the UK for quite a while, and I flew back into London, and I had a show booked at the Barfly, and hadn’t even really thought about it.

“I hadn’t done a London show that was any good up until then - I’d done a million London shows, as everybody always does, but just bars, and little venues – but it was a headline show at the Barfly, and we flew into London – me and my friend Jamie - and I got a phone call saying the show had sold out and I was just like ‘what? What are you talking about?’

“Up until that point I’d been doing gigs for like £50 a pop, and they paid me £350 and I remember I was just like ‘this is an embarrassment of riches’ and rubbing £20 notes all over my face. I then gave all of it to Jamie, because he’d just come around Europe with me for six months for nothing. And that was the day we recorded ‘The Ballad Of Me And My Friends’ that’s on the first album, so that was a good day.”

Another good and memorable day for Frank Turner occurred earlier this year when he was on tour in Germany at the invitation of Gaslight Anthem; although it didn’t begin as good as it ended.

“I was having a bad day. You know when you have those days and it’s like ‘the next person who phones me is going to feel my wrath’, regardless of who it is, they’re going to bear the brunt. And my phone rang... In fact, to be specific, I was at a particularly fiddly bit of stringing my guitar and I was just like ‘grrr’. And it was an American number, I was in Germany, so it was going to cost me money, and I was like ‘hello’ (in annoyed voice).”

The person on the other end of the phone was Brett Gurrewitz – guitarist with Bad Religion and owner of Epitaph Records – not that introductions were needed, as Frank explains: “Before the internet, there was a time when it was impossible to hear new punk bands. You could read about them, maybe in the side columns of Kerrang, and there were fanzines you could write off and order from the States, but there was no way of hearing them unless a friend had it or you just bought the album. And in that context, I can’t count the number of albums I bought just because it had Epitaph written on the back of it, with no idea what it sounded like.”

On the phone Mr Brett was “super nice, super enthusiastic, and he was like ‘I want to sign you’. And I said ‘okay’ and he said ‘what do you want out of a deal?’ and I said ‘I want a deal for the world outside the UK’, because I’m not leaving Xtra Mile, because they’re my family now, basically. And every other label we’d been speaking to had been a big ‘hmm’ about that, and I said that to Brett on the first conversation and he was like ‘yeah, cool, I’m sure we can work that out’.  And that was kinda the end of it.”

Wearing the Epitaph symbol proudly on his metaphorical sleeve, Frank says: “I can tell people, as well as being label mates with NOFX, and Offspring and Rancid and stuff, I can also say I’m label mates with Nick Cave and Tom Waits (through label offshoot Anti), and that’s basically my entire taste in music covered right there – so hooray.”

But just because (cliché alert) all Frank Turner’s ducks seemed to be lined up right now it doesn’t mean  the hardworking troubadour can, or will, rest on his laurels.

“In terms of the business side, if you like, the administrative, organisation side of what I do, I’m hugely content with how things are run. My crew is very tight, my backing band are amazing, my label is great, all of that kind of thing. But I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m completely contented. The thing that I’m not content with is my song writing,” he reveals.

“I know I can do better than what I have done. And it literally wakes me up in the middle of the night, knowing I can do better. And I guess the minute I stop feeling like that is the minute that I quit.

“Or just become a heritage act who plays in Las Vegas.

“Actually, incidentally, I am totally, deadly seriously, fully planning on, if I can, if luck shines on me in such a way that I can continue to be a musician for the rest of my life, I’d like to end my days as a proper old-school-style casino crooner, like Sinatra, like the Rat Pack basically. I’m gonna wear a tux, I’m gonna brylcreem my hair, I’m gonna have a bow tie and one of those pencil microphones, and click my fingers and go ‘hey, it’s not unusual...’

“Me and my keyboard player have been working on big band versions of my songs.  I’ll be Ol’ Brown Eyes maybe... no, that sounds all wrong...”

But before resigning himself to Vegas, Frank has a few goals closer to home to reach yet, in between the relentless touring, of course – “at the moment my tour schedule runs through til Christmas this year, and next year I start mid-January and am out til October, or something ridiculous like that. And then it’ll be time for another album”.

“I’m also, at some point, although god knows when, I’m fully planning on recording an album of traditional English songs. Because almost nobody seems to know anything about traditional English music, I don’t. Or I didn’t until I started researching it, and it’s funny because American traditional music is rather better know, even in the UK, which seems slightly weird to me. And I just feel that with the kind of audience I can reach, if I could spread the word on traditional English music - that would be a worthwhile use of my time.”

Pictures by Amy Freeborn