Page 36 - BiTS_09_SEPTEMBER_2022

what, if this is the last thing I do, it’s time for me to follow my dreams? So I just tried to write
the best songs I could and just follow my dreams. I record at Fame Studios and do things that I
really wanted to do.

BiTS: I hear, Kirk, a nice funky edge in a lot of stuff. Is that deliberate?

KF: Oh, yes [chuckles]. I had a lot of different things in my musical upbringing. Funk and R&B
and Soul and Southern Soul and gospel and blues, and the older I get, the more I want to marry
those things, but just try and do it in a more tasteful way instead of just going hey, I want to do
a funk record now. Or hey, I want to do a rock record. Just trying to do it in more of a tasty kind
of way. Just kind of put it all together.

BiTS: I really love the album. Do you have a favourite track on it?

KF: Ah, that’s like trying to choose one of
my favourite children. But the songs, the one
that’s really biographical, that one that’s fun,
I don’t know if it’s my favourite, but the one
‘Wrapped Up, Tangled Up In The Blues’,
that’s really, really kind of my story. And
then ‘The Night’s Calling For You’, in all of

my song writing, in all of my playing and
records, I always go back to this Bobby
Bland record, ‘Dreamer’ because that’s one
of my favourite records of all time and I’m
always trying to write a song that you would
hear on that record. I feel like I keep getting
closer and closer, and that song was written
sort of different for me because I’m always a
real positive guy, but this song is about a guy
that wasn’t true and it was a lot of fun to
write that song and then ‘Afraid To Die, Too
Scared to Live’. It’s hard to say, really.

BiTS: Tell me something about ‘Afraid To Die, Too Scared To Live’ because it’s a kind of
creepy concept, really.

KF: It is. It really is and I got inspired to write that song by listening to ‘Chains And Things’ by
B.B. King, and that was the thing, and it was definitely that kind of creepy thing, just all of these
chains and things and being bound down by life and everything and that’s kind of the same
thing. I’m afraid to die. I don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die, mostly, but they’re too scared
to live and this isn’t necessarily me I’m singing about. This is just people and what I observe
every day. They’re too scared to live, a lot of people are just too scared to try something
different and they get so caught up in their comfort zone.

BiTS: Yes. Did you go into the studio to make the album? Is this a studio album?
KF: Yes, yes.

BiTS: I was wondering whether you’d taken advantage of the growing ability for people to be
able to make records at a distance.

KF: Oh no. I didn’t want to do that. I have done that, and even during lockdown, I’ve done that
for other people’s stuff, but I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted the whole record to kind of