Featured Photo Credit: Ben Cope
From her childhood tour adventures with father, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, to her pre-teen experience in her Sweet Gone Sour band, music has always been a part of Frankie Clarke’s life.
Now Clarke is starting a chapter as the singer/songwriter and guitarist for her newest band, Frankie and The Studs.
While touring alongside inspirations such as the B-52’s, Billie Joe Armstrong’s The Longshot, and The Struts, this Los Angeles-based rock band has been redefining rock n’ roll for a new generation since 2016.
In collaboration with Anthony Stasi and producer Paul Miner, Clarke has written the band’s new single “(Not Your) Victim,” a cathartic and empowering track inspired by the inherent and powerful strength of women.
This new single and corresponding video, were released under a newly inked deal with Australian label Punktured Media.
We chatted with Frankie about “(Not Your) Victim,” and more!
Excerpt from the podcast:
You just released “(Not Your) Victim.” This marks a new chapter for you. Can you talk a little bit about this song and this new chapter?
I wrote this song about two years ago now. I was going through a really bad relationship. It was just not good. I was still in it when I wrote the song and then shortly after it ended. This song sort of reflects that moment in my life. Then, subconsciously, I was thinking a lot about the Me Too movement that was happening at the same time. That’s how “(Not Your) Victim” came to be. I sat on this song for a while because it was my favorite song that we had written so far. And I was like I really want to have a proper push for it. I don’t just want to put it out and it falls on deaf ears. I’ve been putting out everything on my own for a long time. It wasn’t until this summer that we signed our first record deal with a label called Punktured Media. It was such interesting timing because I was feeling really stuck, obviously, a lot of us are with COVID -being quarantined, not being able to play shows, not being able to go to shows. I wasn’t sure what the future- I’m still unsure what the future of music really looks like. It was reassuring that this came through during this time. It was like okay, this is something I can focus on. This song was really important to me. We put that out during this time. It feels like a bit of a new chapter for Frankie and The Studs because everything that we worked toward it feels like it’s starting to come to fruition. Hopefully, hopefully we will be able to play live shows again soon and tour. We’ll see, fingers crossed. We are doing a live stream on October 2, so I’m excited about that. It’s cool to be able to play in any capacity at this point. I did like acoustic live streams and now we’re doing an electric one. It’s our full set, so that’s pretty exciting.
Listen to what Frankie had to say about the music video and more here.