Hooligan Chats featuring Fran

Interview and photos by Andrea van den Boogaard

Inside Chicago’s historic Walnut Room, I looked across the table as Fran’s Maria Jacobson poured herself a cup of decaf drip coffee. Distant sounds of shoppers echoed across the ceilings, water ran gently in the distance as a cleaning crew exited the nearby bathrooms, and a radiator hummed beside us on the burgundy carpet – A carpet that I was sure surpassed me in both age and wisdom. The massive restaurant was empty, save for two tables and ourselves. Maria smiled as she thanked our server for the coffee pot. I pressed the record button.

Your most recent album, Leaving, just came out. How are you feeling now that it’s in the world?

I’m feeling good. I’m feeling the kind of after-effects of the release – So it’s kind of some sadness, some relief, some gratitude… And I think I’m in the process of letting go of it, really, letting it be everyone else’s, and not necessarily mine as much anymore - though it’s still mine. So it’s a lot of different things at once, but I’m grateful and working towards feeling good [laughs].

Could you tell us what the recording process was like?

Yeah. So it sort of started mid-pandemic [in 2020], long-distance, I guess, with my producer Brian Sulpizio. I was sending him some songs and ideas, and we actually did one day at Jamdek too, earlier on, to try some stuff out. But we did some tracking at Palisade, live band takes, and then after that we did all the overdubs mostly at Brian’s apartment with different musicians. And through the whole process, arranged and recorded and mixed throughout over three months or something. So it was kind of a long and sparse process, and then it was very truncated, finishing it into what it is.

You mentioned early stages and brainstorming… I felt like when I was listening to the album, I was experiencing a lot of emotions in duality – Grief and faith, and fear and loss together – And I wanted to ask about your background in theology. How did that interweave itself into the creative process, and what was the role of religion in it?

So I was actually raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school for 12 years, and what that does, if you don’t become Catholic [smiles] is it makes you not want to be religious.

That’s a generalization, but - [laughs] I think for many years, I didn’t give religion much thought, was kind of jaded and disillusioned by it, and thought it was a more destructive thing. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I was having this crisis of identity and sense of reality. I was like, “How do you make this make sense?” When all the things that used to make sense don’t exist anymore. All the things that you’ve tethered to, you don’t have anymore. Being a musician, being a friend, being a social person, being whatever. We all kind of experienced that in different ways.

So I just kind of went back to the bigger question of… what are we doing? [laughs] What does it mean to be alive? Why are we here? And the people who are asking those questions are religious – That’s how religion came to be, how people came to organize themselves and create systems of meaning. And so I just became curious about that again. I think, forgiving towards it and compassionate towards it more than I had ever been in the past.

I saw it as [people] trying to make sense of this, and that it gives you a reason to live, or a code to live by every day. And just realizing that whether we like it or not, we all need that, and we all actually do have that, though we maybe don’t realize it. And sometimes unfortunately the code for living is, you know, social media followers or advancing in your job…

You know, it’s these things that we don’t realize are a religion in themselves because they’re how we organize our lives. So it was a zooming out, realizing, “Whoah, we’re all doing this all the time, and we can’t say these people are crazy when we’re doing the same thing.” So I think it was just really informing how I was thinking at the time, and it became infused into what I was writing about. And it’s also kind of cheeky and funny and fun, to play with that lyrically.

And the other side of all of this, is this preoccupation with climate change. And that we’re reaching these sort of biblical moments in history where these weather events, these deaths, these changes in our external reality…. What have people done to deal with those kinds of things?

They’ve prayed, they’ve assembled, and they’ve had community to deal with it.

That’s so interesting to think about. In that way, catastrophe breeds a whole other new-age version of the second coming – And the ground is supposed to rumble and open up – And meanwhile the earthquakes in the world today are getting more and more severe.

Like it’s literally happening. So you think… these religious texts or whatever, seemed to have kind of predicted this. [laughs] Like, yes, of course, Jim Bakker with the tubs of mac n cheese in the basement or whatever are one thing. There is some kind of reckoning for humanity that’s happening, and religions are kind of the only things that have charted that, or have some sort of plan or something, you know? I think that was part of the album, dealing with that eeriness. This weird “What’s-gonna-happen” feeling.

I think that we’re all just trying to make sense of everything and build our own narratives within it all.

I was feeling how present nature was when I was listening to the songs. I wanted to ask where you physically were when you were brainstorming, when you were recording, and what role nature played in the creative process for you.

I was mostly in my apartment in Irving Park. I realized that so much of the imagery was informed by the nature around there. Because in the beginning of the pandemic – First we’re not allowed to go outside, then we can go outside, then we can take a walk - It was ever-expanding, how far away you could go from your house. So I feel like a lot of the imagery was imagined in parks near my house. And Irving Park and Albany Park have such beautiful parks, like Horner Park and River Park and Independence Park.

I think that there is a lot of Chicago in this album and Chicago nature, like pigeons and grass, where it isn’t quite pristine nature, but it’s the best we’ve got, and I kind of wanted to honor that. It ended up creating this kind of environment that was honoring the weirdness of city natural life. I used pigeons in my Limousine music video, where my neighbor had all these pigeons come to his house all the time – He would feed them, and they would hang out at his house – And I was thinking that these pigeons feel like humans right now, just kind of misplaced and trying to make it work, or something. I have a lot of respect for pigeons and I didn’t used to. [laughs]

On the topic of inspiration and found images, is there anything that’s inspiring you right now in your community, or in the world, or in yourself?

Yeah, I think right now actually, speaking of Chicago, I’m trying to fall back in love with the city. Which is almost maybe why I wanted to come here [to the Walnut Room]. I feel like I used to come downtown a lot more. I loved downtown and older places like this that have strange history. The pandemic, and now time after - Where you can go do whatever you want - We’re kind of all like [shaking head] I don’t know what to do! I’ve sort of been feeling that way. So I’m wanting to get back to some of the things that inspire me, like this.

Also, I’ve been trying to see more narrative art, see movies and plays and stuff. That’s kind of when I feel the most myself, is a night out to see a movie or a play. Either alone or with a partner. I went to see the opera with some friends the other night, Hansel and Gretel, and I just want to be doing that all the time. And it also gets me out of the bubble of music, the insular thoughts, and people I see all the time. It just reminds me that there’s this bigger context that I can be a part of. So I’m just trying to get back to Chicago.

And in the vein of exploring narratives, I was curious about how you think human beings find narratives in each other, how we treat each other. I was thinking about the break between How Did We and How Did I, and wanted to ask if you came to understand anything in the process of figuring out how we interact as humans with each other, or if there were any questions you were still chewing on with that.

Yeah, I think it comes back to the religion thing a bit where it kind of left me with a feeling of compassion. There’s a Ram Dass quote that says, “We’re all just walking each other home.” And I think the album kind of circled around that a bit. Or dealing with a toddler, where it’s like, “You poor thing, you don’t understand what’s going on. That’s why this is hard.” I think that we’re all just trying to make sense of everything and build our own narratives within it all. And so when we can, I think it’s important to apply that logic of, “You’re figuring it out. I’m figuring it out too. We’re doing our best.” You know?

There was something that struck a chord with me, as a listener, was that we’re asking the question. Not trying to be declarative about it. There’s an openness.

That’s also a thing I was thinking about. That beliefs are restrictive, and that faith is open. Beliefs are the things we say are true, and they can separate us from each other. And that can go down to an interaction or a conversation with someone. When you think you know who they are and what they think, you’re not actually going to know them. So I think “possibility” was a big word that came up. There’s so much about our situation that’s dire and scary and difficult – But what is possible? And how do we get to what is possible? And it’s not by separating ourselves and closing off.

I’m thinking about the song “God” and what it means to be playing God, and I wanted to ask if what you’re talking about right now has any connection at all to the song, or if it came from a different place?

Yeah, I think it did come from a similar place. I guess it’s funny, or ironic, that I see the idea of playing God as a control thing. So I guess the song is about the futility of that - that change is the only constant. I sort of just put it in the context of simple, mundane scenes. An interview, or a dinner with someone, where even as you explain that you’ve changed, you’ve already changed. If that makes sense. Like as I say the stuff I’m saying to you, I’m already a different person. [laughs] And how this [gesturing around] is changing us in ways we don’t even understand, really. It could just be that we’re coming down here and seeing something we wouldn’t have seen, or making some connection – We just have no idea how we will change each other. It’s endless.

In the context of thinking about what it means to leave, and Leaving, I wanted to ask what “leaving” means for you in this moment as it exists.

I feel that my life is kind of the opposite of that right now. It’s very “here,” grounded. Whereas at the time I was writing, I was kind of trying to escape - road trips and train trips and trying to find something outside. Lately life has become much more centered in my home and my job and music. And so when I’m finding a feeling of that discomfort, the “Oh no!” I can’t find anything anywhere else. I have to find it here. I have to learn to be okay with who I am, where I am. And that is the most difficult thing, I think. And I’m doing a really bad job of it. [laughs] And I just had a conversation about this longing for routine and okay-ness… and peace. And it is a daily practice.

And then we go back to, “Who has that?” Religions. [laughs] I think routine is a holy thing, and reflection is really important. So I’m really not leaving much, lately. Mostly just to go to work. [laughs]. To drive 30 minutes to work, just in the car all the time. And maybe that’s also kind of why I’m trying to fall back in love with Chicago. And that means also falling back in love with myself, which can be a hard task with the tumultuous nature of releasing an album, and the expectations that come with that. But I’m definitely not leaving… Maybe that’s the moral of the album, that leaving is bad! [laughs] Don’t do it!