It’s time now to interview someone from that little ol’ band outta Texas. No, not ZZ Top. I’m talking about Texas’ very own Duel. Duel is the creative bank for former Scorpion Child guitarist Tom Frank. Along with former Scorpion Child bassist, Shaun Avants, Tom has re-emerged on the scene after a nice little break with a band all his own and I couldn’t be more pumped about this band.
Duel recently released their debut album on Heavy Psych Sounds and Tom was awesome enough to take the time out to talk to me. We talked about his split with Scorpion Child, his excitement about Duel, and how being signed to a European label has been such a huge benefit to them. I really enjoyed catching up with this guy again and I hope you all will enjoy getting to know Tom Frank and his band, Duel.
Tom, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today dude. Sorry for all the delays in making this thing happen!
No worries, Don. It’s great to talk to you.
================================================
So the last time I talked to you was backstage here in Atlanta after an amazing Scorpion Child set.
Yeah. That was Mayhem Fest.
================================================
A lot has changed since then. What happened between you and Scorpion Child. There was so much great chemistry on stage with that line up.
The reason I wasn’t playing with them anymore was pretty much financial. When I started playing with those guys they were in kind of a hard spot. They needed somebody to do the Clutch tour and I told them I could do it. Then another tour came up and it just turned into one after another after another. We were touring nine months out of a year and we were still at a point where we were pretty much doing it at a loss. After about a year of that, it got to where I just couldn’t keep up. They were getting ready to go to Europe again and they were going to try one tour as a four piece to see how it went. I was going to step out until we could at least make it a little more affordable but it worked out pretty good for them being a four piece. It saved them a lot of money not having as many guys.
================================================
Was it hard to make the decision to leave the band?
Kind of. I loved playing with those guys. They’re all my buds. A lot of the writing for that debut record happened four years before that record was even recorded. It was awesome but I always felt like I was playing somebody else’s guitar parts. I just wanted to do something that was my own thing. I get more satisfaction from playing my own songs in front of 100 people than I do playing someone else’s in front of 5,000 people. It feels more like your baby instead of watching somebody else’s kid [laughs].
================================================
Did you need to wait a while to re-evaluate things after the split with Scorpion Child or were you pretty much ready to jump head first into something new?
When they went to Europe, I had already started writing songs. I had shown them to a few friends that I started jamming with and they started materializing pretty quickly. I kind of had all this stuff that I wanted to do already and it was different from Scorpion Child. I wouldn’t really present it to the band since it was a little too different from the formula they had going on there.
================================================
How did former Scorpion Child bassist Shaun Avants end up in Duel?
The first tour I didn’t do with Scorpion Child was the European one where they had that bad split with Shaun on the road. After that, he just wanted to step out. He didn’t want to play music anymore. He and his wife bought a house in the sticks. He literally has roosters and chickens [laughs]. He wanted to write music for soundtracks and stuff like that but I think pretty quickly he was missing performing. We had an original bass player in Duel that was a great guy for when we started out but as things started progressing pretty quickly, we needed somebody with a bit more stage experience and who was a songwriter as well. I called Shawn and I didn’t think he’d be interested in it. I sent him some songs and he listened to one song and called me back and said, “I’m in. Let’s do it.” [laughs]
================================================
Scorpion Child must have been quite a learning experience. What kind of things will you do differently with Duel?
We’ve had our powwows about how much time we’re going to spend on the road. We’re all for doing a couple of long tours a year but we learned a lot from the Scorpion Child experience. A lot of what was driving that band to be on the road so much was the guy managing them at the time. We also saw a lot of the downside to that. We oversaturated markets to where our guarantees and attendance were actually dropping. It seemed like the ideal thing to do would be to do about two tours a year or something.
================================================
Duel just finished a tour supporting fellow Texans Mothership. How did that go?
It was only about a dozen shows but it was really cool. We had already gone out to the West Coast once and we did a little Southern touring but that Mothership one kind of just came along. We were a little reluctant to do it with the European tour coming up so soon but we did it and ended up being cool.
================================================
That little run must’ve made a dent though. I heard a lot of great things about your sets on that run.
Oh yeah. We really felt like it. We just went back to Mobile and did some Louisiana shows and our crowd went from 20 people on our first tour to playing to three times as many people on the Mothership tour. The merch sales were really good. I mean, we’re picking up and starting from the ground so it’s cool to see it grow so fast. Our label has also been so rad. All the guys in this band have been established and have done collective things. These guys have toured in double decker tour busses and all that but 60 days ago, we were all sleeping together in a tent in a shopping mall parking lot and they’re totally cool. They just wake up in the morning and say, “Yeah! Let’s do it!” [laughs] It’s a good group of dudes.
================================================
Your label is based overseas. Does this make things hard for you guys business wise?
It was real nice to hook up with this label because they helped us get a lot of things done really quickly and are helping us to get to the next point a lot faster. For instance, they book us, provide the backline, the vans, all that. This makes it so that bands can tour and can promote the records that they’re trying to sell. The other thing is that the touring we’ve done over the last four or five months, everything’s been like seven hours a day driving, then you play the show, then you try and find a place to stay. For our European tour, the way it’s been routed, we’re not driving for more than two hours a day [laughs]. They provide lodging and food. It makes it much more possible to do it and do more of it. It will feed into what we’re doing here in the states. He has worldwide distribution. Our agreement with him is also like a hand shake. He told us that next year if someone else comes along that seems like a good thing for us, we just shake hands and move on. We’re not trapped into anything.
================================================
Will you guys be doing another US run? You do realize if you don’t come back to Atlanta I’m going to be super pissed at you dude.
[laughs] Oh yeah, we will, dude. We will [laughs]. The south has been really good to us. We’ve made a lot of great friends down there. We’ll be back for sure.
================================================
You bet, Don. Thanks so much for your support and we’ll be back down there hopefully this summer.
Tom, thanks so much for doing this man. This was a lot of fun and I’m glad we finally did it.
For more on Duel, check them out at https://www.facebook.com/DUELTEXAS
About The Author
