Fran Healy is pissed at Beyonce

Travis shared a backstage area with Beyonce at a festival. Or they tried to:

Healy tells the Daily Record, "Beyonce locked down the entire backstage area for an hour. Everyone was affected. You'd ask, 'Can I just go there?' and they'd say, 'No. You can't cross this little street'.

"Everyone was just following orders from the gang. I guess that's how Americans do it but it's not how we do it in the U.K. She was headlining the main stage and was half an hour late. The whole area was cut off as if there had been a nuclear disaster."

It's true. Fran never behaved like that when he was famous.

Sorry, America

It's two uninspiring solo artists detached from their welcome-outstaying bands for the price of one:

Beginning November 10th in Los Angeles, CA, Healy will join The Killers' front man Brandon Flowers for a two-week tour of the United States.

Staying in never sounded so good, right?

Fran Healy has been busy

It's been two years since the last Travis album; seven, if you measure it since the last one that people noticed. This has created a Travis-like hole in Britain's cultural life.

Holes aren't, to be honest, all that bad. And this is a hole that you really don't mind.

Nevertheless, Fran Healy has decided to try and plug that hole with a solo record. (Yes, it seems that Travis consisted of more than one person.)

There's an excited press release:

Artists such as Coldplay, Noel Gallagher, The Doves and Gomez have cited Healy's sophisticated and atmospheric arrangements as a major influence on their own sound.

Coldplay... well, yes, Coldplay you could believe.

Recorded in Berlin, New York and Vermont, the 10 tracks that make up [the album] are as exceptionally literate as they are emotionally challenging.

Yes. I suspect they will be.

As an idea of how "exceptionally literate" they are, the album is being called Wreckorder. Which is the clumsy sort-of pun that you'd expect from a bunch of 15 year-olds hoping to get a mention in Kerrang, not a "literate" album from a man you're claiming is - oh yes - "a quintessential pop songwriter".

Can you make the album seem even more depressingly assembled-from-mail-order-parts?

features Paul McCartney on bass

That would do it.

The end result is the sound of a songwriter who embodied the spirit of Britpop and continues to artistically evolve.

If he's artistically evolved, why would you need to mention that he embodied the spirit of a music scene that was looking dated fifteen years ago. When humans developed opposable thumbs, I'm pretty certain they dropped banging on about 'now walking on two legs' from their press releases.

Not that Healy did embody Britpop anyway - even Wikipedia just lobs Travis in at the end of a "second wave", which is a polite way of saying 'turned up after closing time in the hope of getting to cop off with people who haven't realised the party is over'.

I'm just wondering, though: could this press release make Healy sound any more like a caricature of himself?

Healy is currently on a North American tour with Keane.

Yes. That would do it.

There is, though, one phrase that will bruise your heart:

The collection of songs includes the Neko Case duet "Sing Me To Sleep" which bounces over warm melodies and a syncopated drum loop.

Neko Case has no business appearing on a song which will be described as "syncopated". Can a drum loop actually be syncopated? Isn't a loop by its very nature the opposite of syncopation?

Voxtrot: Over and over

Voxtrot are going to do one more tour, and that'll be it. Why? Ramesh can tell you why. It's bloody Fran Healy's fault:

Being in Voxtrot has been wonderful and amazing, but it is only one chapter in the book...

When I was in high school, I was a great fan of the Scottish band, Travis, and I have always harbored a secret desire to meet the band's frontman, Fran Healy. Not so long ago, at my friend Lucy's studio in Berlin, I had the fortunate experience of doing just this. He was buying a painting of hers, and we spent about three hours conversing. Eventually, our conversation drifted towards the ebb and flow of our respective careers, as well as the anger that comes with not knowing how to pull oneself out of a creative rut. Obviously, our two careers have been on different scales, but nonetheless, the associated concepts are universal. At the end of the conversation, he said to me, "You can't to keep writing the same song. You have to throw away the map. AND you have to keep creating, even if it goes nowhere for a while, you have to always keep creating… and it'll be great."

And he's right. I must leave again-take a risk, do something radical, but in order to do that, I need closure. This is not to say that Voxtrot will never play again, and certainly, if Voxtrot has never been to your country (or continent) we are open to ideas, but for all intents and purposes, this series of live shows will be the last.

Part of doing something with love is being able to say "goodbye" at the right time. Thank you for everything. On to the next one...

Way to go, Fran. Couldn't you have broken up some other band?

Fran Healy becomes kingmaker

Every year, the seat of learning that still shudders everytime it gets called "the Paul McCartney fame school" - so that's what we'll call LIPA - invites someone who should know to pick the best of the talents studying there to put together a showcase ep.

This year, Fran Healy's doing the honours, choosing the tracks that he believes will set the world alight.

It's an interesting choice - after all, when Travis were invited to pick the tracks which the world would love for their own album last year they didn't do very well. (Yes, there was a Travis album out last year - no, we hadn't realised, either.)

Last year's ep featured The Wombats who have managed to build a following and not just disappear straight away. After a few years burning through cash and relying on Liam Lynch to justify the spends ("look, he had a top ten hit and was on the radio") it does look like LIPA's finally started to turn out acts which are achieving some degree of profile. This might be partly because a new generation has bloomed who haven't got the same degree of cynicism about the whole project and so it's starting to attract people who could probably carve a chart career without going there; and at least it's slightly more credible than the Brits School.

[Thanks to Jonathan for the tip]

Travis try a little Prince action

Yes, Fran and his team of other-members-of-Travis are hoping to be a little bit like Prince. Obviously not by making a funky record, but by giving away their new single with the Mail On Sunday.

Curiously, while the Prince giveaway angered the retail music stores, nobody seems that bothered by Travis giving away tracks that the shops haven't, well, been able to give away. Yes, they had a new album out last May. Nobody much noticed, did they?

Taping Travis

Fran Healy is, refreshingly, taking an anti-Prince stance, happily ensdorsing fans who tape their stuff when they play live:

“From a purely selfish view it helps me. I can go onto the internet and check out a song - at any given time you have 100 amateur cameramen taking a picture of your show from a variety of angles.

"It's a great way of finding out what works and what doesn't. The quality may not be great, but you get the vibe."

Of course, this means we're heading towards an internet in the future which has everything Travis has ever done, and nothing Prince has ever done. Is that what anyone wants?

Fran Healy: don't use music to be famous

After having spent the last couple of years sliding backwards towards obscurity, Fran Healy has decided that using music as a route to fame, cash and easy sex is wrong:

“Music shouldn't be about the band or the personalities. It's about the songs. As long as the songs are out there making people happy that's what it's all about.”

For this reason, and to ensure that the largest number of people draw the greatest amount of happiness from his work, Healy then announced that all Travis tracks from here on out will be made available for fr... oh, no. He seems to have forgotten that bit.

Music composed by: Danny Elfman

Travis are straining at their collective leashes, keen to work with movie and TV composer genius-man Danny Elfman. What's interesting, though, is in explaining why, Fran Healy reveals how he views his band:

Healy loves composing "cinematic" music - and believes teaming up with Elfman could be the band's next step.

"I'd love to work with him," Fran told the Daily Record, "I think all Travis records are cinematic and feel we've got a widescreen sound almost by accident.

"We'd like to give him a song he can embellish."

You have to offer the band some respect for not merely joining the throng outside Timbaland's office - although maybe they've already been rebuffed - but Travis "cinematic"? In the sense of "hot dogs and popcorn are available in the lobby", perhaps, or "an old cinema which has been replaced by bingo hall, providing carefully policed excitement for people who don't have much to look forward to."

A broken neck mends a broken band

The nasty accident when Travis drummer Neil Primrose broke his neck in the swimming pool had consequences for us all. Until it happened, Travis were about to split, reveals Fran Healy:

"When you start getting successful the business starts to seep in to any sort of cracks, and then they expand and push everyone apart.

"You then start to see each other as workmates and not friends. It is bizarre but when Neil had his accident and broke his neck we were like - 'oh no, it's Neil!' - not 'oh God, our drummer!'. I think we suddenly became friends again."

You see why taking care at the swimming pool is so important, now, don't you?