James Franco's Art School Band, Daddy, Recruits The Smiths' Bassist Andy Rourke for "This Charming Man" (VICE Records?)
Actor, comedian, author, director, painter, scholar, cell phone salesman, and apparent sleep-less human, James Franco has seemingly decided to add yet another "notch to his belt;" he's currently finishing up a full-length album with his art school band/multi-media project, Daddy. Franco formed daddy with fellow forward-thinking Rhode Island School of Design classmate Tim O'Keefe around 2011. Daddy's formative Motorcity EP and companion "Love In The Old Days" Remix EP were recorded on location in Detroit during the making of James Franco's 2013 Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz The Great & Powerful and featured a Polaroid of his scantily-clad Spring Breakers co-stars on Motorcity's cover. Franco and Tim O'Keefe even went as far as to recruit local golden-voiced legend and Motown founding father, Smokey Robinson for additional vocal duties on early video-single, "Crime." "We took a 10-poem sequence called "The Best of The Smiths: Side A and Side B." I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry)," James Franco explained to VICE, who recently premiered the heavily-filtered video for "This Charming Man."
"The Smiths' songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. Once I had the sequence, Tim [O'Keefe] and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs, back into songs of their own," he somewhat confusingly continued. Daddy then managed to recruit Smiths founding member and original bassist, Andy Rourke to appear across their forthcoming Let me Get What I Want LP (2015). It seems as though VICE will sporadically release a short film/video for each of the album's 10 tracks, which were created by Mrs. Franco's Palo Alto high school film class; flanked by 10 original James Franco paintings inspired by his 1993 high school yearbook and created during his time spent studying at RISD. Fresh off of stints hosting SNL and Naked & Afraid this past weekend, James Franco and buddy Seth Rogen are preparing to release their long-awaited, feather-ruffling North Korean Action-Comedy flick, The Interview, on Christmas Day.