Travis lead singer Fran Healy on the f-word, community in LA and the band’s 'live friendship' on stage

Glasgow native and Travis frontman Fran Healy, like so many of us, has a complicated relationship with Los Angeles.

On Travis’ latest album, 2024's L.A. Times, Healy has some choice words about our fair city in the title track.

“I use the f-word possibly more times even than any rap record that’s ever been made,” Healy said. “I was venting. I was venting about L.A. and about my experience. And it’s my truth; I can’t lie. You shouldn’t lie in songs; it’s the only place you get to be as honest as you can ever be.”

But those notions were challenged when fires ripped through the Palisades and Altadena a few weeks ago, giving everyone — and Healy himself — pause and more appreciation for the people of L.A. He and the band have made L.A. home for the past eight years.

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“What blew me away, was these fires — while absolutely atrocious — I've never seen an outpouring [of support like that], of ‘What can we do?’ ‘How can we help anywhere?’” Healy said. “I've seen a different side of L.A.”

Travis' members have been vocal on social media about raising money and awareness for victims of the L.A. fires, asking fans to support a variety of charitable organizations.

“Humans want interaction and it's very difficult to do that when you're stuck in your car on the 405 every day," he said. "I wouldn't say I'm a Los Angeleno, I'm a Glaswegian, but for this Scottish guy to look and see just, wow, how everyone's just stepped up. It's beautiful.”

The album L.A. Times isn’t a nod to our newspaper friends down the road, rather it’s a play on an idea Healy came up with over 30 years ago in Glasgow, when he recorded an Evening Times seller on Argyle Street who called out “final times” to passersby.

“He would almost sing it like he was telling us the end of the world was coming or something," he said. "And I recorded him one day in 1990 on my little dictaphone … and then put it on a mixtape for friends and called the mixtape 'Final Times' and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a brilliant title.’’

L.A. Times as an album is an homage to that moment, a reflection on Los Angeles, and takes on the difficulties of finding your people, temptation, and the notion of what is home. Famous friends like The Killers' Brandon Flowers and Coldplay’s Chris Martin (whom you could argue owes some of his band’s mega-success to the path paved by Travis), show up on the track “Raze the Bar,” an anthem for a favorite bar that closed down.

“I don’t know musically where Travis are going to go, ever,” Healy said. “The one pre-requisite for a song to sort of continue and to get to a point where it might be considered for a record is: is it about something? Is it the truth? And does it have a good melody?”

Before heading out on their first tour in the U.S. in 14 years, Travis released a new song, “Avalon,” a sea shanty-style ode to Southern California. Healy wrote the song after buying a small boat in Marina del Rey to have a place to write, away from construction noise near his house. Sea lion barks aside, the sea and Catalina Island were inspirational.

Fran Healy performs with his band Travis during day one of the TRNSMT Festival 2024 at Glasgow Green on July 12, 2024.

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“This song is going to go down big with the sailors,” Healy joked. “It became this sort of Odyssey type of thing, like your Avalon is this mystical place that you're trying to get to; you can't quite get to it. And then using it as a sort of allegory of our career as a band, you're out there and you get sort of lost in the sea, and then you're trying to aim for this destination. Eventually, you realize that it's not about the destination, it's about the journey; Avalon is the journey.”

Only a few other musicians can say they’ve been on a journey in a band with the same lineup for over 28 years — U2, Radiohead, and fellow Scot-turned-Angeleno Shirley Manson’s Garbage come to mind.

Healy said the magic is their friendship, which is palpable on stage. The rule is “never ever break the sanctity of the band,” he added. “When you come and see a band like us you’re seeing live music but you’re also seeing, for want of a better term, live friendship. I know it’s totally genuine. We hang out after shows and talk and make each other laugh, and it’s like we’re still 18. It’s really cool and it’s not lost on us at all.”

Healy and the band take the stage at The Wiltern on Tuesday night. They aren’t strangers to playing a city after a catastrophic event — Travis was one of the first shows in New York after 9/11.

Healy said he believes in the power to bring people together: “Music's the closest thing to the cure that you'll ever get.”