No sour grapes at Wine Amplified Festival

Michael Franti will save you money on Zoloft.

His music — a little reggae, a little hip-hop, a little folk, a lot of smiles — is a natural mood enhancer, the musical equivalent of sand between your toes on some perpetually sunny beach where clouds are as foreign as death metal influences.

We catch up with him on a recent Friday morning after he just finished a yoga session and a run, and he sounds like a warm bath feels: calming, something that instantly puts you at ease.

This peace of mind that Franti distills offhandedly, in conversation and song alike, initially just seems like a natural byproduct of his being.

He explains otherwise, though.

Adopted as a child by a Finnish-American family with three kids of their own, Franti’s youth was both eye-opening and, at times, tumultuous.

“I grew up in a very mixed household, different heights, shapes, sizes, skin color, sexual orientations, all within this one family,” he says. “My father who raised me was an alcoholic, and throughout my childhood, he was going through a very dark place. The way that all of us kids dealt with it was through sarcasm. We’d just make fun, and as I started writing songs as a 20-year-old, I would write about what I saw in the world that was wrong.

“Now, I want to write songs that say the opposite,” he continues. “I always try to look for the brighter side. Part of that is the catharsis for the way I grew up. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to live that kind of life.”

And so, over the course of seven albums with his longtime backing band Spearhead, along with a handful of solo records, Franti has mostly sought to uplift. He doesn’t shy away from darker sentiments — on his most recent album, 2013’s “All People,” Franti addresses heartache, mortality and the imperfect world that begot them all.

But he does so through songs in which struggle tends to be rewarded, where hard times are a conduit to better days.

His is a discography of happy endings.

“I’m a storyteller,” Franti says. “I love artists who are able to tell stories about life, about love and about the world and put them all together, something that people can sing along to and dance to. I admire Bob Marley for that, John Lennon, Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash — people who were able to write a song about how they love their girlfriend and then put it right up against a song about how much they’re concerned about the planet.”

To do so, though, means making personal sentiments universally relatable.

“I labor over that,” Franti says. “It’s the thing that keeps me up late in the middle of the night with my guitar. When I write a song, I always want it to be able to be interpreted in (multiple) ways. If it’s a love song, it shouldn’t have to be just a love song about romantic love. It should be able to be a love song about how much you love your best friend or your mom or your community. The song should be able to be interpreted in that way.

“I admire Bill Withers for that,” he adds. “He never really wrote songs that were just like a boy-and-girl romance song. He always wrote songs that anybody could relate to whatever they were going through in their lives. That’s the struggle for me.”

By the time Franti hits the stage, though, said struggles become something else, the concert equivalent of a bear hug, joyful and revelrous.

This is one of the reasons Franti and Spearhead are a good fit for the two-day Wine Amplified Festival this weekend, where he’ll perform alongside the likes of Train, Blink-182, Violent Femmes, Magic! and others with more than 60 wineries offering their wares.

“When I first heard about it, I envisioned it being like Robin Hood and his cast of merry men,” he says with a chuckle, “a big fiesta of wine and people dancing and mandolin players singing and stuff like that. So, we’ll see if Vegas can pull off that kind of vibe,

“It’s interesting to see all the different types of people that wine brings out — it’s kind of like music and food, they all go together,” he says. “People of all walks of life celebrate and have those moments in life that become amazing memories through wine, through dancing and through song.”

So, you see, getting tipsy beneath the stars this weekend could make you a happier person in the long run.

You know, after the hangover fades.

“Positivity is like anything else you want to be good at,” Franti explains. “You have to practice it.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow on Twitter @JasonBracelin.