North Coast Journal January 11, 2007 : THE HUM : Hard Love

January 11, 2007

You wouldn't say that Bob Franke is a household name, and I'll admit I hadn't heard of him before a week or so ago when a friend called to tell me he is coming to town for a Humboldt Folklife show. Franke is what I'd call a journeyman folkie, a guy who's been writing and singing songs since the mid- &nbsp in his own low-key fashion, mostly in the Northeast, with other song-slingers covering his work on occasion, including people like Peter, Paul and Mary and Kathy Mattea.

My friend dropped off a copy of his album, The Other Evening In Chicago, a live recording that seems to be something of a retrospective with some of his signature songs, ranging from topical to humorous to your basic lessons from life.

One that caught my ear was "Hard Love," a seemingly autobiographic tale of growing up in a dysfunctional family and the effect the hard love received is having on a current relationship. The story is told as if a lover far from home is calling to try to straighten things out, reminiscing about the past, looking toward the future. The cadence and interior rhymes show a love for the craft of traditional songwriting. The inherent lesson conveyed is that "love is never wasted, even when it's hard love."

I asked him about it when he called this afternoon, wondered if it was in fact autobiographical. "I always take the stance that all my songs are fiction," he told me, "because even if it sounds an awful lot like docudrama to somebody who knows me, 10 years from now I may be singing the same song, but I won't be the same person. So yes, on the one hand that song did come from elements of my life, and on the other hand, I was quite consciously creating a character and a fictional situation."

Over the years Franke has shared his skill in songwriting workshops. He'll teach a couple of sessions while he's here next week. ("Songwriting from the Heart" with Bob Franke, Wed. and Thurs. Jan. 17 & 18, call Sara at 822-5394 or e-mail sarasun@humboldtfolklife.org for details.) Fair warning, I don't get the impression he's the right teacher if you want to write pop hits or head to Nashville.

What does he teach? "First of all I ask the question, `Why do it at all?' and fess up that my answer is, `I do it for healing and for fun, which are two side of the same coin.' I talk about songs as healing artifacts and their current place in society and how part of the artist's job is to shift from making money for a few corporations who have very little to do with culture or healing to a grassroots model, participating in communities that are helping heal the culture."

From talking to him it became clear why he writes songs, because they reach people. "I get a wonderful sort of satisfaction when I meet someone from my generation who has followed my music for a long time. They tell me, `Look, your songs have been really important to me as I've gone through life.' It's not the big sales, but as someone pointed out once, my songs tend to wind up at people's weddings and funerals. In fact there was one gentleman who handed me a photo at a show I did in California. The picture showed his mother's tombstone -- on it was her name and the date and the sentence, `It was hard love.' That sort of thing is validating in ways that big paychecks aren't."

Franke is coming to the West Coast for a series of shows, many of them house concerts. When I first heard about his show scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 16, it too was planned as a house concert, but the householder had backed out and the show was homeless. A follow-up notice placed it at a new venue, Arcata Playhouse, a place that I've been meaning to tell you about for a couple of weeks.

David Ferney, a Dell'Artisan perhaps best know as Guapo (the Handsome One) from Los Payasos Mendigos, called me before New Year's Eve to tell me that he and his Dell'Artisan wife Jackie Dandeneau were taking over the lease for Stargarden Theatre, the home of Vagabond Players in the Old Arcata Creamery, a spot occupied years ago by Pacific Art Center. The plan is to for David and Jackie's Four on the Floor theater troupe to share the space with the Vagabonds and with Cory of Muddy's Hot Cup and his Shoebox Theatre, and other worthy groups in need of space. Guapo invited me to a semi-private New Year's party there and I was most impressed.

It's a great space with a stage, tiers of seats, a row of café tables, high ceilings, racks for lights, a bar in the anteroom, all quite comfortable and easy to imagine as a venue for all sorts of creative ventures. A new band led by Tim Randles, The Gardeners, was playing -- they sounded great, the sound was good, and hey, it's in Arcata. I walked there and walked home. The Franke show should prove a great kick-off.

The Mateel Board of Directors officially announced the hiring of new producers for Reggae on the River 2007 last week: 2BI Multimedia, a S.F.-based company led by Boots Hughston. I had a long talk with him about his plans for the future of the festival, his back history with Reggae (he helped build the original site), even his pay for the massive job -- you can read the interview in full at rotrblog.blogspot.com. The short version: Same as it ever was, but under new management. At least that's what he hopes.

"Our plan really is to get the show in order fiscally and financially ... get it back to its original roots, which is promoting peace, love and harmony," he said.

The music? "The idea is to move the event back into the conscious reggae world. That's one of the thing's we've all been talking about. We want to pull things back to the event's spiritual roots and get a little bit away from the gay-bashing talk and dancehall attitude. That has its place in the world too, but we want to bring Reggae back to its original principals ... pick more conscious acts and try to stay in a more conscious direction. If the show's going to survive it has to change a little -- not a lot, just a little."

His pay? "I'm not getting paid anything, actually. I'll get a percentage of the bottom line at the end. You know they don't have any money. There's no way for them to cut me a $100-grand check. And that's not the reason I'm doing it anyway. I'm doing it because I want to see Reggae continue on. I want to see it all work as one family, as one community, like it always has."

That may prove easier said than done judging from the nastiness in evidence in the comments posted on Eric Kirk's SoHum Parlance blog (redwoodreality.blogspot.com). It seems there's active resistance to the overthrow of People Productions. A meeting was held at P.P. offices last week for an inner circle of Reggae coordinators still loyal to the old regime. How they can dislodge the Mateel Board's control seems unclear, but there's talk of litigation and the path forward seems far from clear. The whole situation seems to be a trainwreck in the making, and I'm not talking about the strain of herb.

Indigo shifts gears Thursday, Jan. 11, with UKEsperience on the stage with songwriters Mike Craghead and Sari Baker.

Those cerebral metal monsters Dragged by Horses are back in the saddle with a new drummer and two shows: first an all ages thing Friday, Jan. 12, at Out of the Sun in Fortuna, then Saturday at home base, The Alibi, where they share the bill with loud Seattle punks The Hot Knives.

Friday in Arcata, chose between funky jammers Al Howard and K23 Orchestra at Humboldt Brews and reggae vet Junior Reed at Mazzotti's.

Self-described "angst-driven indie popsters" The Signals have declared their show Saturday, Jan. 13, at The Pearl as "one of [our] final sets as a traditional rock outfit," whatever that means. They're joined by Bloody Heads, a bouncy West Coast pop outfit that does not sound nearly as scary as their name (they sound real good), and Oakland's freaky/folky Port O'Brien.

A new incarnation of the Jennifer Breeze Band plays Saturday at Humboldt Brews, this one with local heavy hitters Ruben Diaz on guitar and Mike Kapitan on keys. A note came in suggesting that an act called Maha Ras with Zahira, Jimi Bridges and special guests is opening with "harmonic sound atunement" to help you "realize the oneness." Not sure what that means either, but I caught a spacey sort of nyabinghi drum type song by the dreadlocked Jimi Bridges at last summer's North Country Fair -- it wasn't all his fault, there was no soundman, but it was embarrassingly bad.

And speaking of said fair, I spoke with a couple of Same Old People over the holidays; they're moving forward on the next N.C. Fair in the hopes that Washington Vera will bow out gracefully. Note to Washington: Realize the oneness and let it go. We don't need another battle over a precious Humboldt County cultural event. The one down in SoHum is more than enough.

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