Denice Franke –
Background
Highlights of Denice Franke’s story, so far –
featuring her own musings and recollections.
Denice Franke’s career is rooted firmly in her gift
for singing, and an intuition for penning songs that get under the skin. She accompanies herself on
the guitar with grace, and skill, and a repertoire of rhythms that rock
listeners gently in place as they take in the ‘movie’ each song projects. Life
as a touring artist began for Denice in 1978. Franke
(pronounced “Frankie” – the name she
answers to as readily as her first) will tell you straight out she’s grateful
for the distances traveled, and for the water under the bridge. It’s what
informs her music these days. What makes her dive more deeply into her own
stories, and those of the characters who find their way to her songs.
“It took me a while to get to this place of digging
deeper,” Franke muses, in the midst of naming off her core musical
influences. “Of course, it helped being around Eric (Taylor). Talking
about songs. Listening to his songs, and to people like David Olney. Tom Waits
is another. And of course, Joni Mitchell.” As natural as breathing, Franke
exhales a favorite Mitchell line from “That Song About The Midway” where Joni
sings, “I met you on a midway at a fair last year. You stood out like a ruby
in a black man’s ear.” Both women – Franke and Mitchell – have an
ear for good lines.
Franke follows with a favorite Eric Taylor line,
taking her time with satisfaction, “The good times scratched a laugh
from the lungs of a young man in a Deadwood saloon South Dakota afternoon.” The
classic “Deadwood” is one of several Taylor songs covered by Nanci Griffith,
perhaps the brightest star for whom Franke is known as ‘best supporting
vocalist.’ Franke makes her point, “When I hear others’ songs, those
are the lines – where something is telling, but it’s not told. You know from
the images what they’re saying. They’re painting the picture. That’s the kind
of writer I want to be.”
That’s exactly the kind of songwriter Denice Franke is,
thank you very much.
The fact that this songbird made her entrance into the
world at a hospital bearing the name “Nightingale” is just too quirky not to
mention. Born April 18, 1959, in Dallas, Texas, it was during her
growing-up years in a neighborhood near White Rock Lake that Denice Franke
found her voice. As a member of the congregation at Christ Lutheran on
Lovers Lane in Dallas’ Highland Park, she fell in love with singing hymns and
harmonies. Though her father did sing in the church choir, “How we wound up
there I don't know,” she wonders out loud, recalling her own neighborhood
filled with lower middle-class, blue-collar families. “I remember these huge
elegant lawns with massive houses. It was quite a contrast pulling up next to
the Cadillacs in our Chrysler Plymouth on Sunday mornings.” Denice takes
pleasure in the recollection of visiting her grandparents in Rosebud, Texas,
and hearing the booming voice of her German grandfather, John Franke, as she
sang next to him at the Salem Lutheran Church. “In this congregation of
several hundred people, it felt like you could hear my grandfather over
everyone,” Franke laughs. “I thought it was really cool to sing next to
this guy with this huge voice.”
Rather than not sing because the hymn tunes weren’t in
her range, young Denice made up new harmonies so she could sing along. A
gift she’s honed through the years, and a big part of how she’s made a name for herself in an ever-growing
‘congregation’ – singing alongside and opening for noted artists and friends
including Eric Andersen, John Gorka, Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen, Jr., Hal Ketchum, Chris Smither, and Eric Taylor.
A turning point came with the gift of a baritone
ukulele from her parents when Denice was 14. Along with her school choir experiences, Franke recalls
an 8th grade teacher’s assistant who played the guitar and hosted informal
classes, leading the group in singing contemporary songs of the day. It’s where
Denice first heard Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” She remembers heading for
a record store looking for that song. “I became infatuated with everything
she did,” Franke says, attributing Mitchell’s songs, along with the hymns
of the church, as being the influences that sparked the beginning of her
musical journey. The four-stringed gift got replaced with a Sigma guitar when
Denice turned 16.
Once she got the hang of the guitar, Denice began
writing and performing when she was a high school junior. She entered the
school talent show, and readily admits, “I got all this attention from that,
and I loved it. I was always the shy geeky kid. Tall and big. Towering above
the guys until later in high school. Sports had been my life as a kid. My Dad
had season tickets to the Cotton Bowl back in the Tom Landry/Don Meredith era.
I wanted to be a football player ,but they didn’t have women’s football back
then. Franke recalls, “One of my proud moments as a kid was throwing the
football in the street on Sunday afternoon with my younger cousins, my Uncle
Johnny, and my Dad – and as I threw a pass my Dad said, ‘She can sure throw a
pretty spiral.’”
Franke was a good, rough-and-tumble kind of kid who
loved being outdoors, and who excelled at sports – and singing. She was
influenced by the music of artists like Jackson Brown and David Lindley, whom
she saw perform several times in Dallas. She recalls an unforgettable high
school friend she met on her first job flipping burgers. “We’d go to Wayne’s
house and spin records,” says Franke. “He loved music. We’d
listen to Joan Baez and Judy Collins, but he turned me onto a lot of South
American music too. And when I graduated, he gave me two mics so I’d have
everything I needed to play solo gigs when I went off to college.”
A gift that obviously came in handy.
A 1977 graduate of Dallas’ Bryan Adams High School,
Franke continued performing as a solo artist while attending then Southwest
Texas State University in San Marcos. She’d cart her stuff to Grins, a
local hamburger joint (still there) where she was a regular on stage, and where
she often went to listen to a group called the Beacon City Boys. One
night, in ’79, Franke’s music caught the attention of BCB guitarist David
Wright, who asked her to join his band. She accepted, and ‘the boys’ changed
their name to the Beacon City Band. The 1891 Old State Bank building, an
icon of the San Marcos downtown for more than 100 years, inspired the band’s
name. The bank was “robbed” by actors
Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw when the empty building was used as the location
of the Beacon City Bank for the film “The Getaway” in 1972. In May 1981,
the Beacon City Band recorded an album – two-track live in two days – at Loma
Ranch Studios in Fredericksburg, Texas, with John and Laurie Hill at the helm.
The album’s 11 songs included Nanci Griffith’s “West Texas Sun,” a cover that
would prove synchronistic in the coming days. The group – comprised of Franke,
Wright, Roland Denney and Doug Hudson – performed extensively for a year and a
half, garnering a strong following.
It was during those Beacon City days, when the band was
trying to break onto the Austin music scene, that Nanci Griffith discovered
Denice Franke at the Alamo Hotel Lounge. Prior to the night they actually
met, Denice would often take the bus from San Marcos to Austin to hear Nanci
play the hallowed haunt. “Martin and Bobby ran the place,” she says,
describing the vibe of the Lounge. “Eric played there. Nanci, Butch Hancock,
Joe Ely, Jimmie Gilmore. They’d play three or four sets, and Martin would pass
the tip jar around. That would be the pay. But my way back to San Marcos left
at 11 at night, so I always had to haul ass out of there to make the bus.”
Story goes that the band stopped by the Alamo Lounge
one day and left their record. According to Denice nothing happened. But
weeks later, they got a call from Martin. Jimmie Gilmore had cancelled, and
they wanted Beacon City Band to fill the date. “Total chance” is how
Franke describes the page-turner night that opened an important chapter in her
life. “So we got our foot in the door,” recalls Franke. “Well, Nanci
was good friends with Bobby Nelson who ran the Alamo Lounge with Martin
Wiginton. We had four or five Nanci Griffith songs in our repertoire, and we
did one during the sound check.” Drum roll.
“Unknown to any of us, Nanci would come hear Jimmie at
the lounge,” Franke continues. “And
that’s how we met that night. Before we started up, Bobby informed Nanci that I
sang ‘Alabama Soft Spoken Blues.’ She asked me to do the song. After that, I
started singing with Nanci Griffith at the Alamo Lounge.” The Beacon City
Band eventually split up, and not long after that, Denice and fellow band mate
Doug Hudson formed the popular duo Hudson and Franke.
The historic Alamo Hotel Lounge fell to the wrecking
ball in 1984, but thankfully not before years of playing host to some of Texas’
finest performing songwriters. The lineup included Joe Ely, Butch Hancock,
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen, Lyle Lovett, Eric
Taylor, Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams
– and yes, Denice Franke. Out of this dark little bar, many a star did
shine.
Hudson and Franke recorded and performed over a period of
12 years, mostly touring across Texas and the Southwest, with one tour to
Boston. Early on, the duo remained based in San Marcos. In 82, Hudson and
Franke decided it was time to tour Europe. They flew into Luxembourg carrying
all their equipment, bought a VW bus, and off they went. Mind you, they
departed on this tour with no actual bookings, but loaded with determination
they made the gigs happen once they arrived. The tour turned out to be a
nine-month musical odyssey.
“That was the trip we went to England and met Rodney
and Molly Drake,” Franke tells with reverence of their pilgrimage to the
home of a treasured muse who died too young. She credits Nick Drake with being
a powerful musical influence. “That first visit with Drake’s parents was
brief,” she says.“We came back later in the tour and stayed over. I slept in
Nick’s sister Gabrielle’s bedroom. Doug slept in Nick’s deathbed. Since then,
Nick’s parents have both passed. It was one of those moments you never forget.”
Denice returned from Europe “longing to be in a
bigger place.” She packed up her things in San Marcos and moved to
Austin, where she began attending the University of Texas, and declared her
major – German. “It excited me to speak another language,” says Franke. “It’s
the language of my family’s heritage, and it’s served me well. I’ve since made
10 or so European tours, and I’ve been able to use German in 13 countries.” In
her signature, wry-humor-jive-talkin’ voice, Franke brags about graduating via “the
10-year liberal arts plan” from UT Austin in 1987. For that accomplishment,
she rewarded herself with a six-month trip to Asia, visiting friends and
playing her music in Malaysia, Taiwan, and Japan – where former Beacon City
Band mate David Wright was living with his family.
Denice recalls with pride, “In Taiwan I discovered
I could make a lot more money busking on the streets than I could in the pubs,
and I didn’t have to play as long. I had busked some in Europe
before. But in Taiwan I was surrounded by all these street vendors. When they
started frantically packing up their goods to look like knapsacks, I would know
it was time to put away my guitar and move on before the police arrived. It was
a handy system that served me well.” Denice returned home to Texas from her
Asian adventure just in time to play the 1988 Kerrville Folk Festival with Doug
Hudson.
Hudson and Franke reached a pinnacle that year as
supporting singers for Nanci Griffith’s live hits album and video “One Fair
Summer Evening,” recorded at Houston’s Anderson Fair. Following that
landmark recording, Hudson and Franke toured for a year as Nanci’s backup
singers, and as her opening act. Shortly after that tour, the duo parted ways.
In 1989, winds of change steered Denice in the direction of those South Gulf
lowlands. She turned the page to a new chapter, and moved to Houston. She
wondered at the time if her desire to create music might have taken its leave.
Though Franke did some hanging out and performing with Eric Taylor in the early
‘90s, she decided it was time for a break from the music scene. As a writer
from the Houston Chronicle aptly put it, “…it took a different kind of backup
gig to find her voice and personality as a solo artist – backing up the waiters
and waitresses as a bartender at Café Express.” Denice took a job as a
bartender. “It was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” she
says. “The experience pulled me out of my shell.”
The person, Denice Franke, emerged from her shell,
while the songwriter inside rode out her waves of silence in the music world,
as songwriters often do. Wisely, she allowed the season to have its turn,
the fields seemingly fallow, while all along seeds of new songs were planted,
tended, and nurtured – often unbeknownst even by the artist herself. As a
reviewer from Performing Songwriter magazine put it, “With some heavy coaxing
from friend Eric Taylor, Denice returned to the music fold in 1997 with a warm,
richly textured acoustic gem of a CD called “You Don’t Know Me.” Produced by
Taylor, the record caught critics’ and fans’ ears, and subsequently established
Denice as a performing songwriter who showed genuine promise and potential.
That promise and potential reached full fruition and exploded in 2001 with the
release of the Taylor-produced “Comfort” – a tour de force of tight and
variegated ensemble playing, passionate singing, emotionally stirring lyrics,
and haunting, catchy melodies.”
Fast forward to 2007. Having learned a few things
about shells, and waves, and winds of change – Denice Franke up and moves to an
island. Texas’ own Galveston Island. And that has made all the difference. Franke’s
2008 release “Gulf Coast Blue” (on her indie label Certain Records) was
produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Austin’s Mark Hallman at his Congress
House Studio, and includes a guest background vocal by Red House recording
artist Eliza Gilkyson. The cover art reflects a
woman who most definitely has come out of her shell. If ever the CD packaging
term “jewel box” was appropriate, it is in this case. Inside, behold – a pearl.
Franke’s latest takes you on a pulsing drive along a coastal landscape where
the weather is fine, and the moments shine.
As Franke would say, “You know, there are just certain
records.” Certainly “Gulf Coast
Blue” is one of them. And in case you’re wondering about what’s next – if this
story so far is any indication – stay tuned. It’s bound to be a page-turner.
Wondering about just who is Denice Franke these days? First off, listen to her
latest release. Better yet, go hear her live. Up close and in person. And keep
up with Franke in the news and online. This woman is going places. Just know
that when she comes home off the road, she’s writing more songs, spending time
with friends, walking the beach, enjoying one of her favorite pastimes –
baseball – and nesting in her cozy Galveston bungalow.
Oh, and guess what color she painted the house?
Denice Franke Background Highlights
compilation and commentary by Lynn Adler - freelance writer,
co-proprietor
of noted live music venue Crossroads Coffeehouse & Music Co.
in Winnsboro, Texas, and one half of the duo
Adler & Hearne.
