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"I always think of Bob Franke as if Emerson and Thoreau had picked up acoustic guitars and gotten into songwriting."
— Tom Paxton, songwriter
"Bob Franke writes the kind of songs that will still be sung a hundred years from now."
— Christine Lavin, songwriter
"I believe that [Bob Franke's] 'Hard Love' is one of the best songs written between 1950 and 2000 — and that includes Dylan and Joni."
— Rich Warren, host of WFMT's Midnight Special
How do you measure a hit song? In the pop world, you simply count how many units it sold. In folk music, it's more complicated. You ask how long it's lasted; how many people have taken it into their own lives? By those measures, Bob Franke (rhymes with "Yankee") is among the most important folk songwriters of our times. Many of his songs, like "Hard Love," "For Real," "Thanksgiving Eve," and "The Great Storm Is Over," have entered the American folk canon, sung by major stars and open-mikers, church choirs and summer campers, recovering addicts at treatment centers, and spiritual seekers at religious retreats.
"There is an affection for Bob's work that is really palpable," says Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary. "People know he has given them something rare and powerful, real and uncompromising."
Singers renowned as song-finders have recorded his songs: Peter, Paul and Mary, June Tabor, Kathy Mattea, Tony Rice, John McCutcheon, Garnet Rogers, and David Wilcox. When ABC's Nightline asked Alison Krauss to name her favorite songs, she cited Franke's "Hard Love," saying Franke was her hero and "main inspiration."
But that just scratches the surface. Franke's lyrics appear on church marquees and tombstones; his songs are sung at weddings, funerals, and christenings, and appear in the hymnals of several denominations. The City of Salem commissioned him to write songs celebrating its rich history; and he spent 30 years as artist-in-residence at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, writing children's plays and liturgical music, including a popular Good Friday Cantata, which "presents the Passion as a deeply human tragedy," according to the Boston Globe.
Acclaimed juvenile novelist Ellen Wittlinger named one of her most successful books after his song, "Hard Love." "There's a vulnerability in his writing that lets him get to a place in himself that people don't often put out into the world," she says. "That allows the listener to reach that place, too."
Franke has remained a popular concert headliner for over 40 years, but he's also a beloved teacher of songwriting. One student dubbed him "The I Ching of songwriters."
"I see all my students as artists," Franke says, "and every time I turn people on to their own creativity, and take them through this difficult but possible process, it makes me feel less lonely, breaks down that old idea of the artist being different from most people."
You might think that a performance by an artist of such depth would be a heady, dense experience. But you'd be surprised. He intersperses his serious songs with smartly daffy ditties about computers and cagey catfish, psychedelic polkas and adjusting to our loved ones' foibles.
"No matter the size of the audience, you're going to get an intimate evening with Bob," says Alan Korolenko, who has hired Franke for small concerts and the huge New Bedford Summerfest. "He just pulls everybody in. By the end, you've laughed and thought and cared; you've gotten to know the guy. He's a class act."
Franke learned the value of entertaining in the 1970s, busking at Boston subways stops and street-corners. "I saw that if I can let people have a little fun to take their minds off the stress of their work," he recalls, "I was doing a huge service."
Franke fell in love with folk music as a teenager, joining raucous hootenannies at the back of the bus he took to his Detroit school every day. He moved to Boston to attend an Episcopal seminary, but realized that he was called to express his faith in songs, not sermons.
Franke always meets his audiences eye-to-eye, neighbor to neighbor. His voice is warm, soft and familiar, like your favorite winter gloves. He is a superb guitarist, but you'll never hear a show-offy trill or "look-at-me" lick. Instead, he uses elegant patterns to bring audiences inside the song with him. His goal is not to dazzle, but to befriend.
"One thing I love about Bob on stage is his whole lack of ego," says Rich Warren, host of the weekly Chicago radio show Midnight Special, and the concert series Folkstage. "He gets up there, and he's just Bob. That works incredibly in his favor - because he can back it up with talent."
"Whenever I sing," Franke says, "I'm trying to create in my listeners an awareness of the beauty and sacredness of their own lives. A woman told me recently that my song put her relationship with her dad in a new light, gave her insight into her dad's love for her. That's all I need to take home from a show."
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