The Valley Advocate February 22, 1996
Bob Franke might just single-handedly rescue Christianity from zealots, demagogues, and fools like Randall Terry, Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan. Here's an album of Christian-based folk songs that's introspective, not preachy; universalist, not dogmatic; and self-deprecating, not judgmental. Franke's also not afraid to call a hypocrite a hypocrite. "Krystallnacht Is Coming" wastes no niceties in comparing current American anti-immigrant ravings with those of the Nazis. He also dons the prophet's mantle in "Waiting for Nineveh to Burn" and again in a duo with Noel Paul Stookey on "Turn Back, O Man." But Franke, long respected as one of America's best songwriters, is at his best when he fingers the common seeds of the human spirit, and turns us towards the light. In "Hard Love" he sings, "the Lord's cross might redeem us, but our own just waste our time." Aside from the slick "Eye of the Serpent" which opens the album, most of t ges from a complex, thoughtful writer with a humane soul.
Sing Out! Vol. 40, No.4 Feb./March/April '96
This represents Franke's most "commercial" release, with full professional production by Mason Daring. Being a folkie at heart, Daring tastefully layers just the right amount of accompaniment. Of course, the contributions of instrumentalists Nina Gerber, Cary Black and Billy Novick further enhance the production. Franke is one of the very few songwriters who can weave religion into his songs, as he does in "Eye Of The Serpent," without sounding like he's proselytizing or dogmatic. His songs form compact moral dramas equally appropriate to atheists, Christians or Buddhists. Franke has re-recorded here his well-known "Hard Love", long out of print, although now covered by about a dozen other performers. While his voice has never sounded better, it lacks the edge of pain that once accompanied this song. Still, even amid 10 other fine gems, "Hard Love" alone justifies the cost of the CD. "Waiting For Nineveh To Burn" brilliantly reconstructs (deconstructs?) the Biblical tale, rife with Franke's trademark irony. "Krystallnacht Is Coming" chillingly details the slippery slope we may be sliding down toward the loss of civil liberties, or perhaps civility in general. No Franke recording would be complete without one double-entendre humorous song, supplied here by "Helicopter Simulator" which, as he describes it, is "a song about mid-life crisis management." The recording concludes with the hymn-type song Franke writes so successfully, "Trouble In This World (It'll Be All Right)." From the sorrows and angst of the previous songs, this one shines bright with hope. Daring's production really blazes here as the song builds. Unlike many singer-songwriters, Franke has never quested after commercial success as much as an honest hearing of his songs and message. This deserves that honest listening as it embodies Franke at the epitome of his musical journey
Monday, March 7, 1988 THE TRIBUNE. Oakland, California
Word of mouth can be powerful when it comes to artistry dressed in "just folks" clothing. When New England singer Bob Franke came through the Bay Area a year ago, the Julie's Place crew put him in a small meeting room at Berke-ley's Unitarian Fellowship Hall. Everyone was surprised at just how many people had heard of this little-known folkie. It was so crowded, fans were hanging out the room's win-dows, and those who couldn't get in listened from the hallway. Franke returned Saturday, this time in the larger assembly room for a full house of 150. The two-hour concert was nearly identical to last year's, but that wasn't a problem. For many newcomers, each song held a moment of discovery as described by Franke's fine, deep tenor and excellent guitar accompaniment.
For repeat customers, Franke's songs are al-ways worth hearing again: They're often deep and reveal more of themselves with each performance. "He could write about anything and make it interesting," one audience-member pointed out. If the songs seemed familiar, so did his wrin-kled shirt and gray blazer, probably the same out-fit he wore last time.
That's Franke's appeal. He seems so familiar and unguarded that he could be a neighbor or old friend dropping by to talk about the world. Franke's approach to the world is to take its most mundane elements, daily lives of regular people, and dig out universal values in sometimes disturbing, often funny songs.
Franke's songs are well-known in contempo-rary folk circles because so many other musicians use them as the high points of their shows. Franke has only one album in print; he's not a prolific writer. But what he does write is the stuff most singers and poets struggle lifetimes to produce. Most performers, at best, deal in vague terms about things Franke gets in focus - with a novel-ist's attention to detail - in just a few lines, whether it's a song about two girls in Victorian Salem discovering simple treasures in their aunt’s closets, or contemporary adults trying to sort out relationships. To say nothing of confronting the infinite void. That's a good one for Franke, and although he doesn't delve into organized religion or dogma, there's little to separate his mystical, spiritual insights from those revealed in a great sermon. His songs make the world seem more in focus and full of wonder.
Franke lives in a blue-collar suburb of Salem, Mass., where he recently quit his job as plant engineer of the Harbor Sweets candy factory to make singing his full-time occupation, which means he's away from home and family for weeks.
He told of how he imagined that poets used to meet in bars, until their hands started to stray, so someone gave them guitars, and that's where the folk singers come from.
His science-fiction allegory, "Invasion of the Money Snatchers" was hilarious, as was his "Fuji Blues," which he described as the use of the ex-tended metaphor of traditional blues to describe more worldly dealings, in this case, bicycle repair as sex. He sang about his daughter's "Boomerang Pancakes," and prepared for Passover and Easter with "Roll Away the Waters Again" (about the Hebrews' flight from Egypt) and "A Still Small Voice."
Inspired by the Challenger disaster, he sang a new one with a view of the universe in which he declared, "My life and eternity in song are recon-ciled," before swinging into his life anthem "Beg-gars to God," and a medley of his two best-known songs, "For Real" and "Hard Love."
He tempered the force of those songs with his "Abyssinian Desert Monkey Rag" and an encore of blues pioneer Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," playing his National Steel guitar with a metal slide, scratchy, stinging blues riffs flying from the strings.