Frankenreiter now riding his own wave

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

For Donavon Frankenreiter, life is all about balance. Hardly surprising for someone who started surfing at age 9 and turned pro at 16. But it isn't just a matter of keeping a low center of gravity on his surfboard. For Frankenreiter it means keeping a balance between family and career, between staying home in California and traveling the globe, between the artistic and the athletic.

Now 34 years old, Frankenreiter is still an active pro surfer, jetting off to ride the big waves in front of the cameras and promote his various sponsors. Since 2002, however, he has split his working life between surfing and making music.

"It's something I've always done. When I was traveling for surfing, it was just one of the things I always took along--some surfboards, a bag of clothes and an acoustic guitar," Frankenreiter told The Daily Yomiuri earlier this month over the phone from his home in California. Frankenreiter had just returned from the Caribbean, where he had been plying one of his trades for an upcoming surf film, the latest in the popular Drive Thru series, and was about to jet off to Brazil to play as a supporting act for Ben Harper a couple of days later.

After Brazil, Frankenreiter is planning a short recreational surfing trip to Hawaii to break up his flight to Japan, where he is to play nine shows across the country in just 12 days in February. The breakneck pace continues in March with a whirlwind tour of Europe.

Frankenreiter is no stranger to Japan, having visited about a dozen times on surfing expeditions and for the shooting of at least one surf video. He also wowed the crowd at the Fuji Rock Festival last summer and has a real affection for Japan.

"I love coming to Japan, it's like nowhere else in the world. We had a lot of fun at Fuji Rock. I just wish we could have stayed longer and checked out more of the bands."

"It's hard; I'm gone a lot. My wife is expecting our second child in April, so I'm taking some time off. It's tough to balance music, surfing and family--this will be the first break I've had in about four years, but I'm taking four months off," says Frankenreiter, adding sheepishly that he will probably spend a lot of time writing new songs with an eye to going back into the studio later this year to work on a new album.

Asked whether he considers himself a singing surfer or a surfing singer, the shrug can almost be heard over the phone. A few moments of conversation show that the two pursuits are very much Frankenreiter's yin and yang: "I love doing both, but it's great to be able to get away and do something else. The music thing can get pretty crazy with the touring and recording and promotional stuff, so it is really nice to be able to put it down and not think about it, just go surfing for a few weeks and then come back to it fresh. I've been surfing since I as 9 and surfing still keeps me healthy. It clears my mind and my soul...The two really balance each other out."

Frankenreiter's surfing connections have played a big part in his musical career. When he was 16 he moved to Hawaii's famed North Shore and rented a room from the wife of surfing legend Jeff Johnson, father of pro surfer-cum-pop star Jack Johnson. Being the same age and both fanatical surfers, the two became fast friends.

"I was already playing guitar when I met Jack and so was he, but we sort of bounced stuff off of each other. I'd teach him a song; he'd teach me a song. Later on, we did a few surf movies together," Frankenreiter says. "We've been friends a long time."

Both started getting more serious about music around the same time, and Johnson's early success enabled him to start his own label, Brushfire Records. Frankenreiter's first eponymous album came out on Brushfire in 2002.

The comparisons were inevitable and possibly even apt, given how much the record was shaped by Johnson as producer. The two share some stylistic similarities and are old friends, but after a while Frankenreiter clearly got a little tired of being written off as a Jack Johnson imitator by people who clearly had not listened to his music.

"I wanted people to listen to my music and to know who I was...Sometimes it was a little too close for comfort," he says.

For his second effort, last year's Move by Yourself Frankenreiter moved to a new label under the Universal Music umbrella, Lost Highway. Two years on the road with his own band and a different approach to recording made for a different record.

"The first album was done with Jack's band and we recorded it on Pro Tools, which makes it really easy to move stuff around. I'd never done a record before and I was really impressed by the things they could do...It was great working with Jack at his studio in Hawaii."

The second album was done with Frankenreiter's own band, and most of it was recorded live onto two-inch tape. "Recording live like that is very much about capturing a moment, getting the best vibe down that you can," Frankenreiter says.

A slight departure from the mellow folksy charm of his debut, Move By Yourself is full of funky blue-eyed soul grooves that sound reminiscent of '70s R&B stalwarts Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder with a dollop of Lenny Kravitz and a smidgen of Beatles thrown into the mix for good measure.

The last track on the album, "Beautiful Day," was recorded in one take on the spur of the moment with bassist Matt Grundy improvising a guitar lead and drummer Craig Barnette playing a shaker that happened to be close to hand.

"It was about two in morning and I had this idea and I wanted to get it on tape, mostly for the guys to learn the song with the idea that we might record it. So we just crowded around one mike and I started playing--if you listen to it, you can hear the rhythm guitar is slightly out of tune--and it just worked. It has this great vibe to it."

In music, as in surfing, sometimes you just have to ride the wave.

Donavon Frankenreiter (with special guest Timmy Curran) will play Feb. 6-7, 7 p.m. at Ax in Shibuya, Tokyo, (03) 3444-6751; Feb. 9, 7 p.m. at Drum Logos in Fukuoka, (092) 771-9009; Feb. 10, 7 p.m. at Weather King in Miyazaki, (0985) 20-7111; Feb. 11, 7 p.m. at Club Quattro in Hiroshima, (082) 542-2280; Feb. 13, 7 p.m. at Big Cat in Osaka, (06) 6535-5569; Feb. 15, 7 p.m. at Club Quattro in Nagoya, (052) 264-8211; Feb. 16 7 p.m. at Kyoiku Bunka Kaikan in Toyama, (076) 432-5566; Feb. 18, 7 p.m. at Jasmac Plaza Zanaedu in Sapporo, (011) 261-5569.

(Jan. 27, 2007)

Obama puts the hurt on FOX
Barrack Obama is not and has never been a muslim, met his father only once, did not attend a madrassa as a child and Jon Gibson and Steve Doocey and the staff at Moonie owned Insight Magazine are a lying bunch of mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging cretins for saying otherwise and trying to claim that it was the Hillary Clinton campaign that gave them the info.
This is what the Democrats need to do every single time some charater assasin like Jon Gibson or Bill O'Reilly opens their piehole to spout bullshit. Call them on publically, loudly and point by point. Then demand a retraction and public apology, or better yet sue the bastards.

It's official, the terrorists have won
Although it goes against my principles to link to FOX for any reason whatsoever, even they seem to realize just how idiotic and wrong this is:

Australian Kicked Off Flight for Anti-Bush T-Shirt
Monday, January 22, 2007
An airline passenger has threatened legal action against Australia's flagship carrier Qantas for barring him from an international flight because he was wearing a T-shirt depicting US President George W. Bush as a terrorist.
Allen Jasson said today he was defending freedom of speech through his insistence on wearing the T-shirt.
Mr. Jasson, 55, an Australian IT specialist who lives in London, is staying with his daughter in Melbourne after he was refused entry to the flight to London at Melbourne Airport on Friday.
Airline staff argued that the T-shirt, which bears an image of the US president with the slogan 'World's number 1 terrorist', was a security risk or an item likely to upset passengers.
The airline earlier had prevented him from flying to Melbourne for Christmas with relatives on December 2 until he removed the shirt.
Domestic carrier Virgin Blue took the same action when Mr. Jasson tried to catch a connecting flight to Adelaide, but on a return flight to Melbourne with Qantas on Friday, he successfully wore the shirt.

On such a winter's day
The counter-culture deathwatch continues with the death of Papa Denny Doherty.

You'll believe a lasagna can fly
The Illuminati want you to believe that Robert Anton Wilson has died.
He was seventy-four-fnord years old and a truly admirable wacko. One of our people and he will be missed.

Somewhere a speechwriter's butt is sore

Shorter Bush TV address: "I've lost 3,000 shooting craps so far, so the smart thing to do is bet another 21,500 and try to win my money back"

I know that when Dubya said:

"Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship"

we were supposed to think of the last war the United States won
But how many people out there thought of this:

Kanadian Korner #2
Rock'em Sock'em Hockey


These guys are Americans and not really brothers, but we won't hold that against them. Many decry fighting in hockey, and while I dislike goonery and cheap shots and think Don Cherry long ago became a parody of himself, I do think fisticuffs have a place in the game. Now there is a book that makes the case that fights actually reduce the number of cheap shots and high sticks-- something almost anyone who has played the game knows. It also has some great stories in it, like this one from Dave Hanson:

The stories in the book are worth the price of admission, so much fun. My
favorite was a doozy that Dave Hanson told in which he wound up going at it with
none other than the great Bobby Hull. Dave, of course, was one of the famous
fighting "Hanson Brothers" from the classic movie "Slap Shot."

"The most memorable fight I ever got into over my career would have to
be the one with Bobby Hull, probably the biggest star in the game at the time,"
Hanson recalled. "I was with Birmingham and we were playing Winnipeg. I was
trying to establish myself as a player in the league and make an impact, so I
was playing pretty physical. Well, I am out there skating around and I run into
Bobby, which was like running into a brick s--- house. He just bowled me over.
So, when the next opportunity came later on in the game, I gave it back to him
pretty good. Bobby took offense and dropped his gloves, so I followed suit.

"We were just going at it with lefts and rights, and then, all of a
sudden, he just stopped. You could have heard a pin drop in there at that
moment. So, I looked up at the crowd and it was like everybody was just frozen.
I looked back at Bobby and I am thinking to myself, 'Something doesn't quite
look right here.' Sure enough, I looked down at my hand and I'll be damned if
his wig wasn't caught in my knuckles. I had somehow caught it and ripped it
right off of his head. It was unbelievable.

"They tossed me in the box and threw the book at me. I got two minutes
for elbowing, five minutes for fighting and 10 minutes for pulling hair. Well,
Bobby skated off and came back out with a helmet after that. Later on, I wound
up in the faceoff circle with him and said, 'Mr. Hull, I am really sorry.' Bobby
just looked at me, smiled and said in his deep, raspy voice, 'Ah, don't worry
about it kid, I needed a new one anyhow.' Bobby and I later became good friends,
but to this day, we have never spoken of that night."

I've met Bobby Hull a few times at amateur hockey events and I know he and his high scoring son were estranged for many reason. Bobby didn't strike me as the nicest guy in the room. He was cocky, a bit arrogant and self satisfied and seemed to be a bit of a bully-type jock. I won't say more than that for the simple reason that despite my being six feet tall and two hundred and (cough, mumble) pounds and 27 years younger than him, the Golden Jet could still rip me in two with one hand while stick handling with the other and not raise a sweat even 26 years after he played his last pro hockey game. And even that would hurt less than stepping in front of one of his famous slapshots, which I am sure age has slowed to below his old muzzle velocity of 120 miles per hour, say down to 115 mph. Although I still haven't forgiven him for jumping to the WHL.

Ross Bernstein's book, "The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL." apparently talks at lenght about why and when hockey players fight. I haven't managed to get my hands on a copy yet, but from what I've seen written about it, he seems to make a good case for what most players and fans know to be true: that fighting exists in the game as a way of enforcing the rules. It is, in a weird way, democratic and honorable and above all effective at keeping the sticks down and limiting the cheap shots.

If you know Marty McSorely is going to tear you a new one if you even try it, you are not going to take a whack at Wayne Gretzky's ankle. And if you do try it and you back away from taking your punishment, then it's open season on your ass everytime you step on the ice. The ref may not see you do it, but Wayne will feel it and Marty will know about it, as sure as Michael knew it was Fredo that betrayed him and will deal with it in much the same way. So you play by the rules or else.

That is why fighting is a part of hockey and hopefully always will be.

But please, no foil.

One in four
Surely such polls cannot be correct, but apparently more people think Jesus will return to Earth in 2007 than think George W. Bush is doing a good job. Apparently drug abuse is much more prevelant than I thought.

M-I-C (see you in court) K-E-Y (Why? because we're bastards) M-O-U-S-E
KSFO radio is a haven for bigots and hatemongers. Blogger Spocko has been waging a campaign to make the station's sponsors aware of what their advertising dollar is paying for. As a result, the owners of KSFO - ABC and Disney - are trying to use legal muscle to stomp Spocko. Have a look at the link to hear the kind of hateful crap being spewed on KSFO and ask yourself if they should even be permitted a broadcasting licence for the public airwaves. Is radio WKKK far behind? Even an old anti-Semite like Walt Disney would have drawn the line at this sort of crap.

Kanadian Korner #1

In the beginning...

Where it all began. The start of late 20th century- early 21st century Canadian nationalism. Without Bob and Doug, there would have been no "I am Canadian" campaign or the revival of Johnny Canuckism that we so enjoy.

songs that made america great
An internet comment about an obscure 1975 album that has and thoroughly deserves a cult following and the subsequent discovery that said album was rereleased in 1997 has prompted me to pony up some yen for my very own copy of Patrick Sky's masterpiece "Songs that made America Great"
Click the link and go have a listen -- I think you'll agree it isn't for everyone, but it should be. He should have won a grammy for "Rambling Hunchback Blues" alone. My former partner in musical crime Rick Bauer aka Sonny Lematina, introduced me to this album 15 years ago and I've been searching for it ever since. I used to cover "Rambling Hunchback Blues" between John Prine tunes at folk clubs to considerable appalled indifference. Ah misty, water-coloured memories....

Sky wrote almost all the material on the album except for this dirge by Dave Van Ronk. Luang Prabang was the capital of the kingdom of Laos, but if you think of it as Baghdad, you won't be far wrong -- Its raw, but its right.

Luang Prabang

When I got back from Luang Prabang
I didn't have a thing where my balls used to hang
But I got a wooden medal and a fine "hoorang"
And now I'm a fuckin' hero

Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me
Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me

And now the boys all envy me
I fought for Christian democracy
With nothin' but air where my balls used to be
Now I'm a fuckin' hero

Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me
Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me

And one and twenty cannon thunder
Into the bloody wild blue yonder
For a patriotic ball-less wonder
Now I'm a fuckin' hero

Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me
Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me

In Luang Prabang there is a spot
Where the corpses of your brothers rot
And every corpse is a patriot
And every corpse is a hero

Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me
Mourn your dead, land of the free
If you want to be a hero, follow me
--© Dave Van Ronk

Home for the Holly-daze
A happy Festivus to one and all from the Woodshed, We are back in Ontari-airy-airy-Oh for the holly-daze. The flight was the usual 12 hour trial of boredom, exhaustion, bad movies and crappy airline food with the added excitement of both kids barfing all over the place just before we landed. As my brother, always the-glass-is-half-full kinda guy he is pointed out, it could have been worse - they could have puked on takeoff.
blogging forcast is for light, intermittent posting for the next week or even two. In the meantime, there is Christmas in Ponoka, RCMP-style

99,000 words
Would not be enough to describe the 99 strangest photos of 2006, so you'll just have to go and look at them yourself.
A tip of the hat to Man Descending.

Not the DaVinci Code
Go here and click refresh a few times to generate your very own Dan Brown novel. All I need now is a site that generates fat movie rights and publishing royalties cheques to go along with it.

In Your Ear

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

BERT JANSCH

The Black Swan

P-Vine, 2,520 yen

Revered in Britain since his debut in the mid-'60s, Scottish folk guitar wizard Bert Jansch has undeservedly cruised just under the radar in North America, never achieving the wide popularity of a James Taylor or even a Don McLean. His latest album The Black Swan is unlikely to break into MTV's Big 10 or be featured on Total Requests Live any time soon, despite Neil Young comparing him favorably to Jimi Hendrix.

Jansch's appeal as a solo artist and as part of British folk supergroup Pentangle has never fit with mainstream pop tastes--he doesn't prance around in spandex, date starlets or regularly get arrested. What he does do is sing, write interesting songs and play the acoustic guitar very, very, very well.

Jansch's guitar on Swan is as warm and refreshing as a sudden shower of rain on a hot, sunny day. There are no head-melting solos, just solid, consistently interesting and off-beat instrumental work as Jansch backs up his own dry, deep vocals and those of guest Beth Orton on a selection of sparsely arranged tracks built around his guitar. The tracks run the gamut from meditative ballads such as "High Days" to folk blues such as "My Pocket's Empty" and the titular sci-fi story-song. There are even a pair of protest songs--"Texas Cowboy Blues" and "Bring Your Religion."

An excellent antidote to the commercial hurly-burly of the holiday season.

JERRY GARCIA

The Very Best of Jerry Garcia

Rhino/Warner, 3,150 yen

'Tis the season for greatest hits collections, and Rhino has assembled an excellent cross section of Jerry Garcia's recordings as a solo artist.

Best known for his lengthy guitar solos in concert with psychedelic jam icons the Grateful Dead, Garcia started his musical career as a folk banjo player, and his musical tastes pretty much covered the waterfront, something reflected in this collection that includes covers of songs by Irving Berlin, Bob Dylan, Alan Toussaint, the Beatles and Jimmy Cliff, as well as numerous joint efforts between Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter.

The first of the two discs is drawn from Garcia's solo studio rock albums recorded in the '70s and early '80s and not all of it has aged especially well. The second disc, made up of live recordings from 1973 to 1990, offers a better example of Garcia at the top of his game, stepping out for extended solos and crossing genres from bluegrass to folk-rock to reggae.

While it contains some absolute gems, the album could have been shorter and is better suited to fans and Garcia completists than neophytes.

NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE

Live at the Fillmore East

Reprise/Warner, 2,580 yen

While not technically a "best of" collection, this 1970 concert recording of Neil Young and Crazy Horse showcases the group at their best.

Young, in 1970, had not yet reached the peak of his fame and it was performances like this one that earned him a place in guitar hero Valhalla. He wails, crunches and twangs his way through an energetic set of his early material with extended pregrunge workouts on "Down By The River" and "Cowgirl In The Sand." Also included is an early version of "Wonderin'," a minor hit for Young when he finally recorded it in 1983. This album is must-have for fans and will come as a revelation for those who only know Young's Harvest-era folk material.
(Dec. 16, 2006)

RIP Ahmet Ertegun
The R&B and soul music pioneer who popularized Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and opened the door commercially to the British Invasion, was also a big soccer fan (betcha didn't know that!)
I think he probably went the way he wanted to go - he fell and hit his head at a Rolling Stones concert and just never woke up. I wonder what song the boys were playing at the time?

The art of headline writing
About the level of quality we expect from CNN:
"Leahy wants FBI to help corrupt Iraqi police force"

and from the "hell in a handbasket dept."
"'Moral decay' behind library vandalism"

(sniff) Do you smell that? (sniff)it smells like.....Pulitzer!

Do not adjust your tinfoil hat
just do not vote for these treasonous cretins ever again.

Mel Hurtig, the founder of the Council of Canadians, and also a variety of other reliable sources including veteran CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, now reveal that senior elected representatives and advisors to the Conservative Party, are currently planning a scheme that would hand over Canada to the Bush regime by 2007. The official name for this scheme, is called "North American Union".

What could possibly go wrong with this?
I'm sure you won't see more than a million or so links to this story about how stupid one Texas legislator is. He is sponsoring legislation to allow the blind to go hunting. Truly, the mind doth boggle.

Dark look into underground
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

A Scanner Darkly

2.5 stars out of five

Dir Richard Linklater

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder


Paranoia, betrayal, dependence and confused identities are not exactly standard themes for an animated film, but then not even the animation is standard in director Richard Linklater's adaptation of sci-fi noir author Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

The film was made using an animation technique known as digital rotoscoping that allows animators to essentially trace and overlay photographic images with digital graphics, resulting in an impressionistic film in which characters look and move like real people, but with the altered perspective of the filmmaker superimposed.

Set in the near future, the film follows an undercover narcotics officer codenamed Fred (Keanu Reeves) who is assigned to investigate suspected drug dealer Bob Arctor. Undercover police agents in this world are fully undercover, their true identities concealed even from their coworkers and superiors through the use of a so-called scramble suit worn at the police station that completely masks their appearance and voice. Arctor is suspected of dealing in the pernicious and highly addictive substance D, a drug that gradually splits the user's mind into multiple personalities.

We quickly realize that Fred and Arctor are the same person, but what isn't clear is whether Arctor is posing as a Fred or vice versa, or whether either is aware of his link to the other.

Aside from a few twists and turns, the story follows Fred/Arctor and his friends through their descent into further drug addiction and eventual attempts at redemption. The narrative often takes a backseat to dialog-heavy set pieces revolving around urban legends, low humor and drug-induced obsession and paranoia. While the set pieces are often amusing or sad, they slow the pace of the story to a glacial crawl.

In a stroke of obvious but effective casting, noted Hollywood druggies Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. play Arctor's housemates, with Harrelson's dopey hippie an ideal comic foil for the fast-talking, occasionally sinister character played by Downey. Where Harrelson's character is generally just spaced out, Downey's is more mischievous and conspiracy-minded. One funny scene in the film has him convincing another character that he can make cocaine out of Solarcaine sunburn spray.

Downey's performance is definitely a bright spot in the film, as is that of Rory Cochrane, best known for his turn as a conspiracy buff in Linklater's Dazed and Confused and his work on the various CSI television programs. The less said about the wooden Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, the better, though Reeves' lack of affect does give the character the sort of blankness that can pass for confusion over his true identity.

While there are a number of laughs in the film, most of them courtesy of Downey, the overall tone is fittingly very dark as we watch the main characters spiral down into madness, desperation and even suicide.

Linklater made good use of rotoscoping to convey a sort of cinematic version of magic realism in his 2001 film Waking Life and it serves him well here, allowing him to show the jangled, stuttering and occasionally hallucinatory point of view of the main characters as they slide in and out of drug-induced psychosis. While occasionally distracting, the effect is key to the overall atmosphere of the film.

Unsuspecting fans of animation, science fiction and Keanu Reeves should be forewarned that this is a film with an important message.

At its heart, A Scanner Darkly is a plea for a more forgiving and humanitarian approach to drug addiction. In an epilogue to the novel reproduced at the end of the film, Dick wrote: "This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow."

Linklater has taken a book that is clearly dear to his heart and rewritten it for the screen, probably with the foreknowledge that it would be difficult to translate the novel into a film, but he did it anyhow, because sometimes the message is more important than the medium.