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STEWART FRANCKE

About Me


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"STEWART FRANCKE MAKES BEAUTIFUL MUSIC"--BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 2006
Stewart Francke began making music when he was 19, playing bass with fabled boogie woogie pianist Bob Baldori. He received an education in every facet of the music business under the tutelage of Baldori, the fabled Midwestern blues man and founding member of The Woolies. They frequently backed Chuck Berry, Del Shannon and other early rock and R&B legends.
Stewart didn’t make his first record, however, until his thirties, when his daughter was born. In the meantime he played countless gigs in and around Michigan in rock and R&B bands and later wrote reviews and features about music and film for the Detroit Metro Times, eventually being named a Contributing Editor.
Since making that first record in 1995, Where The River Meets The Bay, (a record that illuminated his Michigan surroundings with dusty stories and simple melodies) he's made nine more, capped by the breakthrough blue eyed soul cd, Motor City Serenade, recorded with the Funk Brothers and released initially in England in 2005 by Zane Records.
Stewart has found his voice and vision through hard work, expressive songwriting, and soulful singing that's often compared to the classic soul singers of the 60s & 70s. In addition to the 10 cd releases, he’s licensed songs to TV (Melrose Place, MTV Real World, various daytime shows), major label compilations (Sony/BMG) advertising agencies (GM, Ford, National Cancer Association). He’s built a reputation as a warm and exciting live performer, playing his own headlining shows as well as tour support with the likes of Sheryl Crow, Warren Zevon, Steve Earle, Chris Isaak, Robert Cray, Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald, Stevie Winwood, Eddie Money, Chicago, & many others. Yet he feels he's still in the beginnings of his artistic journey. Most importantly, there is a magical and firm connection between Stewart and his audience.
"Stewart Francke is the best songwriter I’ve heard in 20 years." – Mick Taylor, legendary guitarist & former member of The Rolling Stones.
Growing up in the 1960s & 70s in Saginaw, Michigan, Stewart recalls it as a great time to be a kid in the Midwest. Fueled by popular music–a combined invention of black & white styles-- kids dared to dream. It was everywhere, on every kitchen AM radio, songs that told the truth and opened up your mind in a complex time.
Stewart watched his father, a car salesman and the mayor of Saginaw from '62-'66, try to make sense of it all in a waning industrial town--racial trouble, class inequities, the dynamic between the Big Three automakers and Unions, downtowns dying. He took it all in, quietly, this confluence of culture and politics that would later inform his songs. As a teenager, he loved sports, later becoming an NAIA All-American athlete. He grew up and left, eventually landing in Detroit in his early twenties after the internship with Baldori and Berry.
After his very first single, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," found its way to TV shows and national radio play, Stewart began headlining regularly at clubs and concert venues as well as opening for everybody who was anybody coming through town. He even played a two night stand back home, working his own songs into arrangements with the Saginaw Symphony Orchestra in the late 90s.
A duet with his friend & idol Mitch Ryder ("Upon Seeing Simone" from the House of Lights CD) preceded other strong selling, independently released titles: Sunflower Soul Serenade, What We Talk of When We Talk, Swimming In Mercury, Wheel Of Life and Motor City Serenade.
In the midst of this growing success came the dark night of the soul. In 1998 Stewart was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. It was a serious interruption to an artist's career, but more importantly to a man, father and husband. His kids were still very young. His sister was found to be a perfect bone marrow match and he underwent a stem cell transplant in the fall of '98. Terrific doctors and nurses at Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit contributed to saving his life. He wanted desperately to live to see his children grow. He fought to stay alive; he fought hard. He got a lot of help. He went through 5 years of hell and back. He's still here.
After regaining enough strength to play some gigs, Stewart began writing and recording again. A Leukemia Foundation was formed in his name. Nearly $200,000 has been raised by the Stewart Francke Leukemia Foundation and donated to groups such as Gilda's Club, the Children's Leukemia Foundation, Leukemia & Life Research and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. An endowment, the first of its kind anywhere, was established in Stewart's name at Karmanos Cancer institute to assist patients whose insurance would not cover the cost of a search for a compatible match, with the emphasis on minority patients and donors. The foundation held bone marrow donor drives, also with an emphasis on minority participation, which informed the public through education and awareness about the disease. Stewart actively continues these cancer activities today. In 2002 he was recognized as one of the Points of Light by the P.O.L Foundation and was named Volunteer of the Year by the National Marrow Donor Program.
He's been recognized by his peers in his community through numerous Detroit Music Awards, including Best Artist, Songwriter & Album. Hour Detroit readers voted him most popular musician 2002-2004. The Stewart Francke Leukemia Foundation was also presented the prestigious Partnership In Humanity Award by the Detroit Newspapers, and he was awarded a Creative Artist Grant by Artserve Michigan.
After his cancer struggle, his music changed. It became funkier, more soulful. The lyrics became more focused. Stories were still told, but the narratives were inclusive and aware, not detached romantic fables. The songs were now about all of us, and where it is we're going.
It's been a harder road than imagined by the 19 year old who began his journey by jammin with Chuck Berry, playing the rock & roll vocabulary. "I wouldn't trade a minute, despite the hard times," Francke says, remembering that moments are given, to be enjoyed and sometimes endured. He's now quite happy to be a "survivor," a title you earn, and learn by. And the music is that of a survivor -–groovin’, deep, resonant, enduring and warmly descriptive of where he's been and whom he's known.
In September of 2004, Stewart came full circle with his musical loves and lifetime heroes. He recorded three songs with all six remaining Funk Brothers, the legendary group that cut all of the superb Motown hits in the 60s & 70s.
After releasing a book titled "Between The Ground & God," an award winning collection of his lyrics and writing in 2006, he’s now working on a new record, blending the narrative songwriting with soul and funk arrangements. Stewart’s again using the best players in Detroit, this time with an ear toward what’s new. He's working with legendary saxophonist & producer Dave McMurray (Was Not Was) and renowned soul producer Jon Tiven in Nashville. With more than thirty new songs written, Stewart hopes to record quickly and get new music out by the spring of 2009. He's also writing a book about his experience with leukemia, stem cell transplant and long recovery.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 12/16/2006
Band Website: http://www.stewartfrancke.com
Band Members: Stewart Francke: Vocals, guitar. Pete Peltier: Guitar. Craig Groscurth: Bass. Steve Moenssen: keys & B3. Randy Gacki: Drums. Bob Weber: Trombone. Russ McMartin: Trumpet. Jim Wilpula: Baritone sax. Eric Korte: Tenor sax. Jeanne Staels: Vocals. Barbara Payton: Vocals.
Influences: "What did I hope to gain from a life in music, other than the obvious things like freedom of creative expression, emotional connection with an audience, the excitement of the existential outcome and being hit with the room keys in the forehead? I think it was this: To be a part of an ongoing story, something that began before I did, to surrender my adolescent desire to the inevitability or mortality and continuity, and then do work that felt true, right and real. I wanted to get in line and contribute to the Great Song, to add on to all the music that changed me. Do good work for a long time, God willing. And what about that ideal of music as connection to other people? It's still very much with me, but the question is more defined: What truly binds us? I choose to continue to believe that music carries with it everything a good life demands...it's faith that binds us, that allows us to depend on one another. Faith in what? I'm compelled to say faith in faith itself, a belief in believing, that there remains in this world an outcome to our struggle that is accordant to the nature of our actions. But it's a faith based on doing the right things right, with a greater good in mind."

--Stewart Francke, introduction to Between The Ground & God

Motown to Morricone, James Brown to Stevie Wonder, Stephen King to William Faulkner, Springsteen to Pet Sounds, James Baldwin to John Cheever, Lennon & McCartney to Hayes & Porter to D'Angelo & Angie Stone, Parliament Funk to Cornell Dupree's guitar playing to James Jamerson's bass playing to...
Sounds Like: James & Jackson Brown(e) were brothers.

TESTIMONIALS

What others say about Stewart Francke's music:

"STEWART FRANCKE MAKES BEAUTIFUL MUSIC"--BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 2006

"Listening to Stewart Francke's music is like waking up and finding yourself in an alternate universe. It's a place where rock and soul still speak to each other, where you catch glimpses of what the seventies might have become if we'd lived up to their long-forgotten promise. It immerses you in a soundscape where you hear Motown and Philly International communing with Pet Sounds and Fleetwood Mac. It's a good world to imagine, and, Francke promises us, it isn't really out of reach. Part of the sense of promise lies in the music itself. Whether you're coming at the music from rock or soul, you can close your eyes, relax and let it wash over you. When you come back to the world, you'll feel energized and renewed. Like the best music of he rock and soul era, this music believes. It believes that we can reach a higher ground, that the conversations between black and white, between blues realism and gospel redemption, remain as vital as they were before narcissistic irony swamped our shared hopes and dreams. Like Marvin Gaye and Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and Ani DiFranco, he knows that, if we find the strength to tell our own stories honestly and he courage to open ourselves to others, our burdens can be a source of hope, not despair. And, he insists, the only meaningful response is to love each other and to change the world. " – Craig Werner, author of Change Is Gonna Come & Higher Ground

“Stewart Francke is one of a kind. A talent that encompasses songwriting and prose writing appears rarely. How much rarer then is a songwriter and writer whose sensibility includes Johnny Cash and Gore Vidal, Yoko One and the Funk Brothers, marriage and mortality, race relations and cancer treatment? His Motor City Serenade is the most important blue eyed soul record in a generation. Standing courageously at the intersection of rock and soul music, influenced equally by Marvin Gaye and Brian Wilson, Francke possesses all the tools: A sweet voice, a vision that’s grand without being grandiose and an undying love of sound for its own sake, along with an equally passionate engagement with everyday life and the people who live it. This music isn’t classic anything only because, like every real artist, Francke takes the world as he knows it and moves on his own course. " -- Dave Marsh

"Thank God for Stewart Francke. Thank God for his feeling, healing music, for the sweetness of his soul, the sincerity of his songs, the strength of his vision. WHEEL OF LIFE is enriching, nourishing music -- music as faith, music as celebration, music whose source is clear and joyful love." --- David Ritz, author of Ray, the Ray Charles Story, Divided Soul: The Marvin Gaye Story, Aretha Franklin biography and many others.

"Stewart Francke is the best songwriter I’ve heard in 20 years." --- Mick Taylor, legendary guitarist & former member of The Rolling Stones.

"Returning to the warm healing waters of "Lets get It On" era Marvin Gaye, genre hopper Francke restores faith in the much besmirched world of blue-eyed soul... genuinely life affirming. Looking for a real soul revival? Don*t look any further."— Gavin Martin, Uncut, June 2002

"As always, Stewart Francke's passion and raw, soulful singing strength are evident on Swimming In Mercury. Like all the best songwriters, Stewart writes from the heart and sings from it as well. The power of his up tempo tunes and the plaintive emotion of his ballads make for that rarest of musical accomplishments: a great songwriter who can rock!" -- Mitch Albom~Columnist & Best Selling author

Stewart Francke's Motor City Serenade is a daring exercise in musical anthropology, cultural license, and Detroit aesthetic savvy. Francke has been on the scene a long time, regarded highly in Detroit, but basically underappreciated elsewhere. That may change with the issue of this album, released by Great Britain's Zane label - the crew that released great titles by Delaney Bramlett, Ellis Hooks, and Eddie Hinton. Motor City Serenade pulls out all the stops creatively. There are layers of singers - including the gospel group Commissioned, Barb Payton, and living rock legend Mitch Ryder - elegant yet edgy strings, spiky, taut horns, funky keyboards, and popping guitars in a mix so utterly open and ringing, it saturates the listening space in a swirl of color, texture, and grit.

But Motown isn't the only sound at work in Francke's mix; there is also the romantic sophistication of Brian Wilson and the wild abandon of Jack Nitszche. The title track is a lullaby to Detroit, romantically name-dropping some of its heroes, from Marvin Gaye and Nolan Strong to techno's "holy trinity" ( Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson) - all of it fueled by Motown's Funk Brothers backing Francke. His singing voice has grown deeper and wider over the years. It contains a kind of reckless maturity and nuance that is the badge of experience and beneath-the-skin expression. He's doesn't worry about anything but getting the song to be true to itself as song. He's got the necessary soul chops, but he is also a fine rock singer - when he and Ryder cut loose in "Upon Seeing Simone," over a rollicking horn section, they send chills down the spine. But sonics and vocal prowess only tell part of the story; Francke's true gift in his ability to write words so utterly and poetically impure, and melodies that project them from the mix to the consciousness of the listener.

For Francke, backyards, street cruising, the triumphs and tragedies of family, and fleeting love are all wrapped in the same bundle, all cards in the same slippery deck. He can find the divine in the heat of a kiss, or the supernatural in glare of city lights on wet pavement; he can discern the measure of morality in a broken heart. Tracks like "American Twilight" lament the craziness of the nation in the beating of a man on a suburban roadway. "Deep Soul Kiss" expresses the need to continue in relationship in the midst of struggle, all the while acknowledging the power of eros to transcend. Yeah, this is real people's poetry: it carries within it the rough mystery of the urban street and the mundane magic of suburban epiphanies and doubts. And it's as romantic as a muggy summer night. This is music that's more interested in asking pertinent questions than looking for quick-fix answers. And in its quest there lies unintentional moral instruction as in the utterly moving slip hop of "You Better Get to Know Your Broken Heart."

Motor City Serenade is a celebration of contradictions: the beauty found in the ruins and history of a city that has lost its mooring but not its will to survive, the tense experiences of the people who inhabit its surroundings, the anxiousness found in searching for pearls of wisdom and excitement in the grind of everyday life in what was once the city that articulated the American Dream. And Francke has brought them all to bear here, allowing the voices of doubt, faith, regret, despair, temerity, and desire to speak for themselves in a truly exciting set of 13 songs that is as tough, tender, and ass-shaking as the city it reflects. -- Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

"Francke's finest songs reveal lives at stake in intimate tales where men and women struggle to understand each other. He always awards the lives in his songs with the generous, dramatic arrangements they deserve, what he calls all that beautiful noise." --- David Cantwell, NoDepression, March 2002

On "Keep Your Faith, Darling," the opening track on Stewart Francke*s brilliant fifth album, the singer-songwriter sets the musical and thematic tone for the 10 songs to follow. Cradled in vocal harmony, riding a delectable melody, Francke recalls the mantra his wife whispered to him as he lay in the hospital last year recovering from leukemia: "Keep Your Faith, Darling/Everything*s gonna be all right tonight." Swimming In Mercury is easily Francke *s best effort to date, the most potent expression of his longtime faith in hope and the human spirit. The album conveys the humility, triumph and enlightenment that accompanied his cancer battle, but is imbued with a poetic grace that keeps it from reading like just another mushy tale about dignity and hardship. Taking its sonic cues from 1998's SunflowerSoulSerenade at times--with its spiritual overtones and adept pop grooming--it comes off like some great lost George Harrison LP from 1971. Elsewhere--on songs like "Fathers and Sons" and "The Branch Will Not Break"--Francke recalls the plaintive earthiness of his earlier work. Keeping the faith, indeed. -- ~Brian McCollum~Detroit Free Press

On the opening chord and angelic chorus of Swimming In Mercury, former Saginawian, cancer survivor, and undeniable musical talent Stewart Francke sets the tone for a collection of new material that chronicles his own tale of Hell and Redemption. To say that this new release is a 'masterpiece' would be tritely dismissive; rather, it consciously delves into classic archetypes of Rock & Roll with a majesty that could only be born out of tribulation and hard-won triumph. Francke's fifth release on his Blue Boundary label is both a culmination of his previous 'confessional' style of songwriting, and a breakthrough in terms of staking new territory on that rather tenuous space between heaven & hell that rockers (and humanity in general) tends to tread. Indeed, if the overall 'tone' of this work is concisely capsulized, it occupies that ubiquitous space between challenge and achievement, with the power of collective realization more an incidental 'frosting' on the cake of individual truth, which in Francke's case embraces the notion that it is equally important to have faith in the tangible blessings of this earthy world as it is to have faith in the intangible promise of heavenly redemption. Swimming In Mercury is a major contribution by an important and emerging artist. Full of melodicism, soul, passion, horror, fear, courage, and the 'politics' of disease, it is rendered in a transcendent manner that not only soothes and stirs but also inspires the soul. ~Robert E. Martin, Editor & Publisher, Review Magazine

In Craig Werner's wonderful book A Change is Gonna Come, he writes about the gospel impulse, "the belief that life's burdens can be transformed into hope, salvation, the promise of redemption." Stewart Francke's "Swimming in Mercury" is no gospel album, but Francke's musical response to his own year of personal hell and redemption is currently Exhibit A in making the case that the impulse isn't tied down to the genre from which it gets its name.The fifth full-length album from the Detroit-area singer comes a little more than a year after his diagnosis with chronic myelogenous leukemia. He's currently cancer-free, something surely due in part to a painful bone marrow transplant, but also due to his own personal faith--in himself, in those around him, and in God. Swimming in Mercury captures these struggles and triumphs lyrically, and its sound is one of hard-won joy, full of choruses soaring toward heaven and rhythms as powerful as the human heartbeat. That he was able to transform his experience into music isn't unusual. That he was able to transform it into music so strikingly powerful and timeless is.Francke's aesthetic is a lot like Bruce Springsteen's, not so much because it echoes the Boss' sounds -- though "The Valley" would have fit nicely on Born to Run, with its majestic piano and layered backing vocals -- but because, like Springsteen, Francke reinvigorates classic rock and pop archetypes. The album opens with "Keep Your Faith Darling," which sounds like it could be the Beach Boys until its chorus, where the chords change in an interval that Brian Wilson never would have used. Suddenly, it's a Raspberries' power-pop classic. While such comparisons don't vanish – you can hear Jackson Browne here, U2 there -- they cease to mean much in the face of music this unabashedly romantic and hopeful. "Keep Your Faith Darling" sets the tone for the album, which is all about holding on to the things you believe at the same time you stare into the abyss. As "Heaven and Earth" reminds us, it's just as important -- maybe more -- to have faith in earthly things as it is to have faith in God or heaven. Indeed, even as he's reassuring his wife to hang onto the good times they've shared, he makes it clear he's not ready to surrender to the afterlife just yet: "If I'm between heaven and earth/let me fall to where I'm from/let me fall to where I know I'm loved for sure." To paraphrase a line Springsteen's been using on his current tour, it's not about believing in life everlasting. It's about believing in life right now."For Want of a Nail" could have been just a cliched rumination on how great events can turn on trivial happenings. Francke turns it into something anthemic, with a gospel-tinged chorus that repeats the line "love's falling down on everybody" with a Pentecostal fervor so high you can feel it drenching your skin. It's a level of emotional intensity he reaches often on Swimming in Mercury, sonic proof that he follows the directions he tells us he gave his kids: "Live with all your guts and soul and heart, every day." With "The Branch Will Not Break" and "Fathers and Sons," he explores the fundamental gospel impulse belief that our experiences are inextricably tied to those around us. For good or ill, none of us are ever really on our own. As tough as those relationships can be, Francke seems to be saying that, in the end, they're what truly define us. Francke draws his characters with the same degree of sympathy and detail with which he recounts his own experiences: the Latvian man who turns his confusion with America into rage against hip-hop kids, the rock 'n' roll girl who's as beautiful as she is hopeless: "her heels are too high; her hair is too high; she is too high.""Letter From Ten Green" deals with death most directly, but it's the most hopeful song on the album, recounting the 4 a.m. news that a little girl in his hospital floor has died. He turns his fear, rage, and confusion into the energy to write a manifesto to his children, one that sums up all of Swimming in Mercury's themes. Along with the liner notes, it's also where Francke shows his sense of humor, calling on his nurse ("Florence Nightenmare") to give him the narcotic Dilaudid: "Thank God for Dilaudid. Put the guy that invented the stuff into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or something."By the time the album ends with Francke's triumphant promise to himself and those he loves that he'll walk out of the Valley of the Shadow, he's reached out and touched our sense of mortality, our incorrigible spirit, our soul's interconnectedness with all the other souls around us. In other words, he takes us to places that it's easy to forget we've all got to go, and in the process heightens our appreciation for where we are. (Blue Boundary) ~Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Allmusic.com

London Times, UK April 02, 2005 Soul Stewart Francke **** Motor City Serenade (Zane)

This singer-songwriter from Detroit stands out from the crowd because of his soul-hardened voice and collection of thoughtful, user-friendly songs. His debt to his home town is revealed in the title track, which pays tribute to a raft of Motor City artists (see feature, page 18), including Marvin Gaye and Nolan Strong. And just to reinforce the feeling, he is backed on that track by Motown’s original Funk Brothers, including Jack Ashford and Joe Hunter. Another Detroit legend, Mitch Ryder, also lends vocal support on the 13 numbers that vary from the deft late-night stylings of Deep Soul Kiss to the altogether more funky Prowlin’. An artist who has battled leukaemia, Francke has a cutting edge that has already made his name in his native Michigan. With luck, he could do the same over here.By John Clarke

Detroit Free Press Review: Francke's full of Motown love, funk May 29, 2005

The centerpiece of this committed collection of 13 tracks is the title song, a love letter to the hardworking, music-loving city that Stewart Francke so clearly adores. A virtual compendium of Detroit references -- think Stroh's, Mitch Ryder, "the techno holy trio," Stoney & Wojo, Soupy Sales -- "Motor City Serenade" is built on a bass line and string arrangements that practically scream Hitsville, appropriate considering that members of Motown's fabled backing band, the Funk Brothers, played on the track.Actually, the entire album is almost bursting with Motown and other '70s R&B and soul cues, particularly the string and horn charts and Francke's voice, which has taken on a slightly raspier and earthier tone as he's aged. All this might be a surprise to those who remember the longtime musician's earlier material, which was in a more traditional pop-folk vein. But the transition that began with 2001's "What We Talk Of ... When We Talk" and was roughly concurrent with a life-threatening bout with cancer feels complete -- and legitimate -- as Francke exhibits a wiser, sometimes weary, but ultimately heart-a-bursting persona. He's so obviously genuine about the material that he isn't afraid of engaging in a little foreplay with sentimentality, though he smartly stops short of going schmaltz all the way. -- Steve Byrne

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