The Interesting Narrative
of the Promising Career
of
Bob Frank
and
John Murry,
Two Southern Musicians;
as Collected and Compiled
from a Variety of Documents and Tales.
Memphis, Tennessee native Bob Frank’s story is legend: as a young man he worked as a songwriter for Tree Publishing in Nashville and shared the stage with Tim Buckley and Townes Van Zandt. He signed to Vanguard Records to release one brilliant album in 1972, cussed label president Maynard Solomon at his record release show in New York City, and was promptly dropped from Vanguard’s roster. He reveled in his own obscurity for nearly 35 years, all the while writing songs with little interest in public opinion. In 2005, John Murry, an eccentric 26 year old songwriter from Tupelo, Mississippi and descendant of William Faulkner who had recently moved to California from the South, tracked down Bob Frank on the recommendation of a mutual friend. They quickly became friends and, seemingly just as quickly, began writing together.
The result was World Without End, an air-dried fever-dream of a record – not since Faulkner’s ruminations has the past seemed so dangerously relevant. The ten original ballads tell tales of murder long forgotten or distorted over time and endow the subject of Death with a uniqueness that is both vibrant and haunting, like Poe’s bug-infested sepulchers. Sonically the record is both dense and sparse, referencing America's oldest music forms in one moment and destroying them the next. The production is equally interesting, from the overdriven organ and gypsy violin-fueled waltz about a young girl's murder to the angry tympani, piano, slide guitar, bowed saw arrangement about a Mormon prophet's killing. Greeted internationally with rave-reviews but relegated to cult status, World Without End may have been a bit too close to the truth for indie audiences; it may have proven too honest to be palatable to most. Without irony, World Without End breathes the air of unsure times. And therein lies the record’s timelessness, ladies and gentlemen: America is and has always been unsure of who and what it is and what it will become. Each of us has the potential to commit murder, justified or unjustified. There are guns in all our trunks. But if you listen to World Without End, you might rethink going on that rampage (if you listen to Brinkley, Ark. And Other Assorted Love Songs, on the other hand, you might consider an extra trip to Wal-Mart to stack up on ammo – but more of this later, all in due time and with the proper dramaturgy of chronology).
Before Bob and John went on tour in 2007, they recorded The Gunplay EP, which features live radio recordings, new tracks, and re-imaginings of traditional ballads, the centerpiece of which was the original “Gary Gilmore, 1977,” a somber, greasy piece of rock’n’soul that would have done Ronnie Van Zant proud.
The duo’s second album was also recorded before their European tour. It is a collection of love songs which explores similar themes as World Without End, but retains a markedly different sound: Bob and John, Nate Cavalieri (The Sights, The Dirtbombs), Brady Potts (The Super Eights), Tim Mooney (American Music Club, The Sleepers, The Toiling Midgets), Sean Coleman (The Sunshine Club, Kelley Stoltz), and Quinn Miller (Aim Low Kid) holed up at Closer Studios in San Francisco for five days and got all the basic tracks down. Mark Cappelle and Tom Griesser were brought in to play horns, and Stephanie Finch added some more vocals. There were a lot of additional guitar and vocal overdubs, but unlike World Without End, all the basic tracks were essentially done live after a good bit of experimentation with arrangements. Like with their first album, the final mastering was done by Matt Pence (Centro-Matic, South San Gabriel). The result was Brinkley, Ark. And Other Assorted Love Songs, an album filled with Muscle Shoals rhythms, Memphis horns, Mississippi gospel organ, and Southern guitars.
Just as the characters of World Without End long for love, recognition, justice, or money, the characters of Brinkley, Ark. And Other Assorted Love Songs are tormented by their longing and loss. Sometimes, but just sometimes, they are rewarded with requited love.
No matter whether the experience ends in pain or bliss, True Love always involves suffering. Love and Death are equally timeless, and individuals are eternally driven towards both. That the stories on the record are all true is hard to miss: John’s opiate-drenched voice is both angry and vulnerable, while Bob sounds passionate as hell but more defeated than usual, especially on the first track, the setting of which owes the album its title: Brinkley, Arkansas is a little town west of Memphis on Interstate 40. The song takes place in 1968. Today, Brinkley has the world's largest bridal gown wholesale store and some of the best duck hunting in the world. The line between affection and violence can rarely be drawn with a thick brush.
In 2010, Bob and John re-donned their graveyard boots to record a song about police brutality and the average contemporary American patriot’s complicity in war crimes abroad and at home. The song, “The Murder of Dylan Hartsfeld” is based on a true story and came into being upon the personal request of the murdered Iraq vet’s father.
Currently, Bob and John are both working on their solo albums as well as another joint venture, among various side projects, and, perhaps, a tour or two.
As their tours and interviews have shown, Bob Frank and John Murry challenge the status quo wherever they go – be it San Francisco, CA, Stockholm, Sweden, Oxford, MS, Glasgow, Scotland, Cardiff, Wales, or Köln, Germany. With gigs frequently punctuated with arguments. and sometimes punches, their adventures abroad indicate that these two gentlemen are wildly intelligent, funny, annoying, sweet, confrontational, and at times belligerent – but never uninspired and never uninteresting.
(compiled by Georg Bauer, Graz, Austria, January 2010)
