DENICE FRANKE

CSPS debut | There was San Marcos. And Austin. And Houston, and bars and auditoriums and coffee shops the world over. There were collaborations with some of the greats of American song, including Nanci Griffith and Eric Taylor. There was time as a bartending folk singer, or a folk singing bartender. But for Denice Franke, it was Galveston that did the trick. Crossing the causeway, there was something that happened to the air, and it made the breathing seem easier, and it kept the guitar strings in tune.

“It’s a weird thing, this feeling that immediately came over me when I would come on to the island,” says Franke, whose new Gulf Coast Blue album is a series of portraits and postcards straight out of her new home of Galveston. “Whatever it was, it put me totally in the moment. I took time to walk the beach and play guitar and read and work on songs.”

Produced by Mark Hallman (Carole King, Eliza Gilkyson), Gulf Coast Blue is an invitation to terrains internal and external, beautiful and complex. There’s grit and danger here. There are secrets revealed and secrets kept close, and motorcycles and sad motels. And there’s a feeling that this is something distinct and different from Franke’s first two solo albums, each of which were recorded by Lone Star muse Eric Taylor. This isn’t a back turned to Franke’s past, but a page turned, with roots in folk and branches stretched toward blues and rock.

On Gulf Coast Blue, producer Hallman wraps Franke’s voice — an instrument that conjures silk and smoke and dusk — within textured settings. Spare piano and percussion adorn “Weather Is Fine,” while “Gibraltar” and “Cool Water” are fleshed out with organ, bass and amped-up guitars. Franke’s acoustic guitar is the album’s instrumental centerpiece, and she plays it with a musical eloquence uncommon in this era of bang ’n’ strummers. The guitar and voice work in service to songs populated by seekers and wonderers.
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Denice Franke is opening for John Gorka.