Looking forward to playing Cleveland this Thursday, opening for Bob Seger & the SBB at Quicken Loans Arena. Give a shout if you're going.

For the out of towners: http://ping.fm/IPL7Z

Opening The Bob Seger Tour

When you play a show, particularly a big show like last night with Bob Seger, everything moves fast. It’s a heightened reality with a thousand mini-events removed from ordinary life—all part of why I love it and why my band members love it. What stays with you is the feeling the music gives you, how well you connected with the faces in the crowd, the people you see and make your music with, and maybe a couple other flashes of things.

But last night in Toledo, my band & I will surely recall one singular thing when we think about this gig months from now. In the midst of our soundcheck, we all looked out in the sea of empty seats to find Bob Seger sitting alone, listening to us. Folks, this doesn’t happen. I’ve opened for dozens of the big time acts that come through town, and you rarely see the headliner, let alone have him sit and check you out. This kind of interest and respect from a superstar is unheard of, and it quickened our purpose, got our mojo workin’.

I carry a large band too, and we arrived at the Huntington Center in downtown Toledo just before Bob’s soundcheck. His production staff and sound crew immediately found me and my manager and we went over details with a quick efficiency. Again, this is not the norm—generally the opening act has to chase somebody—anybody--down and sneak in a line check before doors open. As we were soundchecking, up one of aisles walked Seger’s longtime manager Punch Andrews, who shouted up to the stage with his usual pugnacious encouragement, “Mr Francke…kick some ass!” This was, of course, our singular mission.

I’ve been around rock’n’roll and show biz organizations long enough now to know that the vibe of the crew, management, tech people—everyone associated with the star—takes their attitude cue from the demeanor of the artist. Exuding the same warmth and empathy found in his songs, Seger’s team treated us not as some pain-in-the-butt ancillary act, but rather as an integral part of the evening’s entertainment.

To his fans, Bob Seger is the last of the great lion-hearted rockers, a true working class hero who has lent big time rock and roll the common qualities of dignity and empathy. So to join Bob on a date in the Midwest, playing to folks in Michigan and Ohio, is to some extent a celebration of who we are around here and what we believe in. Hearing his amazing book of songs both in soundcheck and in his show carries a connection with the way we reacted to signs of life in our youth: how we came to love a Seger song, where we were and who we were with, and how we came to feel that his songs were our own—a part of our own life. It's not the flavor of the month; it=s not Rhianna or Lady Gaga. His songs are more like oxygen.

The first rock concert I ever went to was a Seger show at the Saginaw Civic Center. I was 15. Seger had recently released Live Bullet, just months after performing at my sister's High School Senior party in Bridgeport, Michigan. Bob had been a road dog for many years already at that point and had worked hard and waited longer than most to make it.

Last night, during “Night Moves,” Bob’s finest moment, his enduring appeal became clear to me--why we continue to care so deeply. If you grew up in the time and place that I did, "Night Moves" contained nearly everything you cared about or did: The loss of innocence, in hopes of a greater awakening; backseat sex, because there truly was no particular place to go; the movement of weather, especially in summer; and the identification of an idealism we were just beginning to harness. In short, "Night Moves" is about a love of the world.

The reality of the demands in life has never been more concrete. If you grow older (which is the most pleasant condition when faced with its alternative), you meet them, embrace them, struggle with them, avoid them, or dismiss them. What's in question, and what Bob Seger is singing about, is the character you exhibit when meeting these demands. What kind of courage it takes, what kind of grace, how much vision is required. The point of "Night Moves" is this: You can't cheat life. You pay for everything. As I looked out at the audience while performing last night I thought, “Where were we going, riding around in those cars all night on empty two lane roads when we were younger?” Well, here we all are.

So thanks for the great gig Bob. Thanks for lending us your genial, accommodating crew, the artistic legitimacy of your stage, and mostly, your faithful audience and their knowing adoration. The folks in your audience know what it means to fight hard, win and lose; they know how rough it’s been around here lately; but they also know that layin’ down that hard earned cash for a ticket to a Seger show is a sure thing.

We were on the receiving end of the emotional largesse from this audience as well. It’s rare for an opening act to play to a full house, and rarer still for that crowd to listen and respond, but that’s what Bob’s audience gave us. Thanks Bob, for the great gig.

Stewart Francke To Open First Night of 2011 Bob Seger Tour, March 26 at Toledo’s Huntington Center.

Finishing mixes for new cd--just wrapped one with Thornetta singing--made it sound like an old Bond track. She's amazin, a natural resource.

Signed a deal yesterday with Untreed Reads, e-book publisher, to write memoir about my experience with leukemia & bone marrow transplant.

Radiohead's "Creep"

This is another piece from Between The Ground & God, a collection of writings published in book form in 2005 by Ridgeway Press. This piece first appeared in the Metro Times in 1994.

Radiohead's "Creep" is an amazing record; it may be post-punk rock's most fully realized link with the varied elements of early rock and roll. Even though Radiohead writer/singer Thom Yorke may have been attempting to distance himself from the clutches of classic rock traditions, "Creep" cements a deal between grunge and pre-Beatles rock.

And like a lot of the most interesting rock songs, "Creep" is something of a one-off, an isolated event. Originally hidden on a 1993 album called Pablo Honey, the song is now a re-released hit on alternative radio. It came well before Kid A & OK Computer, Radiohead's twin masterpieces.

Slurring out a story of immense alienation, Yorke's singing sounds like the sluggish dissolve of a fading siren. Where blues singers use broken cadence and the dropped word to match the feel of the rhythm section, Yorke uses the punk's swollen alliteration to sound even more like the ugly outsider. He's not the classic rock anti-hero who will one day be redeemed by a large audience for the purity of his stance; the guy in "Creep" is too consumed by self-loathing and misanthropy to even strike a pose.

"I wish I was special, you're so fucking special

But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo

What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."

The singer is trapped first by his alienation, then by his desire, and finally by his lack of humanity. Yorke whispers the final chorus without any guts or vision. He (the singer's character, which may actually be the singer himself) is a creep, not to be admired or dismissed. What "Creep" is really about is loving the refuge that rock and roll provides, loving all of its stylistic and emotional possibilities. The creep does belong, finally, in a song with virulent guitars and the general dis-ease of a Dostoyevsky story.

Yorke also tosses jabs at popular culture and the alluring promise of the ad world--"I want a perfect body"--before sullenly addressing the object of his desire and the distance of his alienation: "You're just like an angel, you float like a feather in a beautiful world."

But it's not the world Yorke dwells in. His is a world of masks, of the spiritually dead. The social contradictions in the song are nearly hopeless--what's left after the failure of innocence? We guess that Yorke is crushed by the plasticized consumer culture while the girl, via her unrequested beauty, is naturally included.

About mid-song Yorke breaks into a chilling falsetto, as if there was nowhere left for his physical expression to go. Howled over gristle and bone guitars, this middle eight ties together rock's great antiquarian highlights--Elvis Presley's "Blue Moon," Jimmy Logsdon's really weird "Midnight Blues," Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," even Marc Bolin's elegant explorations of exclusion--with the anti-romantic punk of the Sex Pistols and Nirvana. "Creep" progresses on as well as it recalls earlier music; in this sense it has an achieved beauty that's as rare as it is difficult to sustain.