Frankenreiter: Not a Jack Johnson clone
By ALAN SCULLEY
Get Out

Before recording his first solo album, Donovan Frankenreiter spent 10 years in the group Sunchild, which played on the Vans Warped Tour, opened for the likes of the Allman Brothers Band, Stevie Nicks and Lynyrd Skynyrd and even recorded a CD. But Frankenreiter doesn’t sound like a music veteran. In talking with the 32-year-old native of Downey, Calif., he sounds every bit the fledgling solo artist and makes it seem as if his musical past was a whole other life.

“I started a high school band (Sunchild), and I just played rhythm guitar in that band,” Frankenreiter says. “I never sang, I never really wrote any of the songs, never wrote the lyrics because there were two other singers in the band. I did that for 10 years.” Signed to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records label, Frankenreiter released his self-titled debut CD last spring, and after a few outings as an opening act, he has built enough of an audience that his current tour finds him headlining major clubs and theaters.

The Johnson connection is one that goes back to Frankenreiter’s teenage years. Like Johnson, Frankenreiter’s first love was surfing, and like Johnson, he was good at it. By age 13, Frankenreiter was showing enough talent as a surfer that he snagged a sponsorship from Billabong.

Frankenreiter met Johnson, whose father, Jeff Johnson, was one of the pioneers of big wave surfing, at age 14, when he went to Hawaii and rented a room from Johnson’s parents. In addition to surfing, Frankenreiter and Johnson quickly discovered they also shared a love for music.

“I knew about him and his family,” Frankenreiter says. “So me being able to stay with Jack was really cool for me because they lived right in front of (the Hawaiian) Pipeline, so it’s like the place you’d want to stay. So when I met Jack, I brought a guitar over there and he had a guitar. We started playing guitar together.” Frankenreiter turned professional at age 16, and through sponsorships has made a nice living ever since as a free surfer who is paid to travel the world searching out the best waves.

As for Johnson, his promising surfing career was curtailed when he was seriously injured in a wipeout at age 17. Instead of returning to the sport professionally, he learned filmmaking and went on to make several popular surfing films and videos. Johnson also began writing music, some of which he used in his films. Eventually, a connection with Ben Harper’s producer, J.P. Plunier, led to a record deal with Plunier’s label and a 2000 debut CD, “Brushfire Fairytales,” that became a million-selling hit.

Frankenreiter and Johnson stayed in touch throughout the years, occasionally crossing paths at locations where Johnson was filming. But music didn’t resurface as a common link until after Frankenreiter stepped away from Sunchild. “When I was about 28, 29, I met my wife and we would sit around the house and I would play her these songs that are on the record now, and she said, ‘Man, you’ve got to go out and do this,’ ” Frankenreiter says.

Frankenreiter honed his songs and his performing skills with gigs around the Los Angeles area. He finally decided to send recordings of his songs to Johnson, who by then had founded Brushfire Records.

Because he’s a fellow surfer signed to Johnson’s record label and because both artists favor a folky acoustic sound, Frankenreiter has been dismissed by some as following in Johnson’s successful footsteps.

Frankenreiter, though, is quick to respond to any notions that he’s a Jack Johnson clone. “If they came out and saw a live show or they met me, they would be like, ‘Wow, he’s completely different than Jack,’ ” Frankenreiter says.

Donovan Frankenreiter
Opening act: State Radio
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Marquee Theatre, 730 N. Mill Ave., Tempe
How much: $15
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