Listen , Download and Purchase Brian Franke's Music
Below you can listen to Brian's songs or download many of his songs for free. He adds new songs as often as he can for his fans. An interview about Brian's songs, songwriting, and music goals is included at the bottom of the page.
Additionally, Brian provides a list of cover songs he plays.
Why not print out the list and bring it along with you when you see Brian play live
at your favorite venue? -- that way you can make a personal request.
Purchase Brian's Album "Six Blocks Down": Listen to Brian's Music
FREE Music to Download
Cover Songs
A cover version, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song. Check out Brian's list of cover songs.
Interview with Brian on his songs, songwriting, and music goals
Q: What's your songwriting process?
"I wouldn't quite call it a process--every song has a different path and way of evolving into the chords, notes, and words it becomes. Usually though, I end up writing most of my songs on acoustic guitar even if the song is not meant for acoustic guitar in the end. 99% of the time I write the music first and then wait for the lyrics to come to me. My philosophy in writing the music is to try and stay away from playing too many of your standard chords. I'm a big fan of different chord voicings or chords I haven't heard before or chord progressions that sound unique. The other thing I would say about writing music is I want to challenge the listener. Over time I have learned to keep songs challenging but easy to listen to.
Lyrics are a whole other thing. The best lyrics I've written are the one's that came out naturally and fairly quickly and just summed things up exactly the way I wanted. In general I do my best not to force things out, but unfortunately that sometimes means a song will take many weeks or months to get lyrics and that can be frustrating. But it's worth the wait sometimes. Quite a bit of my songs are about me or a situation I am in or witnessed. So a lot are about relationships or the future or a story about something that impacted me significantly. In the last few years I have started writing about issues--like poverty, politics--that I am passionate about and try to voice my thoughts on."
Q: You write a variety of songs--some very upbeat songs but also softer, easy listening music, even the genres vary a bit--why is that?
"Part of it comes from my influences I think and the other part just my emotions. My roots, what really got me into guitar, was metal and grunge, but after trying that I realized I couldn't sing those styles and didn't think my song versions of those genres were any good. But I didn't just decide, 'oh, I'll just start playing this style then.' It just sorta ended up this way. But I will say although I may write a song that has a rock/pop feel to it, there can be some edgeiness in it. My producer I think sums up my variety nicely. He says, 'There's angry rock out Brian Franke and sensative, beautiful Brian Franke songs.' And that's purely my emotions. On the surface I'm a laid back, quiet person, but I use my songs to vent my anger, frustration, sadness, love, elation--all those big emotions.
As for different styles I don't think I'm all over the map, but people have a hard time describing my music or comparing it to another artist. I actually take that as a compliment. As a musician I don't know if I want to be pinned to one type of genre or be constantly compared to someone else. Sometimes I even go through phases--like I'll write a bunch of folk type of songs in one bunch then suddenly move to indie rock. Whatever comes out comes out and I do my best to develop it into what it has the potential to be. I never think, 'well this song's not in my genre so I just won't write it'."
Q: In 2009 you won a songwriting award for your song "Six Blocks Down". What did that mean to you and what's the story about how that song came about?
"Yeah, that's an interesting question for me to answer. On the one hand, I'm not someone that goes out and strives to win awards left and right, show them off, and put them up on my mantle where people can bow down to me. But I decided to enter my songs in a contest during 2008 anyway at least to get some feedback. So on the other hand, winning an award gave me some credibility to myself and showed me that I was a respected musician by my peers. It was an honor for sure and I was proud of it, but again it's not where I focus things on.
So the song "Six Blocks Down" I wrote back in the fall of 2006 as I was getting back into performing again. The title and chorus came to me as I was walking home from work one day and I just had this tune in my head and it just came out as "six blocks down and I'm waiting on you" when I sang it to myself. I let it play around in my head for a while, then found the chords that went with it. The music for the rest of the song sort of wrote itself after that.
The song itself is about frustrations I was having with a relationship and being unsure of where we were ending up or even going. The title of the song refers to this time when we were supposed to meet up on the subway in New York City and ended up missing each other. When we reconnected on our phones, we were blocks away from each other. So even though we wanted to end up in the same place, it didn't end up happening and I ended up waiting where I was for a while and she the same."
Q: Describe a Brian Franke live performance.
"Well, it's just me and my guitar. Oh and a microphone. Then I play music. That's it. I'm kidding, there's more to it than that. Seriously, I've played everything from crowds where I could be more intimate to crazy energetic crowds that kept asking for me to keep going. Having some sort of connection with the audience makes my day, and I really enjoy talking with people during breaks about what I do. Depending on the venue and audience I usually play a mix of my music and covers. I don't know what I look like on stage. Sometimes I'll jump around or dance to whatever I'm singing. Also depending on the crowd I'll try talking a bit although some nights I just want to go seamlessly from one song to the next without talking too much.
Really you should just come out to a performance to find out what it's like."
Q: So where are you hoping to go with your music?
"I hope people like my music and can connect to it--otherwise I'm just wasting my time! But after all these years I'm coming to terms that music is my thing, my passion, and I'd like to do it full time. I'm not looking to become a super star and very famous. If I can make a living off of music and tour around the country or world every once in a while that's great. Of course, I have a long way to go before I do that. I have a lot of ideas--like possibly starting a band or moving to a music centric city--but I'd love to get things going here in the DC, mid-Atlantic area and build off of it. I believe I can do it, but all I can do is get people to hear my music and the more who like it, the better shot I have at making myself a career musician a reality."
