Winter Harbor to welcome folk musician Bob Franke

WINTER HARBOR – Along with the applause he’ll hear when he performs here tonight, folk singer Bob Franke has earned the highest praise possible from his peers.

Franke’s songs have been recorded by folk legends Tom Paxton and Peter, Paul and Mary; contemporary folk musicians Sally Rogers, June Tabor, David Wilcox and John McCutcheon; and country stalwarts Kathy Mattea and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Of Franke, Paxton once said he was struck by his artistic integrity.

“I always think of Bob as if Emerson and Thoreau had picked up acoustic guitars and gotten into songwriting,” Paxton is quoted as saying on Franke’s Web site.

“God bless Tom Paxton,” Franke, 56, said Monday, speaking by phone from his home in Peabody, Mass. “I’ve been a fan of his since day one.”

The two met while teaching at a music camp for adults several years ago.

But it is performing his own tunes that keeps Franke busy, playing up to 80 shows a year. He will play a solo acoustic show 7:30 tonight at Hammond Hall in Winter Harbor, part of the Schoodic Arts Last Friday Coffeehouse series.

Franke has performed in Maine before, playing at the former Left Bank Cafe in Blue Hill and, last fall, in the Ellsworth Public Library.

“All my songwriting has been driven by performing,” he said.

Franke hails from Michigan, and remembers working at a coffeehouse in the late 1960s and early 1970s and having the chance to see Joni Mitchell in concert twice before she burst onto the scene with her first record. He also remembers seeing bluegrass patriarch Doc Watson and blues great Skip James, among others.

He cites as his influences “Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and the whole traditional school” of folk music. He also considers himself a fan of British folk singer Richard Thompson and Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn.

Franke’s most recent CD, “The Desert Questions,” released in 2001, features a range of confessional, spiritual and humorous songs, fleshed out by backing musicians who have performed with Carpenter and Thompson.

“It’s simultaneously austere and lush,” Franke said of the sound achieved on the album.

He also has released a Christmas concert album, which was recorded live in Providence, R.I., in 1999. A song from that collection, “Straw Against the Chill,” is included on Mattea’s new Christmas CD.

A versatile guitarist, Franke will mix it up tonight, he said, alternating between finger-picking, flat-picking and slide, and will blend his original songs – drawn from six albums – with a smattering of traditional tunes.

For information about the show, call 963-7670, or go to www.schoodicarts.org. For more information about Franke, see his Web site at www.bobfranke.com.