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Donavon Frankenreiter

Nov 05 2006 / Los Angeles, CA
At a surfing contest in San Clemente when Donovan Frankenreiter was 16 years old, he decided to go pro. He’d had enough of being an amateur surfer; for the next 16 years of his life, he traveled the world, going wave to wave in search of the ultimate rush.
 
Somewhere, along the way, he picked up an acoustic guitar. Now, Frankenreiter is, perhaps, known better for his strumming than his riding. He’s played all the places he used to surf: places like Australia, where his first, self-titled record was a chart-topping hit, and San Diego, where he was a featured performer at this year’s massive Street Scene festival. But his recording career was almost a complete chance occurrence: when he was surfing, he became close friends with Jack Johnson, who he lived with in Hawaii for two months. When Johnson became president of Brushfire records, one of his first signing was fledgling songwriter Frankenreiter.


“[Jack] threw me in that direction,” Frankenreiter says, on the phone from his tour bus. “Wow, make a record with a friend; it’s no pressure, not do-or-die: we’ll have some fun!” His self-titled debut featured Johnson and G-Love, and was a slacktastic, low key post-surf chillout album, full of acoustic guitars and simple melodies.      


The new Frankenreiter, though, has a bit more to offer: “Move By Yourself,” which came out this year, has a reggae-and-70’s-soul vibe that moves Frankenreiter far away from his roots-rap peers. But the man himself hasn’t changed; he still name-checks Bob Marley when he’s talking about great adventure songs, and waxes philosophical in between waxing his board. “The thing that’s most vivid about getting my first board,” he says, “was the bar of wax. That smell of a brand new board – the smell of a bar of wax – that stayed with me forever.”

 
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Donavon Frankenreiter

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These days, when he’s not on the road, Frankenreiter lives in Laguna Beach, CA, where he says he’s got some great, hidden surf spots. But he still tries to catch waves when he’s on the road – thanks, mainly, to his cadre of old friends. “I’ve got friends all around the world, so I’ll usually just borrow a board,” he says. “I don’t always know if I’m going to be able to surf. It’s better to just borrow boards on the road.”      


Frankenreiter’s songs may not have a sun-soaked innocence (“I don’t have any lyrics like ‘lets go surfing now/everybody’s learning how,” he laughs) but he equates surfing and music together. “When I surf,” he says, “It puts my mind, body and soul in a great place to perform music.”

           
For Frankenreiter, though, he knows he’s got a dream job – and thinks that anyone who wants either to surf or to rock should learn how to enjoy it, first. “No matter what anyone does in life,” he says, “as long as they’re having fun, if they have a burning passion inside, they’re just going to get better and better.”

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-Jeff Miller