1942 – Scott Frankfurt Studio Store

LYRICS

I CAN'T CONTROL
THIS LIFE I SEEK
TRAPPED IN THIS HOLE
SO TIRED AND WEAK

WHERE IS THE LIGHT?
WHY CAN'T I SEE
THAT MY CLEVER WORDS ARE
THE THING SLOWLY KILLING ME

THEY CAN'T CONTROL
THIS LIFE I SEEK
THEIR CLEVER WORDS ARE
THE THING SLOWLY KILLING THE

PEOPLE I SEE
TEARDROPS ON SCREENS
I CANNOT STOP IT
I FEAR THEIR DISEASE AND THE

RAGE AND THE HATE
THE BRIDGES ON FIRE
THE SPIT IN MY FACE AND THE
FLAGS RAISING HIGHER

I KNOW THERE IS ONE
TO FOLLOW THE RHYME
TO REOPEN WOUNDS
OF MEN'S ANCIENT SPITE

AND I HOPE WE'RE THE ONES
TO LIVE THROUGH THE NIGHT
TO GIVE ALL WE HAVE
'TIL THE TOURNIQUET IS TIED

LINER NOTES

From the album, Ten Million Miles, “1942” is the first release from an eclectic project I’ve been aiming to make for many years. A long story pretty long – my music career evolved into supportive roles after 2006 when my musical mate/muse/wife of 18 years, Jody Moreing, passed heavenward. The music stopped for a while. Songwriting gave way to arranging, performing and producing for others. Air returned to my lungs in 2008 when I married Sharon, and life became purposeful and wonderful again – but busy careers kept the author inside at bay.

By 2019 both of my parents had passed on. The family piano I took lessons on as a kid — an old Wurlitzer spinet made in 1942 — arrived at my studio after Jim Wilson (LA Piano Service) restored it and gave it new life — and new tricks — like soft hammers and a felt mechanism for muting the instrument (thanks in no small part to my mate, Eric Persing, who did it first). In the first 30 minutes alone with the piano, I hit “record,” and out came this piano improvisation in one piece. Fascinated with it I decided to give it a Lanois-style mix treatment, where the mixing board and effects are the instrument and turned the improv into swirls of reverbs and delays that mimic synthesizers – and I fell in love with it. It reminds me of a puzzle or maybe an old warmup exercise that Terry Trotter had me practice!

The unwritten rules for my album are that it be personal, purposeful and created with the people and the things that I love, steeped with the stories and experiences lived. I’ve speculated that my pen was silent for so long not only due to the circumstances already mentioned but also perhaps because “I didn’t really have anything to say” — until now. As I encounter the material, I am flooded with emotions — exactly as I hoped — either elated or saddened from tip to tail, but always with a sense of wonder and gratefulness to God to still be here doing what I love for almost five decades.

I reached out to Hannah Rose Lewis, whom I met via her mother, famed session cellist Paula Hochhalter. I was immediately intoxicated by Hannah’s sound and musical depth and felt she would be the perfect person to collaborate with not only on the melody but on the lyric as well. The result ties together recent instability, the traumas of 1942, my childhood piano reflections and the final key inspiration – the late Jeremy Lubbock’s “How Many Lives To Go” – sung by Chaka Khan, which may be the most potent recording of any type I’ve ever known.

Enter my dear friend, Grant Fonda, who scored haunting string lines, along with performances by Luanne Homzy (vln, vla) and Charlie Tyler (vc) that wonderfully helped us realize the mood and crescendo we heard in our heads. Mixing was a journey including a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos mix (an experience in itself), but the sound still packs a punch in the Binaural output. Please note there is a lot of dynamic range, and that is intentional. It makes me happy to hear the soft and the loud of it all, something that is harder and harder to find these days.

Finally, our video is homemade, and I’m so glad that Hannah was willing to perform this in such an intimate way — filmed point blank by her love, Brandon Soriano. I think Hannah’s eyes convey it all, and it makes me very fulfilled to have made this music with her and to share it with you.

- Scott Frankfurt

Watch the music video for "1942" HERE