My artistic name is Wolf which is my middle name and I am sure – this is an unusual project.

Or have you heard about a sixty year old making his first professionally recorded CD? I am probably not the only one but I haven’t heard of similar cases yet. No, this is not about recording hits of the past that I and my wife liked to listen too when we were young. This is about daring to realize a dream. The trouble is, I have to write songs. I have to tell stories that move me. I have to get headlines, parts of a choruses and fractions of melodies out of my head and onto paper. 

And I love a bit of satire. The result is a mix of storytelling, critical view on society, satire and poetry. I see myself as a chansonnier.

After having written several songs and after having recorded them with a friend in his music room some years back I thought that that was it. Yes, the local radio played some songs a few times. But hey, it seems I am too old now to become famous and it all costs too much money anyway. So I decided to stop – and failed. 

The songs build up in my mind and over time pressure increases until I give in, sit down and start writing and composing again. While I do so and rehearse the sounds of other instruments join in and together with images they start creating the atmosphere for the song.  This inner force and the unbelievable support of my wife, Renee, have now pushed me into a real professional studio to bring these stories and songs into life. And now I could do with some help. I am grateful for any kind of help. 

This is my story:  

I was born 1956 in Germany, made a management career in the chemical industry, travelled to and lived in many countries and ended up in Far North Queensland end of 2004 to escape the corporate life and to start something new together with my lovely wife. We build up a small company which we operated successfully for 12 years. Then it was time to leave this business to others and finally follow our dreams. Making music is one of them.

I started playing guitar when I became a teenager, although my parents believed me to be non-musical because I tortured them with practising a recorder in earlier years. One of my older cousins in Hungary (my father’s family branch) inspired me with his guitar play. “House of the rising sun” was a song that I needed to learn desperately. So my parents gave me a 2nd chance and bought me a cheap 50 Deutschmark guitar. I took lessons, played in bands with school mates and soon performed in concert style events. I wrote my own lyrics from early days on and was influenced by mainly European sociocritical, poetic singer-songwriters and some US musos of that time.

Eventually my career path became more important. My parents wanted to make sure I have the basis to live a good life and therefore pushed me to take a reasonable road rather than an artistic one. For twenty years I wrote just a few originals now and then, covered some popular songs and played on parties. But that was it. It was only when living in Korea I met other expats and hobby musicians that I started writing songs again. This time it was about the life of a foreigner working and living in a very different culture. This was humorous, satirical stuff that made people laugh. The people loved our 3 man band and so we went into a studio in Seoul to record our music. Believe it or not – the CD still sells today to the expat community in Korea. 

Seoul was followed by 3 years in Tokyo and due to the size of this huge metropolitan and due to the job I had agree to do, music activities dropped almost to zero again. In 2004 we decided that I will neither extend my time in Japan nor move to China for my employer but that I would resign and we move to Australia instead. We had visited Australia before, fell in love with Tropical North Queensland and have been granted permanent residency. With Australia’s doors open for us we left Tokyo.

Since we started our business in Australia I returned to song writing. I have been managing a little theatre for some years, organized several musical events, did concert style performances and wrote plenty of own songs. In 2013 my semi-professional made CD "Road Closed" was launched. The songs can be found on Spotify under Frank Frikker, MySpace, Itunes and Soundcloud among other platforms. So I have done my homework and now, after having turned 60 in August this year, I finally took my material to a real professional studio in Cairns this month. The work with the producer and experienced musicians is very exciting, informative and full of fun.

 If this made you curios please watch the development by reading my blog here: http://geckomusicproductions.com.au/ 

Other links: 

https://myspace.com/frankkfrikker/music/album/road-closed-19229722

https://soundcloud.com/frank-frikker 

The total cost of such a production is far more the amount I am hoping to raise. It will be at least double as much. As I cannot expect others to help if I am not showing that I believe in this project myself and therefore invest as much I can too, my wife and I will fund about 50% ourselves. I am very gratefull for the professionalism of the producer and drummer, Nigel Pegrum. With his help costs are kept at a minimum.

The money raised therefore will mainly go to the musicians. Most musicians, despite their experience and qualification, can't make a living by doing gigs or working as studio musicians here in the Far North. I like to contribute to the goal to keep them in our region. They need to feed their kids too. Most of the musicians I work with are multi-instrumentalists which will save time and money.

The rest of the money will be used to cover that share of the cost for the recoding studio that I cannot cover myself. Should I be bale to raise more than $5000 I will spent the excess money to create a little video clip for one of the songs that many people find hilarious.

As I have already started the project I see two challenges:

1. I will fail to raise at least 50% of the project costs (=$5000)
2. It will be difficult to be recognized by the market

 This is how I will deal with them:

1. I will need to accept that I failed and borrow the money from several family members in overseas and repay them later.
2. I am aware that I represent a niche market and that opportunities up here in the Far North are very limited. As we have decided to move to Brisbane in 2017 for a while, better options will arise due to a much higher population and a larger variety of venues and tastes. Depending on sufficient funds I also intend to create a video clip for one of the songs which hopefully will help to increase awareness of the new, old kid in town.