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The following program is brought to you by a generous grant from
the Illinois Arts Council
I was born in East Moline and raised in East Moline, went Hoffman School in
I had art
in grade school
Leon Eugene Wright was my art teacher
and in high school I had Leon
Eugene Wright, but my Dad also had
some electrical equipment and I liked to play with that too.
So I played with electricity and
always had art, always did
something with that. My Dad played violin
in the high school orchestra and played bass sax in the high school marching
band. The violin that he played in the high school orchestra was actually
was his fathers and my grandfather
who I never really met, played square dance music.
with the same violin and I have that violin.
I was influenced by my Father
and later he was into keyboard instruments
,organ, did some of the restoration work on the
Capitol Theater organ. That's where I got some of my early
influences. For me, I had three older brothers
It was quite a span between me and
my brother nearest me was 14 years
My 2nd oldest brother played an accordian
In those days accordians were quite the thing
no longer, but they were then. He would play that thing
somewhat all the time. I learned a bunch of old songs as a youngster
half learned them maybe..
that kind of got me going into music I think.
Music has been a part of my life
since I drew my breath because my father also played the accordian
he played in a family band
for many years from the time he was 9 years old
From the time I was born until I can remember
at least 3-4 evenings a week after
the chores were done, dinner was served, dishes out away and so on
my Father would get out the accordian and sit and play
various lengths of time, so it was kind of a
something that was in the background, periphery of the
activities of our home growing up, pretty much all of the time.
My grandfather painted the scenery in a lodge that they had
down close to where we live. He painted the scenery
of the mountains and castles of Europe.
I happened to see that when I was a little boy
He was real handy with his hands, I think
that's where I inherited the ability to do that because
I do a lot of stuff with my hands and art, but
electricity you couldn't see, but its
still intrigued me, but then
I always could see what I do with the artwork, so I enjoy both of them
It was a very cheap guitar I think. My Dad
got it in trade for doing some work for somebody
and gave it to me.
I tinkered with it, trying to get it to play better. That is just the way I was.
I just kind of started even
then doing things like that. A friend of a friend
brought a dulcimer back from the Appalachian area
I met this person at this
friends house and they were playing this dulcimer. I thought this is an
interesting instrument..where can I get one? Found out
there's no where in the Quad Cities you could get one and
I certainly didn't have the money to travel down
to the Appalachian Mountain area because I was a freshman
in high school, so I went to the Davenport
Public Library and got a book..looked at the pictures and
built my first dulcimer just looking at the pictures and figuring out how
it must have been to make it work and it was playable
and I got hooked. That was what hooked me
on building, and I continued from there to just
build and then when I
graduated from high school I went out to Pennsylvania to work at a guitar factory
I spent only three months there
but I learned an awful lot in those three months
working guitars in the guitar factory.
I had to leave there because I got this draft notice.
(laughs) join the Navy for 6 years.
That's how I got started. I did a painting of that while
I was on the farm, road my bicycle down, painted that school
I gave it to the teacher there, at a one room schoolhouse
and forgot out it, then I get this notice
this package, here she willed it back to me.
That was wonderful she did that. I never went to school there
but she always invited me to their doings, to their
whatever they had, because they didn't have art or manual training
in that little country room schoolhouse, so my folks paid tuition for me to keep
going to the school in town.
I played in the band. I sang in the mixed chorus. I sang in the
boys glee club, was involved very actively
in music pretty much throughout high school,
it was very much a part of my life, as much
as going through a smaller school I had the opportunity
to participate in music, athletics, drama, and all of the other things
that go along with your typical school activities
There's obviously an overlap between music, drama,
speech and those kinds of things so I had a mix of a little bit of everything
throughout my entire school career as well.
After graduating from high school, unfortunately
I kind of got away from the musical thing because work
jobs, paying tuition and so on took
precedence over those kinds of activities.
I went an extra year
in a grade
in high school art.
We lived on a farm, and I had a
little drawing table that is the same one that I've got here yet.
I had to get the
job, so I went to Deere and Co. and started
an electrical apprenticeship. I never did or never had
sought formal training in music
I guess I've always thought of it as a God given talent
giving me the ability to sing, so I frequently
lament the fact that had I worked as hard
with music as I did with athletics
when I younger, I would be a much better musician today than I am
I got very early training in harmony
through my brothers' accordian.
Invariably it became a singing session and they'd say
you sing the harmony and somehow I
as Mike I had non formal training, somehow I'd
picked up the 3rd part harmony and went
from there. That's how I became the baritone.
When I got drafted, started going through basic training
I was sketching. I got a call
from the company commander, if I could do art
work, I say why yes. He needed a sign for his desk.
I did it in Old English for him, the captain,
and he says can you do drawings?
All we had was a small book for
training, because it was in the Korean War conflict
and most of this stuff was gone. I got this
book out and found some books out and some pictures of the weapons
that we would be using and he gave me all of the paints and that
and said 'captain, that's my outfit in the infantry'.
..the 101st airborne division. He says, you're not
in the infantry, you're in the engineers. So then
brushes saved my life. I painted these big paintings
3 by 4 foot, they used them to
train the troops.
I was on a destroyer, the USS Mitcher out of Norfolk, VA, spent 6 years in the Navy working on missile
launchers. When I got out of the Navy I went to school to learn
motorcycle mechanics. I did that for a little while
I was welder at John Deere
I went through apprenticeship and became a machinist at the Rock Island Aresenal
After I got laid off from there
I went to school and learned computer aided design and did that for 12 years.
then retired from that.
I've done a lot of different things and each thing
you do kind of gives you some
insight and some skills that will help you in the next
thing. If I hadn't been a machinist, I probably
wouldn't have been able to do computer aided design as
well as I do because I was a machinist.
Then I went to school, art school, under my
GI Bill, at the American Academy of Art
I had a teacher there, VandenBrock,
and I've got many paintings in my studio here that I did
then. I did all art and all
always did TV repair while in art school
What he taught me I composed in my
paintings and I have never forgotten that in
texture and in getting depth
in my paintings and I tried to get a job in the art department
and artists were a dime a dozen.
I went back into the electrical trade. I'm a
Illinois licensed plumber, but
in the span of what a plumber does
I did varied things..worked out at a nuclear power plant in Cordova
I worked at a chemical plant in Clinton.
Houses as well, what average
plumbers do.
Music was not a part of anything actually, other than listening.
I did nothing but technical work in electronics..anything
electrical or electronic, I could fix.
I was certified in fiber optics, traffic signaling, firearms
fire alarms for schools and such, I repaired this
..didn't do wire pulling, just did the repairing
It was strenuous. In the Dispatch and the Argus
I used to repair all of their equipment and I'd come home a nervous wreck.
I'd sit down, do sketching or painting, and that would relax
me..see those brushed saved my life again. My background
is a collision repair technician for several
years. I taught at the local community college for many years.
prior to coming to Quad Cities I taught at the branch campus of
University of South Dakota where I also taught
auto collision repair. Automobile repair has pretty much been the
sum total of my background and lifestyle since
basically since I graduated from high school. I never touched a brush
for almost 30 years because I
had a family to raise and I built this
underground house, I built another house before I built this
one and I kept busy all of the time.
I built a little place to do drawings in my first house, then
in this one I built this studio in here to do it.
It wasn't until later that my kids were gone
and we were very well established, I guess you could say.
I looked for something to do and a barbershop chorus happened to be
the thing. I had a little plumbing shop in Rock Island
A gentleman who was selling me plumbing supplies happened to be
director of the barbershop chorus in Davenport.
Davenport Chord Busters...great group if you get a chance to see them..
he was on me about coming over and I was a guest several times
enjoyed it, but I don't know, for one reason
or another just didn't bite the bullet and go.
One evening we moved to Moline after I got a job with the city
of Moline and read in the paper they were having
auditions, more or less...their auditions are a little different..
if you have a pulse, you're in.. That's how I got there
That's kind of the way it worked with me anyway..and I called
and got started singing and the rest is kind of history
I was recruited by
a fellow church choir member..sang in the church choir
it was about the only venue I was aware about
at the time when I first moved to the Quad Cities. One of the
choir members invited me to come down. I went
and visited, attended a couple of the annual shows
that the chordbusters present
in the spring of the here, pretty much every year
It was one of those things where I went and visited a couple of times and
I was intent on following my son, who was in high school
at the time, very active in sports, athletics, that sort of thing
and the day after he graduated from high school it was kind of like I was kicked
out of the nest. My wife said he's done, he's graduated, it's time for you to go
I joined the chordbusters,
everything else from that point is history I guess.
I did play in a folk music band
probably 15 years ago
for a very short period of time. It was a group of friends who got together
and formed a band and we played a couple places, but it really
didn't go anywhere from there. It was only short period
of time. Mostly I've done it for my own enjoyment. I've
had a tendency when I would go to practice my guitar, I would
end up in the shop. I would go down there to play and somehow
I would always end up building. Of course that's
seems to be where my love it, so I
decided that's ok. I personally like local
woods. I work a lot with walnuts and cherry. The latest
mandolin I built is actually a
red elm, on the top, and
it is a maple neck. I like using local woods because
they're easy to obtain and
they're not as expensive as the exotic woods.
If you mess up, you can start over
it's not like you spent $1,000 on wood.
When I was working, I would take my art with me and I would
go to the rotary clubs and to like an optimists
club and I would go to lunch time, get a free meal
and do a little demonstration. Then my
company was very good that I worked for. They let me do things like this
They were really wonderful.
I would..
do a demonstration then people would buy a painting. It just kept getting
better and better, and I thought, boy I'm gonna be retiring
I'm gonna do it.
(MUSIC)
From that
four guys who were a quartet, two guys remained. Two guys didn't
continue, that was Roger..
Roger and I looked for a long time for a
bass and a baritone. We were going
to Galesburg, and you were driving, and I said you know
you'd be good in a quartet. What do I know
about a quartet. He said, are you in one. I said, we are now.
This is a mandola, which is a
mandolin with a little bit longer
string length and tuned a little bit lower.
There's a blues musician who plays primarily
blues mandolin that was here in the Quad Cities
last year. I talked to him and
about some of my electric mandolins and he said, well I
am sort of in the market for an electric mandola.
So I built this in hopes he might be interested and sent him pictures
of it. I haven't heard back from him, but
that's why I built this as a
hope he might and if he played it, it might
be the step to something bigger.
The shape is based on a
60's guitar company called Danelectro, which made what they called
the longhorn bass...you can see the longhorn idea
It's really so you can get way up the neck.
Like a cutaway sort of thing. This is red elm.
with pine in the middle and a maple
neck, rosewood finger board.
I just started with an idea and
started sketching it out and
figured out what I needed to do to make it.
The idea came to me of painting with mud
when I had a friend, we used to travel
and drive around and take pictures of old barns. I wanted to paint old barns
I said something about
National Geographic, I read where the Indians and that
didn't have a store to go buy paint. They would dig it out of the ground
I said that to her, she gave me the
Frank try it! So I started trying it
I amazed that there's my palate of the
different colors of mud. And I was amazed at the blacks coming
from Carbon Cliff and the reds come from some of the grounds here
and the greys..this is from Le Claire, IA.
When I started putting that on a
the paper, its amazing
what could be done with it.
I had retired and then
after the initial period of time you just kind of goof off for a while
when you retire, and then I started looking for a
part time job..something to just fill up my days and make a little extra
money maybe. I looked into doing
part time computer aided design, since that's what I just retired from
They didn't want you part time, they wanted full time
and / or they wanted you to be on contract in
Rockford or someplace, so I thought that's not going to work out
I checked with some of the music stores, thinking I could do some guitar
repair or even sell guitars, or whatever
part time, well they didn't have any openings either
One day my wife said, why don't
you just open your own show. I
The basic thing was, why not?
I got into an accident
somebody rammed into me and I've got some problems
I got viral encephalitis. 99%
, 98% fatal.
I got some articles in here
to read about, I lost a lot of this with my art ability
but I thought well, I couldn't remember
I still have problems remembering people and things
but I always carry a book I can write in and that
then I got to thinking I'm going to have to do this
that's why I have my charts of colors here. I used to know
all this about using the different colors to
meld together, I've got my charts here so I'll know
and don't have to worry about remembering this. Its strange how things
are coming back. I was on a research program for 10
-15 years at the University Hospitals in Iowa City
and they're learning from me, because of the brain damage, I have right and left
temporal...it's gone. That's what
and they thank me and they pay me to go...so it's great!
Geo is a
magazine similar to the National Geographic
In this
article is a picture about me in there.
There's a
picture of my brain.
This is one of the most fortunate things
that we have experience perhaps because we are
each of us is part of an extended family
for the others. We are a very close knit group
Our wives..
we're a very compatible group. We socialize together.
Whether it be singing, whether it be other activities, that sort of thing.
We've all become essentially
an extended family for each other. What I have learned
in composing paintings and that
and the different materials, that's where I try to
tell these young children and students of all ages
what can be done with it. There's no
end, no limit to what you can do with the art alone.
Just like music, music with different
countries and that
it is so close, but so different. You can communicate with it.
This is the same way, yes. The music that we
sing, the songs that we select sometimes are
as much as we'd like to sing some of the songs, we're not able
to simply because our voices are no longer what they used to be.
Well yours. Ok, (laughs) but,
We know
we understand as you get older and so
you're limited
you just get tired, you know. We do what we can
as much as we can. They are some
months that go by that..we've had
singing encounters, where we've been together as
many as 16 days in one month.
Whenever the opportunity presents itself
Basically if people ask, we sing.
And if people don't ask, then we go to the hospitals
or we go to a nursing home..we create it.
It's a great great hobby. One of my
newest favorite artists is a young lady
called Brandi Carlisle.
She opened for Sheryl Crow here at the iWireless
a few years back and I thought she was
fantastic. If I could build a guitar and
give her one of my guitars in hope she would play it on stage
I think that would be great. Follow your dreams, there's nothing to lose.
You can't go wrong.
It's just great to keep doing what you want to do.
Obviously its something I've liked to do for a very long time, so I'll just keep doing it
for as long as I can. Enjoy yourself and do the best that you can
and have fun with it. So many times art has saved my life.
That's why I am still here. When I
was in the hospitals in Iowa City
I had a cousin that brought me some pencils and some paper
to do some sketches, and
I had to stay there for so many weeks
and nothing to do, so I started sketching people.
They started buying them. So my cousin came by
about a month or so later and he couldn't believe it
'you'll make money anywhere frank'...
Even the doctors
when I was doing sketching of a lady who would not speak
I did a sketch of her, she was an
Amish. I did a
sketch of her cat and she said, "That's my
cat." She started talking to me. Those doctors said I was a better
therapy for her than anything that she could possibly....and that made me
feel good too. Just because of my art. I try to keep active.
That's the biggest lesson and I try to eat moderately.
I'm pretty close to a vegetarian, but I try to eat
moderately and keep active. And I
have no medications...taking none whatsoever
no arthritis. I'm not afraid to admit I'm 82, going to be 83
years old next week and I'm not afraid to admit it.
I've had a good life.