Seize The Moment

"I didn't have anything planned, and I didn't know the record was just gonna take seven days or any of that stuff,” singer-songwriter Donavon Frankenreiter – on the line from his home in Hawaii recovering from two months on the road before the tour cycle begins all over again here in Australia – admits of his latest album, Start Livin', cut just with his long-time bass player Matt Grundy.

“But the first day that we went in there, we recorded the song, Shine, and we had this kind of formula that, you know, me and Matt sat in the room, I played the acoustic and sang and he picked up an instrument and accompanied me on that and sang back-ups, and that was sort of what I told him, that at least I wanted to get out of recording… All these other records I've ever done, you built the track up and it's like, 'Okay now, go sing on this polished, you know, done track,' and I always just felt that was kinda difficult for me. I'm used to always playing guitar and singing – and I love recording and experimenting – but it was, why can't we all sit in a room and I sing and play and do this as a live take?”

So that's just what Frankenreiter did – no real plan, just the two of them in a room, press play and see what was captured. The result, Start Livin', couldn't have been fresher – Grundy heard the songs for the first time in the studio – and though the pair then layered up sounds on tracks as they felt they heard them, a banjo here, a mandolin there, it's a pretty raw, honest representation of Frankenreiter's music as most of us experience it, live and intimate. It was an approach that suited the lyrical content of the nine songs on this latest collection perfectly, their warmth reflecting the warm, comfortable place in which Frankenreiter now finds himself, happily married, two kids, fabulous home on the Hawaiian island of Kauai; a life equal parts family, music and surfing.

“I had a great time in the studio and the songs were fun to sing and play, and they felt fresh to me, too. I don't know if I did that on purpose or not, but I would write a song and I'd feel like it was complete and then I would just leave it alone,” he explains. “When I came around to sing it again and I came around to play it, it wasn't like I had all these preconceived notions about how I wanted it to sound. I wrote the song and I barely knew it enough to play it through, and [Matt] learned it and then we recorded it.

“For me, I've been married now for, what, 12 years. I've got two kids and certainly there was a sort of a theme [on the record]. The passing of [American surfing legend] Andy Irons [from an overdose] – I wrote a song about him called A.I. – and it was just the feelings I'd had since he passed, and that song, it was weird, I sat down and that song wrote itself in five minutes, and it was just, like, emotions that came out. And I just feel like, I turned 40 this year too – I can remember when I was 20 – so that song, Start Livin' was sort of like the basis of what the vibe of the record was, for me at least, just enjoyin' the moment; you know, livin' in the moment. And mostly you can, 'cause it just goes by so quick.”

Donavon Frankenreiter will be playing the following dates:

Friday 1 March - Bateau Bay Hotel, Bateau Bay NSW (6pm)
Friday 1 March - Queen's Wharf Brewery NSW (9.30pm)
Saturday 2 March - SOL Bar, Sunshine Coast QLD
Sunday 3 March - Story Bridge Hotel, Brisbane QLD (1pm)
Sunday 3 March - Jubilee Hotel, Brisbane QLD (4.30pm)
Sunday 3 March - Eaton's Hill Hotel, Brisbane QLD (8pm)
Friday 8 March - Melbas, Gold Coast QLD (6pm)
Friday 8 March - Coolangatta Hotel, Coolangatta QLD (9.30pm)
Saturday 9 March - Komune, Gold Coast QLD (4pm)
Saturday 9 March - Boardwalk Tavern, Gold Coast QLD (7.30pm)
Sunday 10 March - Brunswick Hotel, Byron Bay NSW (3pm)
Sunday 10 March - Beach Hotel, Byron Bay NSW (7.30pm)