Stewart Francke - What Dont Kill Me Just Makes Me Strong: A Memoir

What Dont Kill Me Just Makes Me Strong

By Stewart Francke

Copyright 2013 by Stewart Francke

Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

Cover photo by Cybelle Codish

Internal photos are authors photos except where otherwise noted.

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Dedicated to Julia, Tess & Stewart III

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Craig Werner & Daniel Wolff for editing advice, early reading and confirmation of when this book was finished. Great thanks to Dave Marsh, Peter Wurdock, Kit Reece, Martha Humphreys, M. L. Liebler, Danny Alexander, Pete McGlinchey, Ann Delisi, Alexander Shashko, Matthew Orel and all strat membersSusan Martinez, Lou Cohan, Barbara Hall, Ben Eicher, Chris Buhalis, Chris Papaleonardos, CJ Janovy, Bill Glahn, Mike Felten, John Floyd.

Thanks to Rob Dewar; Dave Feeny; Jim Crawford; James Kelly; Constance Sarasin; Linda Walleman; Debby Flug; Harry Pearce; Randy Stephenson and RMS; B Reilly; Robert E. Martin; Mitch Albom; Mitch Ryder; Jordan Krause; Troy Deckebach; Drs. Karanes, Dansey, Baynes and Uberti and all the staff at Karmanos Cancer Center: Cindy, Val, Julia, Linda, Mary Ellen, Stephanie Mellon-Rippen.

Great thanks to Jay Hartman and K.D. Sullivan of Untreed Reads for hanging in there with me through the writing of this book.

What Dont Kill Me Just Makes Me Strong

Stewart Francke

Chapter One

Crossing the River of Fear: Facing your own reality honestly, without delusion or deflection. Where are you, who are you? What are your circumstances? Whos really on your side? What and who can you count on? Accepting the moment as it is, not as you wish it could or should be.

I wanted to swim in a hundred different lakes and rivers that summer. That was my odd ambition, the funky expression of my own physical freedomto swim in as many strange bodies of water in Michigan as possible that summeras the sun came up, as it set, as it was scorching in the mid-day. Didnt care. Pools didnt count. River, lake, pond, creek, stream, tributary, harbor, channel, quarry: these were my spots. It was spring of 1998, and I had them mapped out with directions, wanting to get to as many as possible during this long Midwestern summer.

Why did I want to swim in as many different places as possible? Why? is always a good questionwhy do anything? Sometimes you cant answer why; some things are just compulsive, instinctive things youve got to do without question. This swimming thing was easy: Because I loved it, and because it offered an everyday chance at a free, fast experience, back to nature. Never knew what youd see or find, or whom youd talk to. It felt like pure freedom where I answered to no one.

Swimming was a small reward that went with the free-yet-disciplined life of an artist; my love, avocation and vocation was working as a songwriter, producer of my own records, bandleader, and performing musician. Swimming offered a sensual rebirth every time I broke the surface. And I loved seeing how other people lived around water, around these little lakes and rivers, in their cottages, shacks and mansions. Id find hidden roads and old trails to drive down in the summer heat, the tips of languid willow branches brushing lazily against the windshield. The heat, the shoreline, the morning, the sound of everything and nothing at allit was all part of staying connected to a Bradbury childhood, holding the physical world in a sense of awe and wonder. And this was Michigan where I lived after all, and even around Detroit we do have a lot of lakes, a lot of open water, and many untouched places.

I was 39, fit, and spiritually restless. I was closing out that prescribed, much celebrated mythological American youth forever and moving toward a middle age life of responsibility and duty. But I hadnt completely lost the nameless, sometimes nave hope and promise of the young. I hope I never do. I was seeking (and still am) that sense of timeless awareness in my work and life, what Saul Bellow called artistic bliss.

Id been a musician and songwriter since I was 19, playing bass on several occasions with Chuck Berry, but didnt make my own first album until I was 35, when my daughter was born. By 1998, Id written and released three well-received CDs, but during that spring, after a lot of criticism and woodshedding, I felt I was just finding my voice as a singer and songwriter. One day the previous month had been an ideal of sorts for me. I wrote and recorded demos for two new songs in the morning, played an afternoon in-store performance at a Harmony House location (then the dominant record store chain in Detroit before the digital revolution closed them all), drove out and went swimming in a small lake at Stoney Creek rec area in the Metro park, and then went to cover a Roseanne Cash and Bruce Hornsby show for the Metro Times , the weekly paper I wrote an arts column for, at Meadowbrook Theater in the evening. Id recently interviewed Roseanne for the MT, and meeting her was fun and interesting. (She hit on me with my wife standing right next to me. What a gal. I didnt walk that line.) If I could continue to make music and journalism pay, thats how we wanted to live.

I loved my young family with boundless intensitymy wife, Julia, my daughter, Tess, 4, and son, Stewie, 2and Id worked hard to make music every day on my own terms. That was the definition of makin it to me, just being able to make music, play shows with musicians I admired, write, record and release CDs, work to grow the career, and pay the bills. Have a chance to create every day. In an artists life, little is certain. Which of course means everything is possible, and thats what I was lookin for.

I didnt know it that day, but I wasnt gonna put a toe in the water again that summer, or for a couple summers to come.

Earlier that winter Id found an old cassette of the Beach Boys Pet Sounds Id had lying around. Id been about as avid a Beatles fan as you can be since I was 13, but never really loved the Beach Boys. They were too straight, too white , devoid of the funk. Despite having written about music or performed music for a living my entire adult life, I didnt know much of Pet Sounds , Brian Wilsons masterpiece, his self-described teenage opus to God, released in 1966.

So many musical friends that I admired called it the Holy Grail, the Great Singular Achievement in pop music, but Id never connected with it. However, this time the music hooked me, and sank deep into my heart, soul and mind. The beautiful, sibling-woven harmonies and simple lyrics were a relief from the petty irritations of the music business, from its rejections, glamour and convoluted prog-rock. Like so many other songwriters and musicians, I was carried away by the vibrant baroque arrangements and the child-like spirituality of Pet Sounds . Im an obsessive, and I started reading everything I could get my hands on about Brian and Pet Sounds how it was conceived and recorded, who played on it. I made everyone at home a little miserable by playing nothing but the Beach Boys for several months at all hours of day and night. Beach Boys box set . Pet Sounds box set . Smile outtakesround and round it all went, 24/7. I couldnt get enough.