About Frank Fox

Born in East London Frank’s maternal ancestry is rooted in County Cork in Southern Ireland. Like so many of his contemporaries he started to play the guitar before he reached his teens. Among the others picking away at their guitars in East London were such greats such as Eric Clapton and Joe Brown. In common with them Frank set out to develop the various blues styles immortalised by the likes of Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson. This was also the era when Bob Dylan was influencing Frank and other young musicians such as John Lennon through the power of his lyrics. Unlike Eric, Joe and Lennon, Frank was not to play regularly in a band but did the rounds of the many folk, blues and jazz clubs in and around London singing and playing guitar with musicians such as Noel Murphy, Billy Connolly, Jerry Lochran, Joan Baez and the Rev. Gary Davidson to name but a few.

Frank produced his first album ‘It’s for real’ in 2002. He wrote the words and music of all twelve songs featured. He also arranged the music and played guitars, keyboards and mouthorgan. Since then he has added a further 5 albums of his compositions the latest being ‘Old, New, Borrowed & Blue’. Additionally a compilation of songs from the first three albums, ‘Some You Win and Some You Lose’ was produced in 2004 and a further compilation of songs suitable for Line Dancing featuring 17 of his toe – tappers was released in January this year.

It is generally considered that his style crosses a number of Country music boundaries. Some have said that at times he has been able to bridge the gap between Nashville or Memphis and his Irish roots. There are influences of some of the greats including Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. On a non – musical note Frank and Kris have something in common: they both have PhDs!

However, the influences are not about plagiarising the works of Willie, Kris or any other Country performer. These giants as others of the Country genre wrote of their times and circumstances. Willie claimed to write of sad, lonely old cowboys, Kris wrote many songs around his wild younger life, of drunks in the bars and streets, of lonely girls in bars and people wandering searching for a dream. Frank too writes of the world as he sees it today: where money is God and he questions the destruction and waste of resources. In short these guys can tell the story in three or four minutes that will make us all think but they have an inert ability to achieve this in an entertaining way.

D.B.