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Who is Joe Frank?

Joe introduced by Davia Nelson at Third Coast Audio Festival Panel 2003

Joe Frank began his career in 1976 at WBAI, in New York City. In his Saturday night show, “In the Dark,” he experimented with live freeform radio featuring his monologues and actor improvisations. It was during this period that Joe’s bizarre and original vision quickly drew increasingly larger audiences.

In 1978, Joe was hired to co-anchor Weekend All Things Considered on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” But a life in journalism soon lost its appeal, and Joe returned to producing radio shows for NPR Playhouse.

Over the course of the next three decades Joe produced over two hundred radio programs for KCRW, Santa Monica, and NPR.

Throughout his career, Joe has been honored with many major industry awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award, and an Emmy. Over the years Joe’s distinctive approach to making radio has inspired producers around the country to experiment with and stretch the medium beyond traditional boundaries.

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Reviews of Joe’s Work

"In an arena in which formats are sacrosanct, Joe Frank has charted new territory with his literate, frequently bizarre, wildly funny essays and parodies... He can be funny, poignant, serious and off the wall - sometimes within the framework of the same piece. Unique is one word to describe it. Brilliant is another."

Los Angeles Times

"Mixing bizarre monologues, multi-sequenced dramatic vignettes and mock-solemn critiques, [Joe Frank's work] is both sophisticated and surreal. A sizable cult has been growing around Frank...a rare radio talent."

The Village Voice

"A strange, different, wondrously offbeat, frequently hilarious, altogether brilliant piece of work..There's never been anything quite like it...Joe Frank is an audio Fellini."

The Los Angeles Times

"[Frank] travels in the emotional landscape of Bergman and Fellini; there's a tension and sense of mystery halfway between Kafka and Chandler... and a satiric edge worthy of Firesign Theatre and Woody Allen... No one else in radio is doing what Frank does."

The Washington Post

"Joe Frank's often bizarre scenarios for the mind are decidedly offbeat radio fare...part surreal satire, part bizarre meditation, part fever dream."

Los Angeles Daily News

"Frank wanders deeply into the unconscious, producing Dionysian stories with a fairy-tale intensity whose effect is often funny, disturbing and deeply memorable."

Salon Magazine

"I came upon Joe Frank's work by accident a number of years ago while driving to my home in the Napa Valley late at night. I couldn't believe the originality and sheer brilliance of what I was hearing. From that moment on I became a dedicated Joe Frank fan. Joe Frank's shows raise the most interesting and enduring questions in new and original ways and are consistently thought-provoking and very funny."

Francis Ford Coppola, filmmaker

"[Joe Frank] is one of the great, original radio performers. He's created a sound and style for himself - a complete aesthetic that's entirely his own. I first heard him when I was 19 and it changed everything for me. His work demonstrated the intensity and emotion that the medium is capable of; ingenious…fantastic."

Ira Glass, This American Life

"You don't have to close your eyes to appreciate Joe Frank's dense audio universe cascading out of your radio. It helps, though, because there are so many layers - of sound, philosophy, of reality-coursing through his dramas... Come to think of it, after awhile, you won't want to close your eyes because in Frank's short stories for the radio, the tension and pathos are as enveloping as they are intriguing... "

The Washington Post

"Joe Frank is an invaluable warrior who stands in defense of our fears, our vanities and our forever-eroding sense of ourselves. He transforms the everyday banality of the human comedy into an inspired weirdness that feeds on pathos and irony, and feels a lot like revelation. Sartre would have called it nausea; Frank makes it art."

Spin Magazine