Navigation

Performers

Live Performances

Music is an important and integral part of a Joe Frank program. Joe worked tirelessly drafting a show and when half-finished, he’d play selected music in the background as he revised his script. He had a keen ear for what type of bass, drumlines, and looping melodies would aid his voice and serve the story.

When performing live, Joe hired many of the same musicians he’d known for decades. Beginning with the Wadsworth shows in 1998 and the band “Brazzaville,” Joe’s relationship with members of this group—both personal and professional—grew and deepened. During rehearsals, Joe had a unique ability to describe what he wanted with specificity, but mostly without words. It was both challenging and exhilarating for all involved.

Joe and the musicians, and later singers and dancers, shared the highest standard and respect for what could manifest onstage with a Joe Frank show.

Find out more about these performers. We also have music CDs from a few of these musicians for sale. All proceeds go to the musician.

Brazzaville & David Arthur Brown
Carolina Cerisola
Danny Frankel
David Ralicke
Ed Valfre
James Harrah
Judith Owen
Julie Christensen
Kenny Lyon
Lorca Hart
Tara Nicole Hughes

Reviews of Joe’s Work

"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

"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

"Frank [is] the apostle of radio noire... His free-form radio dramas... are sometimes moving, often funny, but always manage to confound the listeners' expectations. A maestro of verité, Frank exploits the power of radio..."

Rolling Stone

"Joe Frank is an original whose work has helped form some of the most eccentric, dark and interesting parts of public radio's personality. "

Terry Gross, Fresh Air

"To me, he's what radio is really for... his show makes me think he's getting to some great truth... so completely captivating and just unlike anything else."

David Sedaris, writer

"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

"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

"[Joe Frank is] the most imaginative, literate monologist in radio today... If a microphone could capture the nether recesses of the modern psyche, it would sound like Frank's absurd comical excursions: Radio Vertigo."

The Village Voice

"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 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