We just checked out the man himself on tour and caught up with him after the show to see what's what.
The show was kick ass, the band sounded tight as hell, and he got the crowd going by playing a few tunes, giving cold beers to a few people in the crowd, and then did a sing along, with everyone sitting and hanging out on stage for the hawaiian-acoustic part of the set. He even gave away his ukulele to the winner of the ”it don't matter” singoff. Nice!!
Check out his show, and check out his new album, Glow, coming out in early October. Rumor has it the album cover will glow in the dark.
We caught up with Donavon after the show. On the decision to make Revisited, a Hawaiian-style reinterpetation of his debut album, he says “when I moved to Hawaii three and a half years ago, I fell in love with the sounds, the ukulele, lap steel and slack key guitar, you hear that stuff on the radio a lot in Hawaii. I wanted to do a record with those sounds, I thought it would be neat.” And that my friends, is how we got Revisited. We talked about influences, he said he is “definetly a guitar-hero type guy…Allman Brothers and Clapton….I grew up listening to a lot of vinyl in the 1970s. Nowadays, I listen to everything from Sade to the Black Keys to Black Sabbath, it's like a melting pot.”
Away from music, we chatted about the Drive Thru series (which has now been running for 9 or 10 years). He says they've done some crazy shit on that show, “handgliding, parachuting, all this shit that you would never do. They'll say OK so you're going to jump off a 3,000 foot bridge with a bungee strapped to your ankles” and he says “are you out of your fucking mind!”. Then the cameras roll and he just does it. He says laughing, “those shows are a lot of fun.”
Donavon now calls Kauai home with his wife and two sons, Hendrix and Ozzy. He says Hendrix is “alrady ripping on a board and Ozzy can already stand up” (Hendrix is 7 and Ozzy is 3yrs old). So what's his favorite surf spot these days? “wherever, and whenever I can paddle out on a board, if I'm not not in the water for a period of time, I get cranky.”
Donavon is on tour now and we're stoked for his new album Glow, so check it out.
PS If you can tell us who he is playing with onstage (special guest) in this photo to the left, the guy in the hat, maybe we can convince Donavon to give the winner free tickets to an upcoming show….
Also, check out the interview we did with Donavon back in 2008 here:
http://www.dailystoke.com/surfing-pop-culture/donavon_frankenreiter_interview/
isn’t that Mishka?