Photo by Chris Pretti
Dan Franke
Dan Franke playing with the Mighty Deer Lick at the Cactus Club
Milwaukee music recently lost a longtime music supporter, enabler and recording artist Dan Franke. Franke, 60, died at his Madison home on Dec. 30.
Franke grew up in La Crosse and played in bands The Slow Pedestrians and Pigs in a Blanket. He booked a 1985 Replacements show so the Slow Peds could open. The LaCrosse band shared stages with the likes of Alex Chilton and the True Believers. (Former True Believer Jon Dee Graham remembered Dan on Facebook: facebook.com/photo?fbid=10221242038354477) The tenacious Slow Peds would be one of the first bands to perform at the inaugural South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
Milwaukee Years
By the early ‘90s Franke moved to Milwaukee where the Slow Peds would become The Mighty Deerlick, the band that continues to refuse to act its age. At the time of his passing Franke was finalizing plans for a long-awaited Deerlick album.
Offstage Franke wrote about music for The Newsletter, Traction and Spaceball Ricochet, walking the razor’s edge offering well-reasoned opinions while never losing the spark of a true fan. He also worked straight jobs at Clark Graphics, Atomic Records and was part of a cabal of local musicians who were employed at the law firm Foley & Lardner.
His musical resume included stops with Ben Wah Beat and collaborations with this writer in The Wrecking Yard and The Aimless Blades. His contributions and insights always raised the bar of whatever project we were in. He was a tireless supporter of local musicians and served as manager and van driver for local band The Blow Pops, making sure the group didn’t have to deal with headaches of travel and details on the road.
Austin and Madison
A favorite memory was a trip to SXSW, with Dan at the wheel, where we were pulled over outside Little Rock, Ark., for speeding. A few minutes later, with the trooper out of sight, Franke tore up the ticket and threw it out the window, laughing “I’ll never be here again!”
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So naturally, it was a foregone conclusion that he would eventually move to Austin. When he did, Dan naturally became part of a music scene comprised of like-minded folks as well as other Wisconsin transplants; he served as a cultural ambassador to visiting friends. Smartly, also landed a gig working for tech giant Apple.
In 2018 he moved to Madison, Wis., and made frequent commutes to Milwaukee for Brewers games and resumed playing with The Mighty Deerlick. Taking an early retirement, he concentrated on his strengths: A voracious reader, record collector and avid film buff, he also took time for a road trip around the country to reconnect with family and friends.
As it turns out, Dan was just getting started. Last year he set up a Bandcamp page to corral the vast collection of music he and his acquaintances barely released over the years. 3000 Hits (3000hits.bandcamp.com) is a sly reference to both music and baseball. In typical low-key fashion, the site had already made available nearly 30 demo tapes, cassette-only releases and other hard-to-find pieces of rock and roll history.
Always supportive, always encouraging, always positive, in April of 2020, with the pandemic taking hold, Dan offered this bit of compassion facebook.com/dan.franke.731/videos/10216434722487678.
