Frank Portman aka Dr
Frank writes books and pop songs that are packed full of humor, angst, and
awkwardness that everyone can relate to whether they care to admit it or not.
Frank has the unique ability to speak to the inner teenager within you. His
words reignite fires you thought long extinguished in parts of your soul and
bring you to a state of glorious adolescence no matter what age you’re feeling.
They say youth is wasted on the young. This phrase becomes null and void when
you enter the universe of Frank Portman!
Interview
by Jay Castro
You have written two full-length
young adult novels King Dork in 2006
and in 2009 Andromeda Klien. What or
whom inspired you to want to write and particularly young adult fiction?
With
me it’s not a case of having a burning desire to be a novelist and making it
happen. It was a suggestion that I
give it a try, as a way of possibly making a little extra money. I was broke,
so I gave it a try and the experiment was a success. That’s not to say I didn’t
take it seriously, because I sure did, just like my songwriting. Some might be
surprised to learn that I consider that “serious” but it’s true.
As
for why YA, this was what was suggested to me by the aforementioned agent, but
the reason that he suggested it, and I suppose the reason that it “worked” when
I did it, is that there’s a real affinity between the sensibility of my songs
and the tradition of teen fiction. Teen fiction influenced my songs, certainly.
It just seemed logical. I would even go so far as to say there’s an affinity
between teen fiction and Rock and Roll itself. Both are a window into a world
of formative experiences, of youthful confusion and error, of trying to figure
you out, kissing girls, and driving really fast.
You have a sequel to King Dork coming out later this year
called King Dork Approximately; can
you tell us a little bit about that?
It
is a literal sequel, picking up exactly where the previous one left off. I don’t want to spoiler-ize things too
much, but there are some big unexpected changes in Tom Henderson’s life in 10th
Grade Part II, along with some spectacularly misguided Sam Hellerman schemes.
Both of your main characters
in your novels have been teenagers. Obviously most authors that write in the
Young Adult genre are not teenagers. You seem to have no problem tapping into
that frame of mind both in your songs and in your books. Do you feel like that
ability is something valuable most people loose in their adulthood? That passion, angst, curiosity, and
bravado that seem to fizzle out of most people in their mid 30’s?
I
think that’s true in a way, but it’s also true that the fizzle you’re talking
about never really goes away, no matter how conventional and unfizzly your
subsequent life leads you to become. That’s why tales of teen angst are so
popular among the general public.
It’s a part of life that everyone in our society has experienced, and it
leaves deep marks on a person. As for writing about it though, it can be challenging
to do it authentically or maybe I should to do it in such a way as to create
the illusion of authenticity. Many people who try go astray. I like to think I
do it all right.
You are also the
singer/songwriter/guitar player extraordinaire to the one and only Bay Area sensations
The Mr. T. Experience! It’s been a
while since the last record, tell me, is the MTX starship ready for a re-launch
anytime soon or is it grounded for a while?
I do
plan to re-launch in the run-up to the new book’s publication in the Fall of
2014. I’ve got many ambitious
plans. We’ll see how many of them actually happen!
I have noticed that you bring
your books and your music together as much as possible. There were some editions of Andromeda Klien that had a CD of your
music packaged with it. Do you feel like people that “get” your music will
understand the characters in your novels a bit better and vice versa?
I do think the
two are complementary, to the point of being more or less part of the same
thing. But that’s just me. I believe, as Mark Twain reportedly said of Wagner,
that my music is quite a bit better than it sounds, but it is an acquired
taste, and I know there are readers who can’t “go there.” And I’ve talked to
punk rock fans that don’t really “get the books.” I do think however that there
are so many cross-referenced points between the two areas that people who are
interested in my songs will find something to interest them in the books, and
vice versa.
Speaking of your music, MTX was started
in 1985 when you and Jon Von more or less shared the song writing duties. Since
his departure in 1994 that’s left you as chief songwriter. Has it been
difficult to not have someone else to bounce ideas off of during the writing or
recording process?
No, we were
never a bouncing ideas off each other kind of band. When it comes to songs, I
work alone, always have. Recording is delimited by technical and budget
realities, and when your grandiose plans hit either of those brick walls, you
do need to do some bouncing to try to salvage what’s left of the project, and
traditionally in my world that role was played by producer Kevin Army.
As a kid, what band or musician first
inspired you to want to pick up an instrument and want to write music?
The
first specific music I can remember liking was Patience by Gilbert and
Sullivan, and I did learn to play some of those songs on the guitar later on,
sort of. I liked a lot of the Tin Pan Alley songs of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s, too. But
actually playing learning the guitar for me specifically involved laboriously
parsing the chord symbols from a Rolling Stones sheet music book I got from the
public library when I was eleven or so. I fancied myself a songwriter right
from the beginning, all my “songs” being terrible of course.
As an author, what other contemporary
authors or novels have inspired you lately?
I’m really not up
on things enough to answer. One unexpected thing about being a writer, and I’ve
heard this from other writers too so it’s not just me, is that reading for fun
pretty much ceases when you’re working on a novel. Which is all the time. That’s
another unexpected thing: the job never stops. You’re in your novel’s little
world 24/7 and you can only justify activities that could conceivably help get
you to the goal of actually finishing the damn thing. If you’re not doing that,
you’re “blocked” and though people say its “writer’s block” for a lot of us
it’s really more like “life block.” In that situation, you pick up a book and
spend an hour reading the same two sentences over and over with zero comprehension.
Your mind’s broken, which sucks.
There are lulls
in the action, though, once you have finished and haven’t started panicking
about the next one. I’m in one of those now and I really enjoyed Patrick
Hamilton’s Slaves of Solitude and the
Faulkner stories published as Knight’s Gambit, which I found in the street –
probably the best street read of my life.
What do you have in store for
us in the near or not so near future?
New book, and I
hope an album to go along with it, a best of MTX release, some shows, maybe
some new recording, then another book etc. after that. We’ll see.
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