Tesla has been a steady force on the rock scene for nearly 40 years; guitarist Frank Hannon has been there for all of them. He recently released a unique, emotional new solo record that not only highlights his tremendous skills as a guitarist, but also pays homage to his late father-in-law, iconic Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts. Frank recently took some time during Tesla’s Vegas run to talk about Reflections.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Frank Hannon Interview –
On the inspirations behind Reflections – Well the year 2024 last year, on a personal level was a very, very tough year. We had moved from our home and lived outta state in Florida for a couple years. We had a lot of, I had a few friends pass away and then my wife’s dad passed away and, then we were dealt with some hurricanes, three in a row. One of them was on the news coming straight for us. It was gonna flood out our whole property and we had some animals there. So, we had a trailer, and it was kinda like Noah’s Ark, man. We put all the animals, four dogs, two cats, three horses. one of them was sick. We got in that trailer and we drove for a month. It took us to get from Florida to California. It was a tough experience. So, by the time we got home it was November, and my wife and I were just like, “Wow. We made it home”, and I just started to relax. I just started playing my guitar and coming up with some songs that were, different than anything I had written or recorded before, and they were very real from my heart.
I discovered this very cool microphone. It’s called Audigo. It’s this little stereo microphone and it attaches Wi-Fi to your cell phone. I was using this to record these ideas that I had that were coming to me from that experience I was just sharing with you, and it sounded really good. I was playing it for some of my friends and they were like, “Wow, Frank, wow, man, this guitar playing is different”. I’m really feeling that people were feeling it. What I was feeling. I just kept at it. Next thing you know, I had 12 songs. The great thing about this thing here, this Audigo microphone, is you can take it anywhere. So, I started recording out in my backyard. I was recording in my bedroom. I took it on a cruise ship and I recorded, just micing this little battery guitar amp here and putting this in front of it and playing my guitar. I could mix it and record it and overdub in my cell phone, and I would immediately text it to people, friends that I trusted, my cousin Mike, who plays guitar, my wife, a couple friends I have in Nashville, and they were all going, “Wow, that sounds really good. We can’t believe you’re recording that on your cell phone”. I’m like, “Yeah, man. It’s just really coming out very naturally”. And so that’s how the record was made.
On how it felt to record completely on his own – It was definitely refreshing in a sense of the reactions that I was getting from my friends, that I trusted their opinion than when they would hear it. It was encouraging. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t experience any fear about it because I wasn’t planning on releasing it to be honest. I was having fun with this looper pedal here. I wanna recommend these things to any musicians or guitar players. This Audigo thing I’ve been talking about for convenience, and also a looper pedal is a great tool for a guitar player. If you have an idea, you can just record it instantly on the looper pedal and then play along to it. With this Audigo thing, you can overdub. On my album, I overdub some bass. I would color it up to make it sound good. I’ve done a lot of solo albums over the years, but with this one it’s different. I’m not trying to sing. I’m not trying to write words, I’m not trying to do anything really that, and that was the beauty of it. I wasn’t really even trying, I was just coming up with, with an idea.
(picks up his guitar to play)
So, I would come up with these ideas with some chord changes, you know, using minor, major. I had come up with an idea that I was feeling, and I would play it with the looper and then just, instead of trying to sing with my voice and write words and all that, I was more into letting the guitar do the singing, doing phrases with the guitar and it felt so natural. I was able to express some emotion more than using words. For example, when I go to this chord, I do. I do this, and that little phrase to me is like, it’s almost telling you something like, “I wanna tell you a story”. It was fun. I started stumbling on that type of playing. As opposed to (shreds on guitar) good stuff that we’re all, all of us guitar players are so guilty of overplaying. I I’ve been guilty of that a lot in my career, as opposed to doing (plays a piece). I was really getting into phrasing and singing with the guitar and telling my story with the guitar rather than try to tell it with my voice. So anyway, that’s, that’s the philosophy behind this record.
On if he purposely added upbeat tracks to enhance the flow of the record – Yes. The answer is yes. When you get to a point to where you’ve got a batch of songs that you’ve recorded and you’re listening back to them, and then when I did make the decision, “Well, I am gonna go ahead and put this together as an album, a full-length album”. Then I would, I would listen to it in an entirety and if I felt that it was missing more fun, upbeat, I tried to keep balance in there. I didn’t want it to be a total sleeper, so I had some ideas that were more upbeat, and I did wanna add those to the mix. “Monkey Kitty” being one in particular. To keep it in line with the record, even though it sounds very different than the rest of it. I wanted to pay tribute to my father-in-law, Dickey Betts there, and since it was a very personal, intimate, personal record. I wanted to share a little thing that Dickey showed me on the guitar, ironically, in Las Vegas when I first met him in 2001.
We flew out here, my wife and I, when I first started dating her, we visited with Dickey. He was here in Vegas, and we flew down and we spent a week here hanging out with him in the hotel room and we were passing the guitar around in the hotel room and we were drinking wine, and we were having a great time, like at three in the afternoon. He had a gig that night. Dickey was such a great guy, great character. He and I always hit it off really well. I think he knew that I was gonna take good care of his daughter and so he and I were buds right from the start.
So anyway, the song “Monkey Kitty” on my Reflections album. It came about because I wanted to put an upbeat song on the record, but I also wanted to share a little Dickey influence on there. There’s a lick that’s on there, it goes (plays the lick). I’m trying to play it with a nickel ’cause I don’t have a pick. So, there’s a nickel it goes, the lick goes like this. So, we’re jamming in the hotel room. We’re trading the guitar licks and we’re playing this thing, and then Dickey goes (plays the lick), and I was like, “Wow, will you show me how to play that?” So, he played it really slow for me. That’s the trick right there. You play these two weird notes together. Sounds so weird, right? But you put it together. Dickey taught me that lick. Now, fast forward 24 years, and I’m making my Reflections album, and I’m playing a song that I’m writing for my kitty cat who’s always climbing on me, monkey kitty. I was like, “Man, I’m gonna put Dickey’s little guitar lick in there”. So, I did, I added that in there and that’s, that’s on the record. That was one of the last songs I made for this album, and it’s called “Monkey Kitty”.
On how he combined his childhood exposure to country and western music with Tesla’s rock sound – Well, even if you a song like “Getting Better”, I’m playing this kind of just some twangy kind of, it’s a Telecaster that I’m using on that. Tesla is five guys, a band, each guy has his own element to it. Tommy (Skeoch) was always the metal guy, and I used to love metal too. I mean, the eighties, we all love heavy metal. Brian (Wheat) is the Beatles guy.
Jeff. Keith is like the Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler Guy. I was more like the color guy with acoustic and the twangy country. It’s twist in there, but it goes back to our first album. If you listen to the song “Modern Day Cowboy”, it’s a whole smorgasbord pizza of those elements. Of the five guys. The verses I’m playing acoustic guitar and then we’ve got the metal riffs in there that we put together. So, the diversity has always been there with Tesla. If you fast forward to “What You Give” or “Love Song” the acoustic guitar, I’ve always put that element into our sound and I appreciate what you’re saying.
I think it did separate Tesla a little bit from being a glam one dimensional, Hollywood sounding kind of band. ’cause we weren’t from LA. We weren’t from Hollywood. We were from up north, Northern California. I call it the San Francisco sound. The, those influences on me, like Credence, Clearwater Revival, big San Francisco band from the Bay Area. Santana, Jefferson Airplane. Those are early experiences, early influences that influenced us, We were based out of Sacramento, so we weren’t really stylized as a glam band.
On if Tesla will release a new record or stay with releasing singles – Well, with Tesla, I really do like the ability to create a song independently and put it out as we do it at our point of our career that we’re at now after 40 years and being older guys. It doesn’t make sense to try to fabricate10 songs just to put all 10 songs out on one record, it makes more sense for us to work on a song and enjoy the process and let it develop. Then when it’s ready, put it out. One song at a time seems to work better for writing with Tesla. But the one thing that we are enjoying a lot is digging into our influences and songs that Jeff Keith really get into singing and we’re experimenting with some old soul tunes, some old cover songs you, maybe some James Brown or maybe some Temptations, some different kind of things like that.
You know, we’re at a point now, Tesla’s at a point now where we wanna enjoy our career and have fun and create stuff, and experiment with some stuff like that. That’s a lot of fun. The notion of trying to go in lockdown mode for a year and, and hammer out 10 songs that will be just fabricated, that doesn’t sound like fun to us, really.
On not being able to fit new material into the Tesla set – That’s a great point. I don’t think, most people don’t realize the amount of work and lockdown it would take to, to create 9 or 10 songs. Back when we were in our twenties that was different, man. That was a different time in our lives. So, the amount of work it takes to create a full 10 song album and then when you play your show with a band like Tesla, who’s got 40 years of songs that we’ve gotta play in our show in 90 minutes. Like you said, we’re not gonna even be allowed to play any of these new songs. So, it makes much more sense to have fun and create one great new song. Like our latest one, “All About Love”. We’re so proud of it. It’s really great and the fans are loving it. Before that, we did one called “Time To Rock” and we were really proud of that one and it was fun and we throw that one song in the show and then people still get to hear “Little Suzi” and “Signs” and “Modern Day Cowboy” and “Changes” and all the other ones. So that’s, that is basically it. When a band gets to this point of their career, that’s usually really what works best.
On touring plans for Reflections – The way this record is made, it’s, it’s just me and I have done, four solo shows. In September, I did Daryl’s House in upstate New York. Daryl Hall. What I’ve done is I’ve taken my Reflections music and off of my vinyl album, and I’ve created the backing tracks into an iPad. I go on the road, and I plug my iPad directly into my guitar amp, and I play my music, along with some other guitar-based songs that I do, like “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. stuff that fits the sound of Reflections. I do “Hot Rod Lincoln”. I do some other rockabilly stuff and I’m gonna add more to it. I’m gonna do a few shows here and there. But like you said, Tesla’s still so very busy and it’s very hard to juggle personal life with band life and touring life and all that stuff. But I will be doing more Reflections guitar shows, hopefully like in music stores, maybe going to like a guitar shop and performing for guitar players and performing guitar-based things by myself with my backing tracks and talking about some of the guitar stuff that I’ve been talking about in this interview, which is my passion now for guitar playing as a solo artist is to sing with the guitar, and playing songs that have that direction in a guitar clinic setting and talking about melody and phrasing, which is really what I love the most about music and guitar playing at my age now. Reflections album is all about that.
