When asked what he’s been up to, enigmatic singer-songriter Bob Frank quips back: “Right now, I’m standing in a rose garden.”

His answer is closer to the truth than his droll humor might indicate. At 58, the Memphis-born musician is once again reaping some well-deserved acclaim.

Frank is not your ordinary troubadour. For starters, he self-released a 77-minute epic ballad last year, A Little Gest of Robin Hood, that retold a 1,824 verse Medieval poem as “the longest talking blues in the world” (and the fact that he lives on Robin Hood Drive is pure coincidence).

Oh, and Frank really, really takes his time. That album and his new one, Keep on Burning — both on his independent label, Bowstring Records — mark the first music he’s put out in three decades. (He’ll be in town this week to promote and perform.)

But the accolades have been rolling in, including this bit of praise by Chris Morris in Billboard: “Hopefully, this cult musician won’t remain invisible for long… (Keep on Burning) deserves — nay, demands — wider distribution.”

Frank takes it all in nonchalant stride. His eponymous 1972 debut on the Vanguard label, after all, was hailed in its day. Now, it’s an out-of-print collector’s item, hard to find but adored by those who have it.

“I’m getting letters from people all over the world that love that old album and thought it was great,” says Frank, who lives these days in El Sobrante, Calif., near Berkeley. “To me, it was just a record full of all these old degenerate songs about winos and dope fiends and stuff.”

Yet that’s exactly why people liked it so much, says Memphis music sage Jim Dickinson, who produced Keep on Burning. “All the local dope dealers had that record,” recalls Dickinson. “It had a song called ‘She Pawned Her Diamond for Some Gold’ about his wife selling her engagement ring to buy pot. It’s a real good song.”

Frank’s latest picks up where his Vanguard album left off — more tales of the rebellious and rejected — albeit with a sense of inner peace that only years of trying to figure things out can provide.

It should come as no surprise that Keep on Burning paired Frank with Dickinson, a man in tune with such lyrical conceits, and someone who will soon release a solo studio record himself, Free Beer Tomorrow, for the first time in 30 years.

But these kindred spirits have known each other since running the same Bluff City coffeehouse circles back in the 1960’s, notably Dickinson’s Market Theatre, a short-lived play venue/folk club where the two first met in 1963.

Dickinson even recorded Frank’s song, “Wild Bill Jones,” on his 1972 debut, Dixie Fried. It’s no surprise that Free Beer Tomorrow features another Frank cover, “Last Night I Gave up Smoking.”

After Frank got out of the Army in 1968, he left Memphis in an itinerant frame of mind. He spent time on a ranch in Colorado, worked at a cannery in Washington, and wrote for a Nashville publishing house.

(Oddly enough, the latter job helped steer fledgling tunesmith John Hiatt down his destined path. In several interviews, Hiatt has mentioned how Frank inspired him to join a publishing house in the early ‘70’s, getting the same deal Frank had at the time — a weekly stipend of $25.)

“Memphis is my home,” says Frank, who has lived in California since 1973 and now works on irrigation systems for a living. “I grew up there. I spent the first 24 years of my life there. I just never really liked it there.”

He then laughs. “I always figured I wanted to go somewhere else, but there ain’t nowhere else to go anyway.”

Frank spent the passing decades removing himself completely from the music scene, raising kids and working, he says. A few artists covered his songs, notably cowboy country act Chris LeDoux. But for all practical purposes, Frank willingly disappeared from the radar.

“I don’t know. Nothing worked out right,” he says. “I was writing songs all that time, but I wasn’t trying to make any money.”

Enter Dickinson, who along with opener Don McGregor, played some Frank songs for a Memphis Acoustic Music Association concert at Otherlands in 2000. Word got back to the artist and, soon enough, a record was being made.

“All these years, I didn’t really keep up with anything in music,” says Frank. “And all these years (Dickinson) had been producing records and I never knew it. I asked him should I make a record, and he said, ‘Yeah, come on, we’ll do it.’ I said, ‘Man, you got a lot of good ideas for this.’ He said, ‘This is what I do.’”

The wry folk-country result — Keep on Burning — is an album of stark intimacy and searing insight.

Dickinson assembled a coterie of the Mid-South’s finest to back up Frank, including the producer’s sons, Luther and Cody Dickinson, Jimbo Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers fame, RiverBluff Clanners Tommy Burroughs and Jimmy Davis, Mud Boy & the Neutrons cohorts Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait, John Whitemore, Pete Matthews, Andy Cohen (on banjo), Jim Spake (on clarinet) and Kevin Houston, who recorded the project at Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch Studio in Coldwater, Miss. Recorded in three days at a cost of $1,100, according to Dickinson, the 10-song album mixes old material with new, and good luck telling which is which. They all sound of a different time.

Among the highlights, the unbowdlerized version of the Vanguard tune “Judas Iscariot” and the Civil War epic “With Sabers in Our Hands.”

“That’s the song that I was recording on Jerry McGill when he emptied his gun in the ceiling at Sam Phillips’ studio,” says Dickinson. And for a colorfully complete account of that tale, best read Robert Gordon’s classic It Came from Memphis.

Dickinson clearly admires Frank’s refusal to catch up to the world: “He plays the same way he did 35 years ago. He uses the same chords, still writing the same songs he wrote when he was 17, which is heroic… People have responded to it because it’s real.”

Even Frank is responding to it. Disappointed with how his Vanguard album was produced, Frank much prefers the new one. He credits his collaborator.

“I wouldn’t have been able to record these songs with (other) people, because they look for more commercial stuff… A lot of times you hear productions and the song gets lost. It’s not like that at all with Dickinson. He brings out the song that’s there — this guy is a master producer.”

He’s also been something of a guide to a wandering minstrel like Frank. When asked who his influences are, Frank goes down the list of usual suspects from Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan. Then he stops.

“Those are people I used to listen to. But really, the guy who influenced me a lot was Dickinson, and probably more strongly than any of those other people — but in a more subtle way. It’s almost unconscious, just being there with him.

“Jim Dickinson was a hell of an influence on me and I didn’t even know it.”

Wednesday, 30th

Bob Frank In the feast-or-famine climate of Nashville clubgoing, it figures that two must-see shows would end up on the same night. But if you miss this rare appearance by Frank, whose rep has swelled over the three decades since his Vanguard debut, you may not get another chance. In 1972, the Memphis native's self-titled LP (produced by Music Row veteran Cletus Haegert and Great Escape founder Gary Walker) made him a cult hero: a counterculture confederate with a capital C whose ribald songs mixed folk balladry, sex, an outlaw social conscience and really good drugs. That he took about 30 years to follow it up says less about his talent than his inability to suffer the music biz gladly. Yet here he is with two remarkable recent records: A Little Gest of Robin Hood, an engrossing acoustic adaptation of the 456-stanza 15th century narrative poem; and Keep on Burning, a stirring collection of recent songs and old favorites produced by Memphis shaman Jim Dickinson, with backing by members of the North Mississippi All-Stars and Mudboy & the Neutrons. Now based in California, Frank performs 7:30 p.m. at the Bluebird Cafe; his comrade Haegert plays at 6:30 as part of the Old Rogues Showcase with Chris Gantry, Rick Finney and Alan Ross.

Even many people who consider themselves veteran observers of the Nashville music scene may not remember Bob Frank. That’s because the singer/songwriter made one brilliant record for Vanguard in 1972. The LP included the demonstrative, lyrically striking single “Memphis Jail,” plus several other cuts featuring insights, images and viewpoints miles ahead of what almost everyone else was doing in either rock or country at the time. Frank was part of a local songwriting community that then included Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Dave Olney, and Hay Bynum to name just a few.

Unfortunately, Bob Frank also had some personal problems, and these eventually led to the demise of his career. He was, to put it mildly, quite a colorful individual, far too unpredictable and outspoken for his own good. He was eventually booted off Vanguard, and moved to California after some wild escapades in both Memphis and Knoxville.

But anyone who’s ever closely listened to Frank’s music has been amazed. And now, 30 years later, one of the nation’s greatest songwriters is ready for a comeback. He’s made an outstanding new album, Keep on Burning, which is available on the Internet at bobfranksongs.com.

Frank’s appearing tonight at the Bluebird in a special showcase beginning at 7:30 p.m. Prior to Frank’s set will be another interesting gig billed as “The Old Rogues” featuring Chris Gantry, Rick Finney, Alan Ross and Clete Haegert, who doubles as Frank’s manager.

“This is Bob’s first local appearance since a 1992 gig at the Bluebird,” said Haegert, “and it’s only the second time he’s ever played here. There was an Exit/In date in 1973. We’re trying to generate some buzz and let people know that Bob’s back, and is still a phenomenal talent as a writer and singer. We’re hoping that we can eventually get enough interest going to get his first album reissued and also get some national attention for the new one.”

Frank has no weakness as a composer. Such songs as “Journey to Myself,” “Out on the Prairie,” “Old Truckers” or “With Sabers in Our Hands” have great hooks, intelligent lyrics that don’t rely on clichés or pat situations, and storylines that make listeners think without becoming pedantic or preachy. Frank wrote each composition except “Old Truckers,” which he co-penned with Jesse “Po’ Boy” Pearson. The arrangements and performances are delivered with a confidence and individualistic approach that should have appeal across idiomatic lines.

“Bob was one of the true outlaws in Nashville,” added Haegert. “He’s like a Johnny Cash or a Waylon Jennings in that his songs speak directly to people and they’re immediately drawn to his music.”

Interestingly, though it’s not currently available in stores, Keep on Burning is getting excellent notices. Billboard and Rock and Rap Confidential have each given the disc rave reviews, and Goldmine planning a retrospective feature on Frank soon. “Bob may be 58 now, but he’s still a wonderful performer,” concluded Haegert. “This is the ideal time to see him, whether you’re one of those who remember him from the ‘70’s, or just somebody interested in hearing a great artist.”

A onetime habitué of the Memphis bohemian folk and coffeehouse scene that helped spawn Jim Dickinson and Sid Selvidge, among other local-music fixtures, Bob Frank put out one album in 1972 for the folk label Vanguard and then promptly disappeared from the music scene. Relocated to Oakland, California, Franks’s lone foray into recorded music became something of a cult item, and now, he’s back. Frank’s new album, Keep on Burning, was recorded at Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch Studio, with Dickinson producing and a who’s who of area talent — including North Mississippi Allstars Luther and Cody Dickinson, ex-Riverbluff Clan members Tommy Burroughs and Jimmy Davis, and scene cohorts Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait — lending support.

The album is a gentle, irreverent, and wide-ranging collection of “folk music” — a Civil War ballad, a trucker song, outlaw songs, and idiosyncratic gospel, with echoes of ragtime, Dixieland, and jug-band music — and fits comfortably in the traditions of boho folk and outsider country that encompasses locals in the Mudboy & the Neutrons sphere of influence, East Coasters like the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders, and West Texas cowboy poets like Terry Allen and the Flatlanders.

Frank will play four shows this weekend as part of a homecoming trip. He’ll do an in-store at Shangri-la Records at 5 p.m., Friday, October 4th, and play later that night (9 p.m.) at Earnestine and Hazel’s. On Saturday, October 5th, at 7 p.m., Frank will play the Blues City Café. And Sunday, October 6th, he’ll play the afternoon slot at Huey’s Midtown.

“Bob Frank is so invisible, when he looks in the mirror, he thinks they woke up the wrong guy,” the drolly self-deprecating singer/songwriter says on his Web site.

Hopefully, this cult musician won’t remain invisible for long. He has an absolutely wonderful new album, Keep on Burning, out on his own label, Bowstring Records.

If you’re extremely studious, you may know Frank from his lone previous release, an eponymous 1972 album for Vanguard. “Every song on there is about getting drunk and getting stoned and winos and dope fiends,” Frank says, adding that the record has acquired a fanatical following. “I get the weirdest fucking emails,” he says, chuckling.

Frank admits he dropped the ball with his first album. “I thought, ‘I’ve got it made now,’” he recalls. “I had no conception of what it takes to succeed at this… They said, ‘Go on a tour.’ I said, ‘No, I gotta put my garden out.’”

After a disastrous showcase at Max’s Kansas City in New York, Vanguard dropped Frank. He moved to Northern California, where he still lives in the East Bay, building irrigation systems. But he still wrote prolifically, and, after reconnecting with fellow Memphis native Jim Dickinson (who recorded Frank’s murderous “Wild Bill Jones” on Dixie Fried), he returned to the studio.

Produced by Dickinson, Keep on Burning was cut with a crack crew that included Dickinson’s sons Luther and Cody of the North Mississippi Allstars, singers Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Davis, former Mud Boy and the Neutrons washboardist Jimmy Crosthwait, string ace Tommy Burroughs, and Jimbo Mathus of the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Richly sung by Frank, the album includes a diverse, superb set of songs that encompass cowboy numbers (“Out on the Prairie”), Civil War balladry (“With Sabers in Our Hands”), mariachi music (“Back to Ensenada”), Jimmie Rodgers-styled country (“Since the Midway Came to Town”), truck-drivin’ tunes (“Old Truckers”), and irreverent folk (“Judas Iscariot,” which was expurgated in its ’72 version).

The album, which Frank sells on the Web, deserves — nay, demands — wider distribution. Interested parties may contact Frank at (510)223-3041 or (510)734-4213.

Back in ’72 a gifted Memphis singer/songwriter landed a one-album deal with Vanguard Records, and the eponymous Bob Frank went on to earn critical comparisons to Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, and , as one wag put it, “a barefoot Randy Newman.”

It also went on to become a collector’s item among folk aficionados, its $100 price tag influenced no doubt by the fact that Frank moved to the West Coast and dropped out of sight not long after the LP was released. So here we are, three decades later, and no less than Frank’s old Memphis chum, legendary producer/sideman Jim Dickinson, had coaxed Frank into recording a follow-up album.

Keep on Burning opens with “Journey to Myself,” a semi-autobiographical hippie travelogue (it partially explains why Frank “disappeared into the mist” so long ago) whose brisk, twangy arrangement suggests Johnny Cash showing up for the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty sessions.

Another highlight is the tasty Latin-flavored slice of border rock, “Back to Ensenada”; somebody get this tune to Jimmie Dale Gilmore or Dave Alvin, pronto! The Townes Van Zanadt-styled talking blues “Judas Isacariot” is both scary and hilarious, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes glimpse at just what happened between Judas and Jesus shortly after the Last Supper (hint: it involved a big chunk of hashish).

The Civil War narrative “With Sabers in Our Hands” offers a look at the personalities behind the faces of doomed Confederate soldiers, with the music also couched in the same kind of burnished, antiqued terms that was once the Band’s specialty. With Frank’s precisely phrased lines — sometimes partly spoken and other crooned in a rich, even baritone — well up front in the mix, Keep on Burning is as compelling a slice of traditional-lined, modern-day America as they come.

Featuring a stellar roster of backing musicians that includes producer/pianist Dickinson’s kids Luther and Cody (of the North Mississippi Allstars), Jim Spake, Sid Selvidge, ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers Jimbo Mathus and others, it’s crammed with good playin’ to go with the superb storytellin’. Welcome back, Mr. Frank.

Singer/songwriter Bob Frank’s website characterizes him as “one of the most obscure songwriters on the face of the planet,” a prime example of his self-deprecating humor.

After releasing his self-titled debut album on Vanguard Records in 1972, Frank toured to promote the record but grew disillusioned with the music business and the album’s lack of sales. A year later, he moved from his native Tennessee to El Sobrante, California, about 20 miles from San Francisco. Although he continued to write songs, music took a back seat in his life. He worked other jobs and raised a family of four children.

Now 58, Frank has finally gotten the urge to record again, and is threatening to leave that obscurity behind with a pair of records on his own Bowstring label.

Keep on Burning is a collection of ten original songs written over the past 40 years and produced by Frank’s longtime friend Jim Dickinson. The album is a blend of country, folk and blues that showcases Frank’s supple baritone. The second disc, A Little Gest of Robin Hood, is a retelling of the Robin Hood legend featuring Frank on vocals and acoustic guitar.

Franks, who once worked as a contract songwriter in Nashville, admits he had doubts about his future as a musician after the commercial failure of the first album. “I didn’t know how to make a career out of it,” says Frank, who now installs irrigation systems.

Dickinson has been a champion of Frank’s music since he first heard him perform in Memphis in 1963. The song that caught his ear was “With Sabers in Our Hands,” a stirring Civil War ballad written from the viewpoint of four Confederate veterans. (Frank re-recorded it for Keep on Burning with a new arrangement.)

“I love his use of language… and the sense of humor in his songs,” says Dickinson, who showed his support back in 1972 by recording Frank’s murder ballad “Wild Bill Jones” on his Atlantic Records album Dixie Fried. (He also included it on A Thousand Footprints in the Sand, his 1997 live LP.) Dickinson’s forthcoming solo disc for Artemis, Free Beer Tomorrow, includes another Frank tune, “Last Night I Gave Up Smoking.”

Basic tracks for Keep on Burning were completed in less than a week at Dickinson’s home studio using a combination of Memphis and Mississippi musicians, including Dickinson’s sons, Luther and Cody, from the North Mississippi Allstars. Dickinson played keyboards himself and also recruited Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait, fellow members of his band Mud Boy & the Neutrons, to contribute backing vocals and washboard, respectively. Also showing up in the credits, playing trombone, is Jimbo Mathus of the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

“The recording was much easier than last time,” Frank says, adding with a chuckle: “For one thing, I was sober.”

Keep on Burning ranges from the Dixieland-influenced “Since the Midway Came to Town,” which recalls the blue yodels of Jimmie Rodgers, to the mariachi-flavored “Back to Ensenada.” There’s also a talking blues with a spiritual twist (“Judas Iscariot,” inspired by da Vinci’s painting, “The Last Supper”), a cowboy song (“Out on the Prairie”), and a trucking song that cold lead to a lot of depressed accelerators (“Old Truckers”).

Frank says he and Dickinson have already talked about doing another record sometime soon. “I’m trying to collect my story songs and go back to Memphis to record,” Frank says. Dickinson wants to record Frank with Sun Records guitarist Roland Janes at Sam Phillips’ studio.

Regardless of what happens, it’s unlikely to be another 30-year wait between albums.

Bob Frank’s story has all the makings of a classic comeback: a 30-year gap between his only two recordings; a gradual makeover from a stoner/alcohlic Southern hippie into a suburban, working-class family man with a Buddhist outlook; and a fine new CD, Keep on Burning, produced by the semilegendary Jim Dickinson (Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, Aretha Franklin, the Replacements, Big Star).

There’s only one thing missing: any widespread realization that Frank had disappeared in the first place. Indeed, log on to www.bobfranksongs.com and you’ll read, “You’ve stumbled onto the website of one of the most obscure songwriters on the face of the planet… Bob Frank is so invisible, when he looks in the mirror, he thinks they woke up the wrong guy.”

A Memphis native, Frank knocked around folk clubs during the 1960’s and worked for awhile as a contract songwriter at Tree Publishing in Nashville. He made one self-titled LP in 1972. It was well received by critics, and it could have launched Frank on a steadily rising career arc akin to those of such peers as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. But he sabotaged his chances by blowing off a promotional tour and refusing to play songs from the album at a pivotal showcase at Max’s Kansas City in New York. A few radio stations, such as KAAY in Little Rock, Arkansas, and KFAT in Gilroy, California, put Frank’s “Judas Iscariot,” “Memphis Jail,” and “She Pawned Her Diamond for Some Gold” into heavy rotation. But his label, Vanguard, cut him loose faster than George McGovern dropped Tom Eagleton, and Frank stumbled back into anonymity, confused and resentful.

“When I look back at that guy, he was drunk and stoned and very stubborn,” Frank said in phone conversation from his home in El Sobrante a few days before Christmas. “I thought I didn’t need a record company. I thought once I made a record, everybody’d hear about it, and it was all just gonna happen”

When overnight success eluded him, Frank moved west, played some gigs around the Bay Area with his aptly named band, the Hardheads, and eventually settled down to raise a family. But not without second thoughts. “I was constantly thinkin’ if I didn’t have these fuckin’ kids I could be out there making a million bucks and being a big star and having women crawl all over me,” he recalled. “But I had to get a regular job with a steady income and medical benefits.”

While putting bread on the table by installing drainage systems, Ïrank continued to write songs, occasionally playing them at open mic nights, union ralalies, Buddhist dharma retreats, and his daughter’s modern dance performances. About a year or so ago, encouraged by family and friends, including cowboy singer Gary McMahan, he decided it was finally time to make another album. “I’ve gotten to the point where I feel I’ve gotta record as many of these songs s I can, one way or another, ‘cause I’ve spnt my whole life ritin’ ‘em and it’s kinda like what I’m all about,” he said. “I mean my wife thinks they’re great, but what fuckin’ good are they if I never go play ‘em for anybody and nobody’s gonna hear ‘em?”

Without any current contacts in the music business, Frank called up his old pal Dickinson, who agreed to cut the recording at his Mississippi studio on a shoestring, while bringing in his sons Cody and Luther (from the North Mississippi Allstars) and a host of others to wrap a professional but relaxed sound around Frank’s warm, unguarded baritone vocals. Although the song styles range from romantic ballads and talking blues to mariachi and honky-tonk, Keep on Burning is unified by a swampy Memphis country feel that Frank attributes to the “river and the humidity and the jungle down there” seeping into the music.

Featuring old songs and new, Keep on Burning opens with “Journey to Myself,” which could be descried as one of Frank’s “dharma songs” about running battles with envy, greed, lust, anger, gluttony and sloth, but he’s couched it as an old-fashioned outlaw allegory. Sobriety and spiritual pursuits, Frank argued, have sharpened not softened his craft. “The whole time you’re doing all this practice,” he said, “all you’re doing is becoming able to see things more clearly, so whatever you’re looking at, whether it’s somebody killing somebody else and going to jail or whatever, you’re going to see it more clearly, and if you’re really into expressing it, you’re gonna be able to express it more clearly, so it’s gonna have a better edge on it.”

What has melted away is Frank’s anguish about recognition and affirmation. At 58 and looking toward retirement from his day job, he says it’s enough to make his CD available through his Web site and at his gigs. He plans to record another soon and get onstage more often, with more confidence.