Man's Body

 Greg Franco is a big man – a man who dreams big, with a big heart. I first met Greg when my band Ashtray Boy played L.A. in 2014. He was a friend of sometime Ashtray Boy member Andy Creighton (more well known for his current band, The World Record). Greg crashed an Internet radio interview Ashtray Boy was guest hosting, and from the get-go, I knew I had met a real mensch. Once in a while you get that feeling. Turns out Greg’s in this band Rough Church, who Andy had turned me onto during an earlier L.A. jaunt. And so I’m flattered when Greg asks me to join the church of Rough Church for some shows in Chicago and NYC as their guest drummer. Somehow in a whirlwind couple of days, we also squeeze in a Daytrotter recording session 175 miles away in Davenport, Iowa, the same day as our Chicago gig. I build Greg a bronze colored Telecaster. He turns 50 in New York and we live it up on the Lower East Side.Fast forward a year, and Greg is set to master the new RC album in Chicago with Bob Weston. I get another call from Greg, asking if I want to track some songs at Electrical for fun while he’s in my hometown for the mastering sessions anyway. I recruit my pal Marco, a co-worker of mine and bass wunderkind, to learn the tunes. Greg flies his buddy Manny Nieto out to engineer the session; Greg and Marco meet one another, and a few hours later we have five songs in the can. The three of us celebrate downtown at Greg’s hotel. Over a subsequent trip to L.A. a few months later, again with Manny engineering (this time at his Estudio), I lay down some guitar and keyboard tracks, and Greg touches up vocals and guitars a bit.We thought about a cologne to go along with this record. Man’s Body. There’s something about a Man’s Body. Or, There’s nothing like a Man’s Body.Stay Found.

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