Episode 27 of Hooked on Creek features my conversation with Frank Messina. Frank is an award-winning and widely recognized poet, spoken-word artist and author.
Frank has been a frequent guest on stage with Max Creek, performing his poetry with the band since the mid 1990s. In this episode, Frank talks about his introduction to Max Creek, his background as an artist, the relationship between music and poetry and his enduring love for Max Creek. Frank also shares some incredible memories of performing in Costa Rica with Max Creek and Bill Kreutzmann from the Grateful Dead.
This episode features music and poetry from Max Creek’s live performances on:
- September 19, 1998, at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut
- January 21, 2011 at Doce Lunas Resort in Jaco, Costa Rica
To learn more about Frank Messina visit: http://frankmessina.com
Episode 27 transcription
You’re listening to Hooked on Creek, a podcast celebrating the music, history and fans of the legendary jam band Max Creek. I am your host, Korre Johnson, and you are listening to episode 27.
Thank you for tuning in to episode 27 of Hooked on Creek. I am very excited to share with you my conversation with Frank Messina. Frank is an award-winning and widely recognized poet, spoken-word artist and author. Frank has been a frequent guest on stage with Max Creek, performing his poetry with the band since the mid 1990s.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode, including Frank’s introduction to Max Creek, his background as an artist, the relationship between music and poetry and his enduring love for Max Creek. Frank also shares some incredible memories of performing in Costa Rica with Max Creek and Bill Kreutzmann from the Grateful Dead. Actually, this episode kicked off with a taste of that live performance recorded back on January 21, 2011.
And be sure to stick around after the interview because this episode concludes with a beautiful recording of Frank performing his poetry with Max Creek at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut, back on September 19, 1998. You can get more information about this episode and read an entire transcript of my interview with Frank Messina on the Hooked on Creek website. Just go to hookedoncreek.com. And while you are there, click the contact link and let me know what you think. Alright, now let’s get started.
Korre: Frank Messina, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Frank: Thank you. It’s great to be here. It’s an honor.
Korre: Frank, you are an award-winning poet, a spoken-word artist, an actor, a painter, an author and probably several other things. But among these, you are also a huge fan of Max Creek. Is that right?
Frank: That’s absolutely correct.
Korre: OK. Well, perhaps the best place to start our conversation is at the beginning. So, I am curious. How were you first exposed to the music of Max Creek?
Frank: Both of my brothers went to Hartford University back in the early 80s. My older brother, Robert, he was the one who turned me on to Max Creek. He would come home, and he’s like six years older than me, so he would come home and say, “Hey man, I saw this great band. I am going to see them,” at the Agora Ballroom, the Living Room or wherever they went to go see them at the time — Cell Block. And I started listening to them that way. And then I would go visit him and I had the chance to see them as a kid. I was probably 13 or so. So my brother would go to many shows and then he and his friends like Nick Lombardi and John Lombardi, who went to engineering school at the college, got to know the band pretty well.
The music was constantly played. There was Grateful Dead and it was Max Creek and a lot of other music. Everybody knew of other bands, but Max Creek was kind of like having sushi for the first time. Like, “Oh, I know that band. I know this band.” “But what about Max Creek?” So, I realized it was like a cool thing to know their music. I got to meet the guys when I was really young and then years went by and I was listening to the music, just like I was listening to everything back then. I was listening to a lot of 60s music and also started to get into jazz and some classical, but Max Creek — that name just kept coming back to me all through the years. And I got into the music. Drink the Stars — that was like my regular playlist, that album.
Korre: What was the band like during those early shows for you when you went to those concerts? I mean, what was the vibe like when you were walking into some of those places?
Frank: For me, it was a trip going to see them because I was underage. I would go in with my brother or someone else that allowed me to go in. The vibe was not much different than it is now. People were excited about going to see this band and they knew they were going to have a good time and it was accessible enough, as opposed to going to like a big concert, like at Madison Square Garden or Nassau Coliseum or one of these big shows. There was more of an intimacy with the music. The band and the sound was always really good, for the most part.
As a kid, it was impressive to see this rock band really dynamically play up there. And that’s when I started getting into it, as a teenager — at 14, 16 years old — really getting into live music and the interaction between musicians on stage. Jazz musicians — I used to watch videos of Charlie Parker and how he interacted with his musicians and Miles Davis. And then the rock musicians, and how they were positioned on stage, the aesthetic of the whole live concert experience. And Max Creek, to me, exemplified that. That kind of, “We’re delivering a quality product here and it’s going to be fun, too.”
Korre: Were you as a teenager coming into your own as an artist? Were you exploring where you wanted to go in your creative realm?
Frank: I didn’t know what I was doing. I was reading a lot. But I am the youngest in my family, so I was exposed to music and live music. As a teenager, I was lucky enough to have older brothers who were willing to take me around sometimes. I think by the time I was about 16, 17, I was already writing poetry and I was very interested in the spoken word tradition — the oral tradition of telling stories and sharing stories and incorporating music into it. So yeah, I was coming of age as an artist and listening to a lot of different types of music and reading a lot.
I was not a good student in school. Well, I did OK academically, but I used to get in trouble. I was a disruptive student. I would get kicked out because I’d always crack a joke. I was a class clown in a way, at times. And they would send me down to the principal’s office with a notebook and I would write poetry in those notebooks. And those were my early notebooks in the principal’s office. And if that office was full, they would put me in the nurse’s office. She had a little side room there and they would put me in there. And I’d be there with a notebook and I’d be just writing poems. And that was really the first time I had real conversations with myself in the subconscious. So, I became aware of that dialogue and became comfortable with it. And, that’s where the poetry I think was born from that kind of inner conversation.
Korre: It seems as though music has influenced at least part of your career, right? Because you had or maybe still are working with music as sort of a backdrop to how you do your art. Or how would you explain that?
Frank: Well, I’m a writer first and foremost. I mean, my main love or my main gig, so to speak, is writing — pen to paper or typing. I’m a writer. And then secondly, a performer and a stage person, and then an actor and a painter. But it all comes from the same place, which is poetry. I was always interested in the synthesis of music and poetry going back to — it’s ancient. It just didn’t start in the 60s or 50s with Jack Kerouac and David Amram. It goes back to Homer.
It goes back to ancient peoples and indigenous peoples with music and telling stories — the storyteller being the leader and the wise man or wise woman, so to speak — the wise person. Not everybody had a grasp on language. Not everybody had the ability to read. And then when language became developed and ancient peoples — not everyone understood. Even going back in the past century, I mean, there’s a lot of illiterate people. But if you were a good storyteller, you can kind of hide within that and tell a damn good story.
I had an uncle of mine who never saw past an eighth grade education, but he told damn good stories. I was always interested in the flair and gospel. I used to watch as a kid on TV the evangelists and the Holy rollers. It’s fascinating. It’s a weird channel when you see someone delivering a message to the masses. And I thought I was more interested in the impact of that spoken word and how it can really insight and ignite and inspire. And we know that through history what language and the spoken word — the power of it — is. So, I didn’t know the power of it as a kid. I just knew that it was something I was interested in. And as a poet, I had a place to put it and that is on stage with music.
Korre: When I looked online, it looks like you’ve performed on stage with Max Creek at least a few dozen times since around the mid 90s. I am curious, how did that first invitation come to you — to come up on stage and perform your poetry with the band?
Frank: I was at Wetlands in New York City, the old club that’s no longer in existence. Max Creek would play there fairly regularly, I suppose. This was, I think, in 1995. At the time I had known and met some of the band members to a point where I think I might’ve had one or two of their numbers. Like Rob Fried was really the one — the percussionist, the late percussionist, the great late Rob Fried. Well, he got ahold of one of my demo tapes I had and he called me up and said, “Man, this is great. You ought to sit in with us sometime.” And I’m like, “Man, that would be great.” And at the time I was performing with my own band called Spoken Motion all around New York and around New England and other parts of the country, too.
And around 1993, 1994, 1995, I was established as a fairly well-known spoken-word artists. I was getting press. I was performing all over. And in 94, I would perform. I performed at Wetlands and my friend David Nolan, who was the DJ at the time, was recording. He would record every show there. And he was also in the poetry circuit, too. So he would record at St. Mark’s Poetry Project. He recorded all the poetry readings. New York was flourishing with poetry readings in the 90s. I mean, we got a sheet of paper every month — a poetry calendar. You would fish through it and look where the next poetry reading is. I would hit all these open readings up.
But then had I started my band and Larry McDonald from Gil Scott Heron’s band was in my group, and Joe Isgro the bass player and a horn player, Erik Lawrence, and Elliott Levin. I was very interested in Rob Fried’s approach to playing music. He had kind of this muscular — and I don’t mean that physically — like approach to laying rhythms down. It wasn’t like about being a showman, but it was like driving the music. It was always there and it was colorful. I really dug his playing.
And then I met Scott. I knew the members of the band, but not really in a deep, personal level. It was more just passive. Scott was like — and this was downstairs in between sets down at Wetlands — “Sure, man. Come on up.” And I went on stage sometime in the second set. I read a poem. I was high on that for days. He called me up a couple of days later. Rob was, “Man, that was great.” I remember it being kind of a slower piece or something more tranquil. Over the years, my readings with them developed into these little nuggets of you don’t know if it’s going to be mellow or if it’s going to be highly energetic. One thing Mark Mercier said to me years later, he said, “What you’re doing is you’re making it really interesting for us, too, as well.” And that was kind of nice to hear. Because for me, it was an honor to be sitting with this band that I love.
Korre: Is there a connection between the improvisational free flowing style of a band like Max Creek and the openness to have a poet find a lane in there to sort of elaborate on the expression that’s happening on stage?
Frank: Yeah. You hit a good point there. It couldn’t happen with any band. I mean, I believe I could probably sit in with any band. And at the time when I first started sitting in with these groups, like Max Creek and others, I felt I could probably do this with anybody. But what I found, even in New Orleans when I went to tour down there, these great musicians were reluctant to have a poet on stage with them. I think because there’s a fear in failing.
And what Max Creek does, is they have a space in their music. And a lot of bands have this space. But not only did they have this space, but they have the generosity and the mentality and the interest and the curiosity to bring someone like a poet on stage with them. Not every band can do that. In fact, some bands would like to, but they’re branded or somebody is paying them a lot of money to be a certain way, to look a certain way. And they can’t mess with that. I get that. I totally get it. I have friends that I’ve spoken at length with about that, that are in that position — they resent their own success in a way. Because they’re like, “Oh wow. There are so many things I would like to do, but I can’t because I’m branded that certain way.”
Max Creek never had that problem. And I mean that affectionately. I mean, they were always able to just be about the music and never about something insincere or something inaccessible. So in that lies the opportunity for a poet or someone like myself to go on stage with them because there’s no risk. Well, there’s a risk in that I might screw up the whole show and say something stupid. I mean, that’s the risk of having a poet on there. But that’s what I love about Max Creek. They’re willing to take that risk. And for me to be asked back on numerous occasions has been a great honor.
Korre: One of the videos I love of Max Creek features you in Costa Rica with Bill Kreutzmann from the Grateful Dead. Does that memory stand out to you as something special? Or what do you remember about that?
Frank: Oh yeah, that jumps right out at me. That memory is something that just comes out and grips me and has held me for all these years and always will. It was a great experience. First of all, being in Costa Rica with Max Creek. Just being in Costa Rica is a trip. You’re there in January and you’re getting a sunburn. You leave New Jersey on a frozen Thursday morning and you’re hanging out by the pool, sipping sangria.
Billy Kreutzmann is over there on the corner and then Max Creek is setting up. You can’t get better than that. But you can get better than that. And that is when Max Creek asks you to sit in with them specifically when Billy is playing during their set. And, that’s how it was set up. So, “Frank we want you to come on during the second set.” But we didn’t say we want to have like a certain groove or rhythm or anything. We relied on those years of experience of organic kind of improvisation.
And so when I was on stage with Max Creek doing that poem, I really felt good. I felt comfortable. I felt relaxed. And I had been there already for one or two days, so I had settled into the area there a little bit. And there was a point where I was on stage, in between verses, I turned around and I caught eye contact with Billy. And he looked. I saw these wagon wheels of eyes and this anticipation on his face and this look of, “Yeah, man.” Nodding — these quick nods that he was giving. His classic Billy Kreutzmann kind of excitable drumming.
He was looking right at me. I turned around and I got back into the poem. And I can hear over the music that joy. And it was a trip. And afterwards it dawned on me. I said, “How many times did Garcia turn around and see that? And look at that face?” I got all kind of warm and fuzzy thinking about that. But it was a magical experience.
And afterwards, I had a chance to speak with Bill quite a bit and he said that he wished that the Grateful Dead had done more of that kind of thing over the years. But this goes back to my thing about the trap of some bands — that some things they just can’t do. They did have readings. Ken Nordine I think sat in with them a couple of times. Allen Ginsberg back in the day. But it was very few and far between, unless it was a benefit concert when someone sat in with them. It was so rare because they were the Grateful Dead brand. And I love them, but they almost couldn’t have musicians come and sit in, unless it was someone like Bob Dylan. How are you going to pass that up?
But sometimes there are opportunities there that were missed, I think. But Max Creek never had that problem. But Billy, it seemed fun for him. You see, here I am. I might as well be another musician in a way, because you bring something to the stage when your voice becomes an instrument. But then the poem becomes an instrument because there are words attached to it. And the audience, the crowd, was just on every word. The call-and-response was amazing.
That’s one thing that’s great about performing live, too, is the energy. You feel it when you’re up there. For people that don’t know what that’s like, it’s kind of like shaking hands with a lot of people at the same time or hugging a lot of people at the same time. It’s a beautiful, wonderful experience —performing and getting that love, and giving that love. Max Creek is very good at that.
Korre: So 2021 is the 50th anniversary of this band Max Creek. And I’m curious, what you think is so special about this band that has kept them together this long.
Frank: Well, I think the fans have helped keep them around for a long time because they are a live band and they celebrate life. They celebrate joy. They celebrate the history of music by doing what they do. They celebrate Americana. They celebrate world music. What keeps them together is searching for that joy, that constant joy of celebration. As long as there’s people and there’s music, you’ll put them together and you’ll have what’s called a concert. And I’ll be there. I want to celebrate. I was there at the 30th. I was there at the 40th. And then they should call it the first 50 years because the next 50 years when they retire to become dentists, people can come to their 120th birthday and it will be my 98th birthday and I’ll be there reading poetry with them, hopefully. I don’t know.
What keeps Max Creek around? What makes it special? It’s just these guys truly love what they’re doing. They truly love the fans and they love making music. And we love them for that. Happy birthday, Max Creek.
Korre: On the back of your 2002 book Disorderly Conduct, which I got off of eBay, there’s a quote there from somebody named Donna Coe from Playboy magazine. I’m going to read this and I want to get your reaction to it. Donna said, “Messina delivers with passion and ferocity in a place where audacity meets chivalry, vulgarity meets eloquence. He is without question a genius of generation X.” So for listeners who may not be familiar with your poetry or your performances as a spoken-word artist, how would you describe the themes or topics you cover and how close did that quote get to it?
Frank: Well, maybe that’s a kind of generous quote in a way. Maybe what she was getting at was the topics I cover generally are pretty personal to me. I write about what I know, usually, and what I love. I write about what I understand. It’s very hard if you got to write a paper or something and you don’t really know what you’re writing about. So with poetry, you write about your father dying or you write about the car wreck you saw or the joy you felt when the Mets won the World Series — or if you’re a Red Sox fan, if the Red Sox won the World Series. You write about what you love and what you know or what affects you.
And that book particularly, Disorderly Conduct, is also on the heels of 9/11. You see, that came out right after 9/11. Those poems in there that I wrote are directly related to my experiences as a volunteer down here. I’m in Jersey City right now. I live right across the river from where the Trade Center stood. I am basically not even a mile away from there right now. I wrote about that and those poems got widely published. They’re in the 9/11 museum and memorial now — the original poems, the original journal I wrote, which was a huge honor. A lot of poets aim to win the Pulitzer prize or something like that. But for me, that was the greatest honor. And I found some closure in that. I could park those poems that were born from such tragedy and turmoil and put it somewhere. And 100 years from now, somebody could maybe read through it and get something out of it. It would be historically important, maybe.
The vulgarity or the eloquence? I think she’s talking about dichotomy there. At the time, she was with Playboy magazine. So at the time she had to have some relationship to the physicalness of the poetry, I guess. I like that quote. I haven’t heard that quote in a long time or that blurb. It’s interesting how people interpret your work. Sometimes it’s frightening, other times you just don’t care. But she particularly, I think, grabbed on my performance, as well.
Korre: So we’re in 2021 in the middle of a pandemic. And I’m wondering, do you see this state we’re in as something that could be reflected in poetry or something that you’ve thought about? I’m curious where you’re at today with how the world is going.
Frank: I don’t think I have any choice but to contemplate and to write about it. As a poet — as any artist — it’s really a responsibility of yours, of ours, to confront any condition, the human condition, and digest it in some way and make sense of it. We’re in it, so in a way we can’t do it now. It has to be a year from now or something. But we could at least celebrate what we do have. And that is, we have each other and maybe we have 450,000 less people in this country.
But I have to say, from my own personal experience, I’ve been a parent now through this pandemic. My son was born in June 2019, and we had a pandemic started less than a year later. And then there were demonstrations. I live a few blocks away from city hall and I’m reading Dr. Seuss to my son at 7:30 in August with the window open and I can hear demonstrations down the street. I could hear the uprising and the people and all this.
I never watched the news in the last year. I didn’t have the bandwidth for it. I had only the sense of love for my child and my family and the people in my life. And humanity — I care about greatly. I wish I could do more. But every day hearing about someone dying and the losses. I lost three friends in the pandemic. I have not been able to acknowledge and have any closure with that. And I’m just one person that is experiencing this. So what we’re finding, I think, all around the world now, people not able to find closure in some of those deepest tragedies that have happened in their life in the last year. You can’t have a funeral and send someone off properly. There are a dozen people that I know personally, really that I loved, that have died. Three good friends and then I have friends whose parents or a relative died. There’s so much pain. So, do you get caught in the pain or do you have the joy help you get through.
There’s also another problem we have now — mental illness, anxiety and people flirting with disaster by indulging in things that they think are going to help them and it only makes it worse. I have a theory about this. If you remain healthy as an artist. You remain a great artist and you’re able to help anybody else. You know, when you’re on a plane or if you’re on a boat and it’s sinking or whatever, and you need that oxygen mask, you put it on yourself first and then you help others. Because you can’t help anybody else if you’re sick or if you don’t have oxygen or if you’re stoned so much to the point where you can’t help your child.
We have a responsibility now more than ever to help others, but we first have to take care and protect ourselves by wearing masks and being considerate of others. I mean, my son is 19 months old. All he knows now is people in masks — people walking around in masks. It’s a strange reality. It’s bizarre as hell. It’s insane. That’s why music like Max Creek and the poetry and the arts is so important.
And I am going to tell you another thing, Korre, I have a theory about is that if you look in history, through history, after every pandemic or every major world catastrophe — world wars, but particularly pandemics — you’ll see what follows is a cultural revolution. And so my belief and theory is that there will be another cultural revolution in the next couple of years. It’ll take two to three years. There’ll be a lot of music, new art — and it has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with humanity’s yearning and the human nature — the yearn to connect.
How many people have not hugged in the last year? Who have they hugged? When was the last time, Korre, you high-fived somebody at a show because Scott Murawski did a great solo? Or your favorite baseball team hit a home run? That joy, that tribal — it’s missing from the culture right now. Because human beings have gotten through pandemics, we’ve gotten through wars, major wars, and we’ve gotten through adversity — and we always celebrate at the end.
Korre: Well, that certainly is a silver lining I’m looking for, for sure. I’m not sure if you’re prepared for this or not, but I’m willing to ask if you’re willing to do it. Do you have a poem that you’d be open to reading on this Hooked on Creek podcast for fans?
Frank: Of course, I’ll read Disorderly Conduct. Someone told me recently that this poem is as relevant today as it was when I wrote it back in 2002.
Disorderly Conduct
You’re all under arrest
for giving in to your oppressors
anything you don’t do or won’t say
can and will be used against you
You are hereby charged with
Complacency in the First Degree
Possession of Ambivalence
and failure to obey a distress signal
from your fellow citizens
You have the right to remain “violent”
shouting down the Big Machine
with words of rage till daybreak
instead, you crouch down in silence
drinking, smoking, choking
while your own family stands on trial
You have the right to bear arms up
against the cold, steel face of injustice,
break down barbed walls of dogma,
You have the right to burn
the straitjacket, the suffocating drapery
smothering your daughters’ dreams
You have the right to make a left turn,
you have the right not to be straight
you have the right to do the right thing
but you’re all guilty, guilty of everything!
You have the right to
“not go gentle into that goodnight”
you have the right to fight,
to break open the pale face of Hatred
and shut it down once and for all
All human race
You have the right to
steal the keys to Freedom’s door
dangling from Tyranny’s drooling jaw
you have the right to infiltrate,
to violate to launch a coup d’état
You have the right to break-in and enter
instead, you break down and bolt
abandoning naked children that are
lying, dying, crying
beside crooked gates of hell
You have the right to overthrow the king
whose castle’s walls your own hands built so
you’re all guilty, guilty of everything!
Guilty of lethargy
guilty of medicating your life away
from harsh truths that daylight brings
guilty of talking the talk
but not walking the walk
guilty of not working for peace
guilty of not working for peace
guilty of not working for peace
Get against the wall!
You’ve been condemned
and convicted by the people
for your crimes against them
Look up at the sun
through blindfolded eyes
until it hurts you to see and
remember those you betray
and remember, yes you are all guilty
We’re guilty
Guilty of everything
Guilty of everything
Guilty of everything
Korre: Frank, thank you so much. That’s incredible. I am honored to have your voice on this podcast and have that be featured in this little experiment I’m doing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Max Creek. It’s incredible. Thank you so much. Frank, what are you working on nowadays?
Frank: So, I’m currently working on a book about the abstract expressionist artist Nicolas Carone. You might know Jackson Pollock. You might know Willem de Kooning, but you might not know Nick Carone. He lived in Hoboken, New Jersey. An Italian American born 1917, died in 2010. I got to know him quite well because I was researching, at the time, the relationship between jazz and poetry and the abstract expressionist painters, particularly Jackson Pollock.
And so he was still alive at the time — 2006. I did an interview with him and then I wrote an article on him. And then the family commissioned me, asked me if I would do a book. And they said, “Well, what would it take to do a book?” I said, “Oh, a shit-ton of money and a lot of time.” So we signed a deal. It’ll be finished, I think, in June. And hopefully after this pandemic, we’ll do a release in 2022, probably because this year is going to be a wash, I think.
But, it’s been a great experience writing the book. I interviewed a hundred people or more — the relationship between jazz, between poetry, between the abstract expressionists and New Jersey and Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, and all the other great people that interweave into Nick’s life. And then I’ll do a screenplay on it as well, probably make it into a film.
Korre: Cool. Frank, if fans of the podcast want to learn more about you, do you have a website with more information?
Frank: Sure. You can go to frankmessina.com.
Korre: All right. Frank, thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek.
Frank: Thank you. My pleasure. Go Creek.
It was a huge honor talking with Frank Messina and I really hope you enjoyed listening to our conversation. Coming up now, I am going to play some music and poetry from Max Creek’s live performance at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut, back on September 19, 1998. From the second set, this is Love Makes You Lose Your Mind into Poetry with Frank Messina into Wild Side.
That concludes episode 27 of Hooked on Creek. As always, let me know if you have suggestions for future episodes or recommendations on people to interview for this podcast. You can get in touch with me via the contact link on the Hooked on Creek website at hookedoncreek.com or via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Just search for Hooked on Creek to get connected. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for tuning in.