Bio

As a music producer, Fran specializes in realizing the artist’s concept. He has the ability to help an artist find his or her true voice. With patience and selflessly true direction, he works with the artist to discover what they really want to say musically, and aims to bring that out of the speakers.

Fran spent over two decades in the recording studio business in New York, building and owning three studios over that span. The most notable of which is still in operation, the legendary NYC jazz recording space, Eastside Sound (John Zorn, Lou Reed). Relocated to its current location in 2003 by Mr. Cathcart and his partner Lou Holtzman, Fran had the opportunity to work with clients such as Pop Smoke, FloRida, Herbie Hancock, Mariah Carey, Jeff Beck and Les Paul, among others.

During this time Fran was a leading music producer and engineer. In 2005, Fran produced the album “American Made World Played” for Les Paul, with co-producer Bob Cutarella, which was awarded the Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental and Best Rock Instrumental. Fran was also Grammy-nominated for Roy Hargrove’s RH Factor “Strength” EP in 2004, as producer, with Brian Bacchus. He was also a part of Gregory Porter’s Grammy-winning 2014 Album “Liquid Spirit as engineer. In addition, he was sound-designer and Pro Tools engineer on Luther Vandross’ 2003 album “Dance with my Father”, which earned three Grammy awards and featured a Grammy winning duet with Beyoncé.

The magic of Fran’s music started when he was growing up in Maine. Not only was he a talented piano, violin and guitar player, but he showed an early talent making music with his high school rock band, “Rush Hour.” Fran was lead guitarist and the band’s de facto producer and engineer, wrestling with the primitive cassette 4-track owned by the band. He quickly mastered dubbing between two cassette machines to create effectively what was a six-track recorder, and used his guitar stomp box delay through the effects loop of the machine to give ambient reverb-like delays to his bands music. Lacking enough microphone stands, Fran had to resort to the familiar trick of taping a Radio Shack microphone to a broom handle in order to put multiple mics on a drum kit, learning the art of microphone placement in the process. These early efforts wound up distributed at school on cassettes handed around by his classmates. The result of Fran and the boys efforts? Getting to play all the local area school dances and being honored as Varsity Rock Band in the high school yearbook.

Fran’s innovative spirit continued when he left small town Maine for New York City where he received a BA in music performance and composition from NYU. In New York, Fran found his true drive and inspiration, cracking the code of the early days of home computer-based music production. Inspired by a Rolling Stone article Fran’s Mom sent him about the use of the new just-powerful-enough Apple computers by guitarist Chris Whitley on his 1991 debut album, Living with the Law, Fran set out to learn all he could about the use of computers to record music, as opposed to tape. With a small loan from his grandfather in 1993, Fran bought an Apple Quadra 700 computer and a Sound Designer II soundcard, and soon was recording and editing his NYC rock bands on Opcode’s Studio Vision, learning about MIDI sequencing and the whole world of digital computer-based recording. Eventually Fran began working in music studios and found that his experience in his early 20s was now paying off, making him an in-demand Pro Tools and Apple computer engineer, able to troubleshoot systems over the phone for older engineers who hadn’t grown up with computers as a tool of music recording. Landing work for Robert Clivilles of C&C Music Factory, producer Nat Adderly, Jr. and dance music producer Joaquin “Joe” Claussell (Herbie Hancock, Verve Remixed, Nina Simone), Fran opened his first studio on 56th street in Manhattan where he cut his teeth in the studio business, learning hiphop production and mixing, sampling, programming and all the tools he would use in the next decade and beyond. It was at that studio he worked (and played guitar on) a track with one of his musical heroes, Herbie Hancock.

Today, Fran spends time working on his own music – writing original songs, singing and playing guitar – and works with artists to produce their music and help them realize their artistic vision. Fran has used his skills as a guitarist and composer, audio engineer, string arranger/orchestrator, beat maker, vocal coach, and all-around producer to bring to life the music of countless artists. Come, be the next!