Frank Jones
~ story and photos by Ryan Stacy
A
Midwestern tourist destination, evolving with the times. The most beautiful forest land in Indiana. A haven for the local arts scene. Depending on your interests and personality, you might describe Brown County as any one of these. But for Frank Jones, a lifetime in Brown County has led him to embrace all three— and his love for them comes through in his music.
Frank was raised in Bellsville, where rural families like his were big, hardworking, and strong.“ My great-grandfather built houses, my mom ran a store, and my uncles laid block,” he remembers.“ Us boys would put up hay, hang tobacco, dig potatoes, whatever.”
Soon, Frank and his brother Dickey were picking up musical instruments after they put down their tools for the day.“ Once we found our way to town with our guitars, we found all the happenings, we were part of a tribe,” says Frank of the musical scene around Nashville, Indiana in the early 1970s.“ And when the hippies moved in, we saw it as extending our base.”
Though still in high school, the brothers found themselves welcomed as the entertainment at big local bashes(“ Playing for 300 people at that age does wonders for the ego”), and the attention they got from older musicians was a catalyst for their own musical ambitions. Frank confides,“ I loved it. I thought,‘ I could do this forever... and I think I’ m gonna!’”
But don’ t mistake Frank as purely an extrovert, living for the next full moon party. As much as he loves being around friends, he says he feels the most like a songwriter when he’ s alone with his thoughts and feelings.“ Best advice I ever got? If you can be happy playing for the trees, you can play for anybody,” Frank says.
So, it’ s fitting that he called his new CD Lined in Sycamore. Along with Kim, his wife of thirty years, Frank lives on ten acres outside of Nashville, where the peace and solitude provide the perfect backdrop for writing and composing his brand of bluesy country-folk. And while he does draw upon his more gregarious side for his material, he says he ultimately does his best work deep in thought about the less-obvious things in life, experiences and themes we might take for granted while lost in the revelry of a crowd.
“ Lined in Sycamore is a combination of stuff I recorded a while back, and some newer stuff,”
36 Our Brown County • Jan./ Feb. 2018