– Kelly – 12/12/96
You may recognise Dwayne Francks as the guy who played keyboard for “Face the Music” on TV a few years ago, but there is more to his repertoire than one-liners and a few notes…
As Francks himself points out “Face” had some drawbacks; “It gave me a higher profile, but it didn’t show people what I was actually about. They thought I was just the guy who played
4 notes – well that’s not what I do”. What he actually does is tour 8-9 months of the year performing at conferences, clubs and functions in New Zealand and Australia – he arrived for this interview fresh from a Deer Farmers’ conference in Wanganui. He describes himself as an ‘entertainer’ rather than a comedian or a musician. His performance is based around a mixture of music and verbal humour, or as he calls it: “Hot-blooded music and madness”. He
believes that the label ‘comedian’ can be a limiting one, and prefers to see the comedy side go hand in hand with his entertainment.
Francks grew up in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada in a “small” town of 25 000 people. His childhood gave him a taste for skiing, waterskiing and fishing and homemade wine, as well as music. He learnt saxophone and piano
and started playing in bands when he was in his teens which paid his way though a University degree in music and education. A white water rafting expedition brought him to New
Zealand until he “wound up in Christchurch and discovered the grand piano at the Chancery. As fate would have it, one girl led to another, and finally, after five days, I asked her to marry me. Two years later she said yes”. Karina, a New Zealander, tours with Dwayne
and is closely involved in his career.
Although Dwayne defines his nationality as a crossbreed “CAN-WI”, half Canuck and half Kiwi,he has no immediate plans to return to Canada. He enjoys the closeness of everything here,
(which makes touring easier), the lack of snow, the Kiwi sense of humour, and our resistance to the wave of political correctness currently “drowning” Northern America; “Everyone tends to be a little less sensitive about things here. We’re still safe, we still have a soul”.
Francks’s own sense of humour is less safe. When asked to describe it he says succinctly: “Warped and twisted. Basically normal”. During the show he spotlights people and
asks them questions for the audience’s amusement. His humour is never malicious, he insists, and he watches reactions and body language to gauge how far to push people. He cites the advantages of being less than perfect himself when hassling bald men, and Karina adds (kindly?) “You couldn’t be the Greek Adonis and get away with it”.
Dwayne prescribes positive humour, or what he terms “laugh-firmations”, as an
essential in life to prevent people taking themselves so seriously.
Once on stage Francks seems to thrive on the adrenalin rush of not knowing what will happen next; ” I never really plan my shows. So much happens right in front of me and I have to be ready to jump in”. But does he get nervous? “I work myself into a diarrhoeic frenzy, but that’s God’s way of telling me I have to put up with some crap too!”. Off stage he also prefers not to be pinned down; “If you’re in a positive state of mind things just come to you, and you’ve got to have
the freedom to be able to accept it. I don’t like planning more than three months in advance”.
Dwayne speaks earnestly about the lack of traditional storytellers in modern society, “Storytelling excites the imagination – your mind comes alive. I remember Dad telling us bedtime stories. He’d scare the crap out of us, we couldn’t sleep. Maybe that’s why I hate going to bed when it’s still dark”.
Francks is also well versed in modern forms of communication, he regularly uses the Internet as a research tool for his shows, he will soon have his own Web page (site arriving here soon), and he plans to produce a CD-ROM.
Dwayne Francks’ personality combines brashness with the philosophical and is perhaps best summed up in his version of the meaning of life;
“Being put on the spot, it makes your mind (he snaps his fingers). Thinking is the meaning of life. Being able to think and laugh. And you’ve got to do both to do both.”
