THERE WASALWAYS MUSIC.
THE TOOLS CHANGED.
THE INSTINCT DIDN’T.
I WAS THERE.
Long before The Frank A.I. Project, music was already part of Frank’s life.
It started as a fan — loud concerts, loud guitars and the kind of music that made standing too close to the speakers seem like a perfectly reasonable decision.
Eventually, watching wasn’t enough.
Nearly three decades have passed since Frank’s years in the Atlanta music scene. It was a different time — before cell-phone cameras were everywhere, and photography was often restricted inside venues. Much of the material that did exist was lost or scattered as bands broke up and life moved on.
What remains tells the story remarkably well. The photographs, ticket stubs, advertisements, venues and other artifacts throughout this page come from the places, shows and music scenes that shaped these memories. Together with Frank’s recollections, they form a surviving scrapbook of the road that eventually led to The Frank A.I. Project.
LOUD FROM THE BEGINNING.
Frank grew up near Tampa, Florida, with the Lakeland Civic Center practically in his backyard and the Tampa Bay concert scene close enough to become part of growing up.
The USF Sun Dome and Lakeland Civic Center were places where music stopped being something coming through a speaker and became something physical — amplifiers, crowds, stage lights and guitars loud enough to feel.
Poison. Lita Ford. Cinderella. Bon Jovi. Mötley Crüe.
Before Frank ever stepped onto a stage himself, he was standing in front of them.
OCTOBER 11, 1988 — USF SUN DOMEPOISON / LITA FORD / BRITNY FOX
A show Frank attended during his Central Florida years.
NOVEMBER 13, 1986 — LAKELAND CIVIC CENTERDAVID LEE ROTH
A surviving ticket from Frank’s Central Florida years.
THE NIGHT THEY PLAYED IT AGAIN.
Billy Idol came through Lakeland during the Whiplash Smile tour, with The Cult on the bill.
Frank was in the crowd.
At the end of the concert, “Mony Mony” wasn’t finished. The song was performed again as cameras captured footage for the live music video.
A few months later, “Mony Mony (Live)” reached No. 1 in America.
Somewhere in that crowd was Frank.
CHARLEY MAGRUDER’S — ATLANTAA gathering place for Atlanta’s rock scene, local musicians and touring bands.
SOUL HOUSE
ATLANTA / THE 1990sMOST OF IT DISAPPEARED.ONE NIGHT DIDN’T.
Soul House was small and short-lived. Frank was part of the band during his years in Atlanta, when rehearsals, clubs and late nights had replaced standing in the audience.
Very little from the band survives. Photographs were scarce, cameras were often prohibited inside venues, and whatever flyers, snapshots and scraps once existed were lost as the years moved on.
BUT THERE WAS
THAT NIGHT
AT THE MASQUERADE. ↓
THE PHONE RANG.
One night, the band was hanging out together at their guitarist’s apartment when a call came in. The scheduled opener at the Masquerade had canceled.
Could Soul House be ready in a few hours?
They said yes.
They didn’t even know who they were opening for.
Then they got to the Masquerade.
“It was Great White.”— Frank
For a little garage band, that was a very big night.
THEN CAME
ATLANTA.
By the 1990s, Frank wasn’t just standing in the audience anymore. He was part of a band called Soul House, moving through Atlanta’s music scene at a time when rock was changing fast and seemingly every night offered another story.
Clubs became gathering places. Musicians crossed paths. Sometimes the line between the people onstage and the people standing beside you at the bar wasn’t much of a line at all.
Atlanta’s music scene had a way of making the distance between the stage and everyday life surprisingly small. Frank crossed paths with musicians from bands including Warrant, White Zombie and Metallica at Charley Magruder’s in North Atlanta, and frequently ran into Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes while moving through Atlanta nightlife.
“You never knew what the day would bring. And somehow, every night became another adventure.”
HEAVEN WAS UPSTAIRS.
The Masquerade wasn’t just another club. Housed inside Atlanta’s old DuPre Excelsior Mill, it became one of the places where the city’s music worlds collided.
Heaven was upstairs. Hell was below. Purgatory was somewhere in between. Local bands, touring acts and artists who would become some of the biggest names in alternative music moved through the same old industrial building.
Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Radiohead, Fugazi and countless others passed across its stages over the years. But what mattered to Frank wasn’t a list of famous names. It was being inside that world — rehearsing, playing clubs, meeting musicians and discovering that the distance between the audience and the stage wasn’t nearly as large as it once seemed.
And for one unexpected night, Soul House became part of that story too.
“Yeah. Heaven really was upstairs.”
THE MASQUERADE — HEAVEN, UPSTAIRSA show inside the old DuPre Excelsior Mill on North Avenue.
THE MASQUERADE — NORTH AVENUE, ATLANTAThe old DuPre Excelsior Mill became one of Atlanta’s defining independent music venues.
SOMETIMES THE MUSIC HAD TO SPEAK LOUDER.
Frank knew members of Jackyl during this period and was present for one of the stranger chapters of the band’s early history.
In 1992, after a Georgia Kmart refused to carry Jackyl’s debut album, the band staged an impromptu performance outside the store. Frank was there and was part of the event.
“I was there. Jesse’s father and I were there on the sidelines, supporting the band.”— Frank
AND THEN THERE WERE CHICKENS.
Not every memory from Atlanta’s music scene fits neatly into a music biography.
Frank was part of releasing chickens onto the stage during a Battle of the Bands event at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre.
That’s probably all the explanation this particular scrapbook page needs.
“It made sense at the time.”— Frank
ONE SONG NEVER LEFT.
Somewhere in this period, Frank wrote a song called Distance.
It wasn’t a fragment waiting to be finished. It was a complete rock ballad — written, recorded and finished. And, by Frank’s own admission, probably not a particularly good one.
But it survived.
Decades later, Frank pulled the old song back out and wondered what might happen if he rebuilt it using the technology now available to him.
It started as an experiment. Take an old song. Keep the idea at its heart. See what new tools could do with it.
That experiment became the first song of The Frank A.I. Project.
And unexpectedly, Distance became the bridge between two very different parts of Frank’s life.
So you get to hear something that isn’t anywhere else.
DISTANCE
THE ORIGINAL RECORDING
Recorded decades before The Frank A.I. Project existed.
THIS RECORDING EXISTS HERE — AND NOWHERE ELSE IN THE ARCHIVE.
The song that eventually became the beginning of The Frank A.I. Project, heard as it existed before the project existed.
THE TOOLS CHANGED.
THE INSTINCT DIDN’T.
Frank had always loved music. He had also always been deeply technical. For a long time, those were simply two different parts of his life.
Eventually he stopped keeping them separate.
In March 2026, those histories collided in The Frank A.I. Project — human-written ideas, lyrics and creative direction pushed through modern production technology without accepting the boundaries of a single genre.
The point wasn’t to recreate the band Frank had been in decades earlier. It was to find out what became possible when everything he’d learned from music, writing and technology could finally exist in the same place.
STILL CURIOUS.
There was never a master plan connecting a Tampa concert crowd, an Atlanta club, a song written decades ago and an experiment with modern music technology. Looking backward, the line is easier to see. Frank is still following it.
EXPLORE THE MUSIC