When I describe Frank Hurricane to a friend, I tell them to imagine if John Fahey had become an extremely posi juggalo. While he’s got the chops of a skilled fingerstyle guitarist, his songs vividly and irreverently (but also reverently!) depict a very specific corner of the American underbelly–tri-state Appalachian Trail rats (of which he is one), mystic grannies, Delta 9-addled travelers, the folks he meets while waiting in line at amusement parks. He does this in his own language–shrymp, shrympanati, shrympanaut, spiritual, off tha chain, mystical holy yeti powder. He’s a storyteller, but not exactly the kind that came to your elementary school assembly (though if he did that would be off tha chain!). When you meet him, he will likely be shirtless. He may give you a nickname. He will definitely give you a bear hug. 

Frank has road-dogged it across the United States for fifteen years now, putting out about as many releases during that time. But on his new record, Southern Shrymp in The Big City, the Hurricane has levelled up to category 5. Here he’s at the top of his powers, emerging through his songs as the wise laughing Buddha who takes it all in, passes no judgement, acknowledges the tradeoffs yet accepts his role—as he sings on “Roadside Traveler Blues,”—“to travel them spiritual pathways of the world.” He traverses these mystical ley lines from the Eagles stadium in Philly where he works as a beer vendor, to the hainted mountains of East Tennessee, to the gnarliest, most beloved DIY venues still in existence.

If you listen to a little bit of Frank Hurricane, all the “spiritual,” “mystic,” “holy” adjectives may at first seem cliche and overused. But if you listen to more Frank Hurricane, you realize these words take on a special meaning in his work. Transcendent experiences are as likely to be found in a Walmart parking lot with a “mountain shaman or a naughty whale-tailed country girl,” or at a corporatized mountain resort as at a beautiful mountain overlook or while skinny dipping in the creek under the full moon. In his songwriting, “spiritual” (spiritchal in Hurricanese) describes the flow of a river or the feeling of seeing a man pulled off a Dollywood rollercoaster on a gurney–it’s not necessarily good or bad, but all part of the Gigacoaster of Human Experience. 

In “Taylor and Rhonda,” which centers around a pair of “psychedelic lesbians” Frank met at Six Flags Over Georgia, he drives alone at night, blasting Jason Molina’s “Farewell Transmission” and spots a ghost walking down the highway, “maybe on his way to heaven; maybe just 7-11.” Those two possibilities are a fitting description for most of Frank’s characters—are they holy apparitions from another world? Or a freak you meet in the chip aisle at a gas station? Who’s to say, really, and does it actually matter? Frank teaches us to treat them with the same grace and awe. He bestows his most beautiful, Bert Jansch-iest of guitar riffs of the record on “Girthworm Jim,” a song about a stoic, perpetually high, Honey Bun™-loving dude running from the law on the Appalachian Trail. Frank takes him to a Chinese buffet, where Jim commits the unholiest of actions upon the hot bar…Still, Frank’s so glad to have met him, and off they each go on their respective journeys. 

“Lucky King Prawn” with its sludgy guitars and Frank’s doubled droning harmonies describes an omniscient oracle divining on his mountaintop perch. “Like a holy roller or some shrimpanauts on ice, he stirs our fortunes round like tiny grains of rice.” A God who has seen it all? Or Frank’s self portrait? Regardless, this King Prawn among a world of shrymps is our guide through these twelve tracks. Here, the reverent and irreverent are dosed equally, its lesson that the world is still enchanted; power spots and magical beings are everywhere upon the earth. And we got to treat ‘em kind. 

-Emily Hilliard Berea KY 2025