Katharina Franck | tr

Katharina Franck (born July 28th, 1963 in Düsseldorf) is a singer/songwriter and musician from Germany. She is best known for being the singer/guitarist of the band Rainbirds.

Katharina Franck spent her childhood in Portugal. Form 1974 to 1977 she lived in Sao Paolo, Brazil where she learned to play guitar and wrote her first songs. Back in Portugal she began to play in several bands.
In 1981 she moved to Cologne where she continued writing prose and poetry (in German). She received her first singing lessons at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg before she moved to Berlin in 1983 where she first made her living having several part-time jobs.

She founded the band Rainbirds in spring 1986 and they got a record deal at Mercury after they had won a band competition in Berlin. In 1987 their single Blueprint turned out to be a great success in various European countries. The Rainbirds changed their line-up several times and published a total of six studio albums. Their last album, a live recording, came out in 1999.

From 1990 to 1994 Katharina Franck was a member of the group „Stein“ (together with FM Einheit of the German band Einstürzende Neubauten and her Rainbirds colleague Ulrike Haage). They published 3 albums.

After several guest appearances and a radio play (see Discography), she published her first solo album „Hunger“ in 1997. With this album she created a new genre which she called „spoken pop songs“. She continued in this genre on her second solo album „Zeitlupenkino“ (2002).
Her latest album came out in 2006: „First Take Second Skin“ is again a singer/songwriter album with songs in English.

Her new album "On the Verge of an Autobiography" was released on December 12th, 2008. The first single "Reckless, reckless" is already on air on German radio.

Discography:

With Rainbirds:
Rainbirds (1987)
Call Me Easy, Say I'm Strong, Love Me My Way, It Ain't Wrong (1989)
Two faces (1991)
In a different light (1993)
Making Memory (1996)
Forever (1997)
3000.live (1999)

With the group "STEIN":
Stein (1990)
Steinzeit (1992)
König Zucker (1994)

radio play:
Franck/Haage: Bei unserer Lebensweise ist es sehr angenehm, lange im voraus zu einer Party eingeladen zu werden (1999)

solo albums:
Hunger (1997)
Zeitlupenkino (2002)
First Take Second Skin (2006)
On the Verge of an Autobiography (2008)

guest appearances:
Gudrun Gut - Members of the Ocean Club (1996)
Ammer/Haage - Seven Dances Of The Holy Ghost (1998)
Rosanna & Zélia - Coisario (1999)

(translated from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Franck)

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