Donavon Frankenreiter

With his chipper dude-next-door appeal and background in pro surfing, it'd be easy to mistake Donovan Frankenreiter's biography with that of blockbusting folkie Jack Johnson. In fact, California-born Frankenreiter and Johnson were friends before either had successful music careers -- they met when Frankenreiter rented a room from Johnson's parents while on a Hawaiian surfing junket. Johnson released Frankenreiter's debut LP on his own Brushfire label in 2004, a warmly received collection of easygoing folk pop that underlined their musical kinship. Frankenreiter moved to Lost Highway in 2006, self-producing Move By Yourself, which yielded some modest radio success. Pass It Around appeared in 2008, also on Lost Highway. For it, Frankenreiter called in his musical idols, champions of corduroy sounds like Ben Harper, Grant-Lee Phillips and G Love.