Frampton plays soundtrack to massive pork consumption

Peter Frampton
Rib America, Military Park
Friday, Aug. 29, 9 p.m., free admission before 5 p.m., $5 afterwards, all-ages

Last year, guitar legend Peter Frampton won his first Grammy for “Fingerprints,” an all-instrumental album. But Frampton didn’t leave the Grammy ceremony with his award in hand.

Frampton says that it took about three months for him to receive his gramophone statuette. Once the Grammy was in his possession, Frampton gave it a place of distinction in the den of his Cincinnati home.

“It’s sitting on a bookshelf in my den, to the right of the plasma TV,” Frampton says. “That way, when I’m fast-forwarding through the TV commercials, I can look at it!”

The one television commercial that the 58-year-old musician admits he sits through is the GEICO ad that features none other than Peter Frampton.

The commercial shows Frampton, with his black guitar and amp, standing in a kitchen behind Kari Rigg, who is billed as an actual GEICO customer. As Rigg recalls a situation when the insurance company provided her with quick service, Frampton plays his guitar and uses a Framptone to help reiterate the customer’s story. The ad closes with Frampton “playing” his classic line “Do you feel like I do?”

According to Frampton, the people at GEICO were looking for a “talking guitar” to use in one of their television ads. So who better to get in touch with than the man behind the “Framptone,” his patented talk box that creates such an effect with an electric guitar?

“If you know my stage act, you know that I never take myself too seriously,” Frampton points out. “It was a lot of fun to do the commercial.

“The only thing in the commercial that wasn’t ‘real’ was the kitchen. They needed an all-white kitchen to distinguish my black Marshall stack from the dishwasher!”

Frampton says that his Grammy winner “Fingerprints” was a project that gave him the chance to write and record music that may not have commercial appeal, but “makes me feel good. I’m not going to try to sound like anyone or anything else but myself.

“I know that with “Fingerprints,” which was my return to A&M Records, the label would have liked me to have done some singing on the record,” he says. “But I did the album knowing I could do anything I wanted. And it turned out to be the first album of mine to win a Grammy!”

Frampton jokes that “after winning the Grammy, it’s like the slate has been wiped clean and I’ve started on career number four! I’m the guy who won’t go away!”

This year Frampton has spent a lot of time writing songs for his next album, which he starts recording in November.

“I have 28 songs written so far and I’m shooting for 40!” Frampton says. “I’ve never had so much material ready to record. I’ve been writing with different people, and I will keep on writing when I go into the studio in November.

“Like ‘Fingerprint,’ I’m making this album for me, not for radio. I hope people will get to hear it, somewhere, and like it.”