Donavon Frankenreiter

With a name like your eighth-grade lab partner who made it big in software and a look from the John Holmes Visits Piggly Wiggly home tapes, Donavon Frankenreiter could be the poster boy for the carefully remodeled soft-’70s niche. Frankenreiter was doing just fine as a world-renowned surfer. Then Jack Johnson and G. Love discovered his charming songwriting and welcomed him into the sand-in-the-shoes, VH1-friendly, sleepy jam-blues genre. With songs such as “Whatcha Know About” and “It Don’t Matter,” a prominent spot on the soon-to-be released Bread tribute album (or perhaps a seat in the Seals and Crofts pantheon) can’t be far behind.