Frank Hannon’s Reflections Revealed: Tesla Legend’s Explosive Solo Album! Exclusive Interview!

Frank Hannon Interview

The Trout was honored to an exclusive interview with Frank Hannon, legendary former lead guitarist and co-founder of Tesla, known for iconic rock anthems like Love Song. Frank's just released his solo instrumental album Reflections on September 12th, 2025. After a year of personal loss, he rediscovered his passion for the guitar, crafting soulful tracks like Our Father's Love, Sunrise, and San Francisco, a nod to his Bay Area roots.

Blending blues, rock, and acoustic artistry, Reflections showcases Frank's emotive solos and fresh soundscapes. Let's dive into his journey and this stunning album. Now here's The Trial with Frank.

Enjoy. Frank Hannon, coming at you live and real. This is real, man.

That's real. How did the show go last night? Hey, the show was fantastic. The whole trip to New York City was such a success.

It was a very small crowd, but man, I still played like it was at the Madison Square Garden. It didn't stop me from wanting to put out my guitar energy. I had some very cool fans that had come down and, you know, it was at the Cutting Room, which is a great sounding room.

And more importantly, and most importantly too, is I got to play for some old friends. The editor of Guitar World Magazine was there, and my friends from my old record company were there. It was a magic night.

Well, you know, the funny thing, you're a unique person right now, and I'll tell you why. Because not very many people go out and bring their guitar and just start playing for people. I'm sure you've got backing tracks, I think I heard that, but still, it's just you.

It's just me, and I'm telling some stories and talking about some experiences that are guitar related. It's always come natural to me to play guitar, and I like to make people feel good. It's been fun.

It is a vulnerable position to be in, I will tell you that. It's a very vulnerable position, especially when your guitar goes out of tune a little bit, and you're trying to talk and tune at the same time in between songs. I'll tell you a funny story.

One time I got hired by KGTO in Des Moines, Iowa, to be the intermission music by myself with guitar at the huge music festival they put on. So in between bands, and I think Scorpions and Journey and all these huge bands were playing this festival, I can't really remember right off the bat. But during set change, it was just me by myself, strumming an acoustic, trying to keep the crowd entertained.

So I've got a little bit of experience at it. Like you said, it's a very vulnerable position. You've got a microphone, that's the protection.

So this music on this album is really vulnerable in a sense of it's all guitar, there's no drums or singing. It's an instrumental album, my new record Reflections. And it's music that I've created that's very different than Tesla.

And it's from my soul, this music. So it does feel a little bit more vulnerable than normal to be doing these shows, to be honest. But you know what it is, Frank.

It's you. It's the real you. You know, yeah, it is.

I will say it's from the heart and genuine, for sure. Because I mean, all the bands that we were in, I know you were in a very successful band. But still, you're in a band.

And when you're doing it on your own, you're sitting down and writing the songs. By the way, how long did it take you to put all that together? How long did you start writing for the project? I started recording Little Guitar Ideas in November, after my wife and I returned from a cross-country trip. We evacuated from Hurricane Milton.

We had horses and dogs and cats and a horse trailer. And Milton was coming straight for us. And so we had to get out of there and evacuate it.

And by the time we got 400 miles north, we decided just to keep on going. And we made it all the way back to California in a month. It was like Noah's Ark, man, with the animals.

And one of our horses was sick and we had to put her down and it was very tough. And so that was in October. Excuse me.

So the month of November, I started creating these songs and using the guitar as kind of a healing thing. Just no singing, just play guitar. And it all came very quickly in a burst of creativity.

So I'd say about a month I spent. Isn't it funny, though, that some artists will work on a project forever. And with me, it seems like when the faucet gets turned on, it gets on.

And then it's just, you just can't stop it. You just keep creating. Yeah.

And the trick is, is knowing when that's happening and going with it and not stopping that. And I had read an interview or heard an interview with Tom Petty and he said that was the same thing for him. When he got an idea, he would go with it and he would realize that he was receiving this idea and didn't want to lose it.

So I find the best was first in the morning, man. A lot of this stuff was recorded. I would play around with the guitar and I sitting on the couch and come up with an idea recorded on my voice memo on the phone, listen to it, go to bed, wake up first thing in the morning at five in the morning with the sun's coming up, listen again to the voice memo and go, OK, yeah, I can play this now and then.

Record it, and it would genuinely be the first take, usually, that I would record on my cell phone with this little microphone called Audigo. Here, let me see if I could dig it out for you. It made the capturing the music very real and simple and organic.

I'm digging in my bag here. That's all right. Take your time.

By the way, did I tell you we're on the road? Look, there's New York City right there. So how far is Darrell's house from New York City? Two hours north. And we are right now on the George Washington Bridge, everybody.

Wow. You are in New York City. Yeah.

As we say down in Texas, New York City. Yeah, yeah. I was that thought was that slogan was going through my mind the whole time I was here walking down the street with my cowboy hat.

Now, people ask, you know, why are you wearing a cowboy hat? Is it country? No, it's Western. The music I describe on my album is Western. I grew up in the West, northern California as a kid.

I've been shoveling horseshit for a long time. We've always had horses around. And so it's legit.

It's legit. OK, so here you go. This is this is the microphone.

Well, that's interesting. And it's called Otigo. And you record with it on it transfers to your cell phone.

And my whole record was recorded with this on my cell phone. And that's amazing to me. I was able to capture my guitar live anywhere on a cruise ship, in a hotel room, in a bedroom with that system.

Hey, now we're in a tunnel. I don't know which tunnel you're in. I don't know.

George, I've been to New York for a while. It's been a long time. I don't have a desire to go to New York.

Oh, man. I love I love the experience of being here. But the streets are looking pretty bad, I'll tell you.

And it was pretty, pretty rough and gritty. But what part of Texas are you in? I'm in the Dallas area, but I was born way down south in the wrong. The Rio Grande Valley.

Really? OK. And you reminded me when I was listening one more time and I got to see Billy Gibbons before he had a beard. And when they just started out.

You were doing a slide work and I went, oh, my God, that's Billy Gibbons. It sounds like Billy Gibbons. Well, I take that as a compliment and an honor, man.

Billy Gibbons is one of those guitar players that I forget to mention in interviews as an influence. His slide playing on Tush and just got paid, you know, his slide playing. People ask me, who's your influences on slide? Because everybody talks about Dwayne Allman and Warren Haynes and Derrick Crooks.

Yeah. But my influence on slide playing is more. Rock and roll, I guess, like Billy Gibbons or Joe Walsh or Ronnie Montrose or Gary Roslington is one of my favorite slide player.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But well, thanks for that comparison, man. Thank you. Well, no, I mean, you know, it's funny.

We can't escape that. No way. You know, I was back in April.

There was the guitar shows here every April in Dallas. And I went down to see a great blues player, slide player, Joanna Connor. And she did her set and she walked off the stage and I said, you know, I heard something there.

And she goes, what? I said, Johnny Winter. She goes, oh, yeah, that's a little Johnny Winter in there. So we can't escape it.

That's what influenced us. Hey, I heard a great quote the other day. We're not reinventing the wheel.

No, we're just keeping it rolling. That's pretty good, huh? Yeah. We're keeping that wheel rolling.

We're not reinventing it. You know, I was thinking about and it's funny because I was thinking about doing a podcast on. It came to my attention the other day when they had the VMAs, somebody on Twitter put up that they brought in the old dudes from Aerosmith and somebody and they had like two songs that they played and the music they played was like 50 years old or 40 years old.

And Frank, it started me thinking, is rock dying? I mean, you know, it's like, OK, because I don't want it to see that. But it seems like a genre that more people are moving away from. And I don't want to see that.

But I think what you're doing with your influence, with the rockabilly and all that stuff, I love that a friend of mine here. He's a country swing artist. And yeah, he I just love that stuff.

It's not something I want to digest all the time, but I love it because it just makes you feel good. Makes you feel good, man. People ask me about do I like the blues? Yeah, I like the blues, but I like jumping blues, jumping, boogieing blues.

Yeah, it makes you feel good. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about this situation where you're going to right now.

Is that something that you booked on your I mean, your people booked you or you you called Daryl and said, hey, can I come up and perform? I know a lot of people think of just Daryl's house, but it's like I know people go up there and perform all the time. Yeah, I would love to be part of that filming experience. This is my this is my first time.

It's not going to be filmed or televised. This is my first time being at Daryl's house. And it's it's a restaurant club that he's got.

And we put this together back in July around me coming to New York and playing my my Reflections album and basically reconnecting with Guitar World magazine and and some old friends in in the in the publicity and being here on the East Coast. And I have a great agent who helped me put it together. John Domogal, Arm Entertainment.

They represent me as a solo artist and they helped me put this together. And the fun one is going to be when we fly out of here tomorrow, we're heading to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to the Horseshoe Music Festival that is put on by my brother-in-law, Dwayne Betts. And I'm so proud of Dwayne.

He's he's a great guitar player and he's got a great career. And he and Devin Allman are the sons of Dickie Betts and Greg Allman. And they do their tributes and honor their dads.

And they each have their own solo careers. And they let me play with them once in a while. And that's a lot of fun.

And so we're going to be flying to Jackson Hole tomorrow for that. And the weather will be perfect. I mean, it's obviously getting cool, but still it'll be the perfect time of the year.

Still early enough in September. It's not going to be cold. Hey, and so you mentioned Dallas International Guitar Festival.

I have performed there with Jimmy Wallace a bunch of times. Let's say shout out to that. That's a great event.

I'm hoping to come back there next year and play this music at that. I think this music would fit perfectly at that event because it's all guitar, man. I've really realized how important guitar as an instrument is to me.

I've dabbled with many different projects with Tesla as a songwriter and reproducer and other artists and playing keyboards and all this, trying to sing. Screw that, man. You know what I want to do? I want to play guitar.

That's it. Play guitar. You know, I made that decision about three or four years ago.

And I was doing albums where I was singing and writing rock songs and blues songs. And I finally said, I'm not going to do that anymore. I let my guitar do my speaking for me.

Yes, brother. And that way I don't have to worry. And the other thing, as you get older, as we all get older, people don't look at you and go, this old dude's trying to do some rock music.

If you just play an instrumental, they don't care. You know, they don't care. And it's like, OK.

And I mean, when I listen to your stuff, and I love that. I mean, what really caught my attention when I got the email from John and John sends me. I've interviewed quite a few people, his clients.

And I saw you stand in front of the tractor. I went, OK, I got to listen to this just because he's. And then you start playing and I'm going, dang.

And then I started reading the rest of the PR release and I go, OK, so, yeah, I want to talk. I want to talk about guitars real quick, though. OK.

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Call David today at 469-372-1587. Because when you were with Tesla, what did you play mostly? Did you play like a Strat or a Les Paul? Would you play? With Tesla, I've always played a Gibson SG and a Les Paul and a Telecaster because I always did throw in a little Western twang in some of Tesla's songs back in the old days. And I think that kind of separated us a little bit from the glam bands of the era, a little bit, you know, putting that plus our singer has his lyrics are really I just I'm really happy and proud of J.K.'s lyrics because we've always put out positive messages in our songs.

But anyway, back to the guitars, a Telecaster, a Hummingbird or a Dove acoustic. OK. And a J45 acoustic.

OK. And a Gibson double neck 12 string electric. Oh, yeah, I did see that in a couple of pictures.

Are you having that thing? Yeah. Yeah. I got that back in 1987 at the Gibson factory.

Now, see Gibson guitars before Slash made their comeback, they were not they were really struggling in Gibson for a while because everybody was playing the pointy striped colored fluorescent guitars and the classic sound was kind of not very popular at the time. So they were very supportive of guys that would play them. But I went to Gibson, they turned me on to that double neck and they gave me a couple of SGs and it was a great time back then.

Gibson SG is my favorite because it's the mahogany body and it really resonates differently than a Les Paul. But man, Les Paul is a good old fashion workhorse, too. But then I'd always bring in the Telecaster.

Yeah. Well, the thing about the point is you're playing a semi hollow body now with the Gretsch. So you're getting a different sound.

And I figured you probably played a solid body on the other. I mean, I got my 87 Les Paul there. That's my favorite guitar.

I see that, man. I've been eyeballing it secretly, coveting my neighbor's possession over there. Everybody wonders why it looks so good.

I said because it's my baby. I said I have another one. I have a gold top right there.

But I'm seeing a Firebird or something over there. I don't know. Headstock.

But that's that's for the stuff. And I record that. I want to I want to get single coil stuff.

You know, I want to get I want to get that where instead to go. The reason I always like Les Paul is because I'm a sustained guy. Yeah.

I like sustain. I grew up playing playing blues right behind me is my half stack Les Marshall. So I always like that.

I know a lot of people get tired of playing them because they're so freaking heavy. But the sound you get out. But getting back to what you do, which is you're playing a Gretsch.

That's the main acts you're doing. The Gretsch. For my solo music, I've discovered the Gretsch.

I've always loved the sound of Gretsch, but I really discovered it deeply on this project because it the hollow body sound mixed in with the FilterTron pickups and the Bixby through a clean Fender amp really gives you a lot of dynamics where you can play soft. And of course, it fits the fact that I don't have drums or singing or anything to compete with. So I'm exploring the tones of the guitar with the Gretsch.

It has a way of opening a whole other sound for me. And I'm really loving it at this time. I love all guitars, man.

I'm a sucker for guitars. I've collected everything under the sun that nobody wants. I've got these moon shaped guitars from Tokyo that I found.

I've got these guitars that are made out of all metal. They're called Valeno. They're gorgeous.

I don't know if you remember the Valeno guitar. It's a chrome, aluminum guitar that's really unique. But right now I'm loving the sound of the hollow body Gretsch with the FilterTron pickups through a Fender amp.

But it really works the best with this kind of music where there's a lot of space. And the space inside the guitar, because I don't think it's semi-hollow. I think it's a full hollow body.

I'm going to take a flashlight and look inside of it. It doesn't have a block through it. It's almost like playing an acoustic.

In fact, there's a clip that someone posted where I was using headphones and the microphone was just picking up the guitar. You can't hear it plugged in. It sounds like an acoustic guitar almost.

But the solid body sounds work better for Tesla when you've got a Marshall and you're playing rock music, competing with drums. Les Paul or an SG, you've got to have that. It's funny, when I was doing some research on you guys, and I'd forgotten you redid the signed song by Five Man Electrical Band, which you had a big hit with that.

Yes, sir. I remember when it came out. I bought the album.

The original Five Man Electric? Yeah, I have the original album. And I bought it and that's the only song on it. I could never finish the rest of the album, because that's the best song on the album.

That's the best song. And I'd forgotten you guys did that. And that was so popular back then, because of all the long hair freaky people and all that stuff.

And it made a statement. Yeah, right. You guys took it and ran with it.

But you've been doing solo stuff. You were talking about Dwayne Betts a while ago. I was looking at some of the stuff you did, like Blue Sky, I think.

Are you still there? Yeah, just hit a bad spot. You're fine. Yeah, okay.

We're on the road, people. Now we are somewhere in the concrete jungle. I don't know.

Somewhere. Head north. What did he say? He says he thinks we're in New York.

We're in New York somewhere. Well, we're not sure. Well, you know where you're going to be in a couple hours.

That's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. So just logistically, you finish there. Do you come back to New York and fly out of there? Or do you drive home? What do you do? Yeah, we're going to do the show at Daryl's house tonight.

And then we're going to drive back to Newark, New Jersey. And then we're going to catch a flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming with Dwayne Betts this weekend. And then I'm going to go home.

And I'm going to visit with my mom and my wife. And I'm going to pick some peppers off my pepper plants. And I'm going to boil some vinegar and pickle them.

And then I'm going to go out to the barn and shovel some horseshit and and maybe saddle up my horse for the day, have some fun. And then I'm back at it with Tesla. We're going to House of Blues in Las Vegas.

Oh, wow. We're doing two weeks, two weeks there. And at the House of Blues, the residency.

When was the last I read this, but I can't remember. When's the last time you guys put an album out? Tesla put out a vinyl single for a song called All About Love that I did an acoustic solo on it. It's called From the Heart, and it's a vinyl 12 inch EP.

And that was that was just last year. That was the latest, latest thing that we put out. So you still have a great fan base that follow you guys? Like when you're going to Vegas, you do well? Oh, yeah, I'm really blown away.

Tesla's first album came out in 86. So 2026 is going to be 40 years anniversary. And we're still selling out casinos and theaters.

And, you know, we average about 2000 tickets a show. And it blows my mind. Yeah.

You know, our songs have have still resonated after all this time with our fans. And they're very loyal. Our fans are like deadheads.

But I think that the gals do shave their armpits. I think they do. And shower.

And shower. Yeah. Yeah.

We got some dedicated, loyal fans for sure. You know what you should do? You should get in touch with Elon and ask him if he could provide you guys with the Tesla cars so you could pull up to the gig in a Tesla cars. Right, right.

Hey, you know, that would be a great idea, you know, but I think we tried that already and it didn't work. I think I think Elon's got his hands full with some other things, bro. Yeah, he's kind of he's kind of busy.

I don't know. He's kind of busy right now. It's just kind of kind of busy.

He's trying to get to Mars, you know, you're trying to get to upper state New York. He's trying to get to Mars. I'm trying to get to the Horseshoe Festival this weekend.

So where is your location where you live? What you know, northern California, where do you live? Yes, sir. I live in northern California. Up in the foothills where, you know, again, I talk about Western, Western life, it's where the gold rush was discovered in 1849.

OK, Placerville, California. I know where that is. Yeah.

Hangtown. It's it's up in the mountains outside of Sacramento. And I grew up in South Sacramento and I used to work up in the hills.

And I used to always dream of living up there. And I just love it, man. It's it's home to me.

And it's it's definitely home, you know, you know, go ahead. I'm looking forward to getting back to Fort Worth, though. You're close to Fort Worth, aren't you? Oh, yeah.

Dallas, Fort Worth. Sure. Yeah.

I like to go to the Will Rogers Arena there. And there's a futurity that happens in December every year. The great horse event.

And I look forward to getting back to Fort Worth. And I do love Oklahoma. Let me know when you're here.

I'm going to stop by and see you. I'd like to. Unfortunately, in my line, I don't get to meet a lot of people unless they come through, you know, if they come through and.

OK, well, well, let's stay in touch, Rick. I appreciate you having me on your show. And let's stay in touch and look it up.

It's called the NCHA Futurity. It's for cutting horses. It's a great event.

They got an expo hall. I might even try to book a little music gig there. I want to talk to Bill Riddle.

Yeah, I do have a question of kind of a personal question, though. How long have you been married? I've been married to Chrissy since 2001. So it'll be 24 years going on 25.

That's wonderful. I mean, in a business that doesn't bode well for people staying together. It's nice to see people that are still together enjoying life.

Well, let me tell you, she's an angel and we're really compatible. And it helps that she grew up with a daddy who played guitar. And I've been through hell, bro.

Let me tell you, this is the third time's a charm. She's my she's my gift from God. She's been my best friend for 25 years.

But before that, let me tell you, I had some some hard times in my life. And so you got to go through it to get to it. You know, I've been married twice.

My wife and I just celebrated number 35. So I appreciate people who are married a long time. Everybody asks you, can you tell me how it's going to work? And I go, there is no, you never know.

You never know. And I was going to say, I can envision you going back when you get off the road, getting on your horses, doing the Western thing, get that. You know, I can see it.

I can see it in my mind. Well, my wife is a much better rider than I am. And so as a husband, I have to step down and let her take the lead.

And Bill Riddle said, now, Frank. You're never going to ride a horse as good as she does. Just get that in your head right now.

But she's never going to play guitar like you. So I kind of have the same thing. My wife grew up on horses.