Chopper Franklin

One of the last men standing from the notorious Los Angeles punk rock scene of the late 1970’s, Chopper Franklin plays guitar and mandolin for the Gothic Americana band Heathen Apostles and has played guitar and bass for The Cramps, the Mau Maus, Charley Horse, Nick Curran & the Lowlifes among others. He has produced several albums, mostly for his record label Ratchet Blade Records, which specializes in dark roots music. He is also being recognized as one of the driving forces behind the emerging Gothic Americana genre.

While performing at a Mr. Badwrench show (whose “Up Jumped the Devil” cd is available now on Chopper’s Ratchet Blade Records), Chopper met Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of the Cramps, eventually joining the band in 2002. He did several tours and recorded the final Cramps studio album “Fiends of Dope Island”.

In 2013 Chopper formed a new project called the Heathen Apostles and in the following years he has produced over 20 releases for the band and toured overseas several times.
In recent years, Chopper has produced the Phantom of the Black Hills album That Witch (2021), the Heathen Apostles’ Bloodgrass Vol. 3 & 4 (2022) and songs and score for the Gothic Western animated series The Goodbye Family.

In 2023 Chopper released Spaghetti Western Dub No. 1, a groundbreaking album that fuses the vast, arid landscapes of Spaghetti Western music and the heavy rhythms of Dub Reggae. It features vocals by Mather Louth and the Phantom of the Black Hills.