With a jamming guitar and glorious vocals, The Locktenders is the acoustic band of Kent and Tina Franklin, performing an eclectic mix of up-tempo pop and classic rock. They have been lauded for their well-rounded set list of carefully crafted covers spanning the decades, as well as their own rich and introspective original songs.
Centrally located in up-and-coming Falls Church, Virginia, they support their community in the “Little City”, but are always ready to travel away to a great venue.
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Tina remembers performing in her folk's living room singing and dancing for anyone who would listen. This usually consisted of stuffed animals and Breyer horse figurines, strategically placed in the round. As a pre-teen she became an obsessed Beatles fanatic where her friends once assembled an impromptu Beatles intervention because they just couldn’t stand to listen to anymore analysis of the song, A Day in the Life. After all these years Tina still doesn't get what their problem was. Oh, well.
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Finally, off to high school and college where she discovered her beautiful Coloratura soprano singing voice and spent that time polishing runs and trills performing in countless weddings, shows and recitals. She still feels it was one of her greatest honors to be chosen as a Member of the Paul Hill Chorale performing an annual concert series at the Kennedy Center. Tina still has to ask, “Did that really happen?”
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While she treasured her classical roots, her love of soul, rock and blues beckoned, so she performed in wedding and house bands, but was still not feeling the love, so she started her own acoustic group in 2015, along with her husband Kent, writing and performing her own songs and crafted covers for the acoustic band Falls Church.
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Some of her influences include The Beatles, Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and female greats such as KT Tunstall, Brandi Carlisle, Ann Wilson, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, and the great standards by Etta and Ella of course...
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Her guilty pleasure is always Christina Aguilera with her karaoke go-to of Ain’t No Other Man. This performance most definitely brings the house down and usually garners at least a free round of drinks.
Hope to see ya out there!​
Tina & Kent
