Images: Frank Portman of The Mr. T Experience October 22, 2016 at the Windmill Library

For those that don’t know, outside of my duties at Punks in Vegas, I’m also a youth services librarian. And during my promotion of the PIV 5 Year Bash, I was asked who, if anyone, I’d like to see from the punk world play my library’s auditorium. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to give an enthusiastic response: Frank Portman.

The musician, who many of you know as the frontman for seminal Lookout Records pop punk band The Mr. T Experience, has spent the last decade in the Young Adult world, after penning the successful King Dork novel. Portman’s show at Windmill came at a good time, with that book’s sequel, King Dork Approximately, getting a paperback release earlier this month, a release that comes with a digital download of his band’s first full album in 12 years, King Dork Approximately: The Album.

Portman kicked things off by talking about his unique way of breaking into the writing field, with a literary agent who was already an MTX fan eager to get a book out of him. That book,  King Dork, found success, but as Portman joked, having a second and third success hasn’t been quite as easy. This of course refers to sophomore release Andromeda Klein and King Dork sequel King Dork Approximately. Though released originally in hardback in 2014, the book’s recent paperback release is being treated as a “second chance” for the novel, as Portman explained, released in a less busy time of the year to hopefully find its audience.

This segued nicely into the musical portion of the event, which focused heavily on songs from King Dork Approximately: The Album. As a bundle with the paperback, the album is an incentive for MTX fans who are lapsed readers to give the book a try and vice versa, since the combo pack is less than you’d normally spend on the two separately. “Cinthya (With A “Y”),” “High School Is The Penalty For Transgressions Yet To Be Specified” and the title track sounded great in the large auditorium.

The rest of the show was broken up between songs and questions, with Portman giving advice to budding authors and singers. The final question was more of a request, one for pop punk classic “More Than Toast.” When a number of women in the audience cheered Frank smirked. “I don’t know much about show biz, but I know that when the cute girls cheer at a song request, I have to play it.” This meant the afternoon ended on a supremely high note, with a crowd of people singing along to “I love you more.”

-Emily Maview

Photos by Aaron Mattern | https://www.flickr.com/photos/akmofoto/