Well Bob, have a seat and I’ll tell you all about it.

I’ve been meaning to hop back on the blog since I got back from Renegade Austin in May and here it is the week after Renegade San Francisco. Doing two out of town shows in one summer has been a bigger pain than I anticipated and I don’t mind saying I came up short on both occasions. I think I covered my expenses(travel etc.) in Austin but I got my head handed to me in San Francisco. Came in guns a blazin’ and got creamed, you remember the end of Butch and Sundance right? Like that.

I’m over it but I bitched up a storm about it of course you know all about that if you follow me on twitter or facebook. As per usual all my caterwauling is all in good fun, I use my twitter account as free therapy, dumb joke depository, shit talking sounding board amongst friends and lastly a venue to dispense news on new prints/design and such. It’s synced straight to my facebook, I rarely check in on facebook itself.

If I wasn’t counting on making my rent money in San Fran it wouldn’t have been as big a deal to me, I don’t want anyone who came out to Renegade San Francisco or anyone involved with Renegade to feel slighted by anything I said….well, except the DJ. The DJ was spinning a mix tailor made for Kindergarten nap time, I mean you go to a Grocery Store and they at least play something with a consistent tempo. Keeps people engaged on what they came to do, introspective Neil Young or sad bastard Leonard Cohen slow jams are counterproductive to say the least. That DJ was not helping the atmosphere….though I like Wings as much as the next guy.

Jesus, speaking of bringing the mood down…to the bright side we go! I hung out with Tyler and Michelle Madsen of Love Nail Tree in San Fran, after meeting them initially in Austin. We’re going to try and collab on some shirts in the future, excited about that but god knows when that will see the light of day, fall probably. Anyway we saw Dinner for Schmucks the night before I flew back, fun times.

Also in San Fran were the usual poster suspects but I’m not going to list all the Two Rabbits, Kevin Tongs and Nate Duval‘s of the world, they’re all overrated anyway. ZING! LOLZORZ but working my booth myself I didn’t get out and mingle at all really, I think Regan Smith Clarke the shirt designer from Boston is the only non-poster new person I met. His buddy helping him at his booth looks like a young Seth Romatelli from the Uhh Yeah Dude podcast…anyway Regan Smith Clarke, solid guy. Traded him a print for a nice Tank Top. Oh shit, I also met the dudes from Fuzzy Ink, they make shirts too. Nice guys, met them while drunk(..ish) with Mike from Two Rabbits in lower Haight.

Leading up to San Francisco I needed to finish a design for Spoon and get it approved, the time crunch due to finishing new wood prints(more info down the road) and boxing up 100 lbs of my wares and display paraphernalia forced me to spend most of my Friday once I landed in my hotel room slaving over a hot laptop finishing up the design. The design ended up being rad and it was approved:

The print however did not go quite as I had hoped, more on that later. Flukey weird shit, hardly ever happens but…like I said I’ll address that later.

Moving right along, printing this week will be a 3 color poster for The Black Keys(strangely playing the same venue as Spoon in the above poster)  this Friday in Columbus, Ohio.

To recap my trip to Austin in May, it was a great time. Austin always is. I stayed with Tim Doyle (of Nakatomi inc. fame), his wife Angie and darling son Rocko! I’m bad with baby ages but he’s a little guy, got a lot of bam bam in him. Also met Nick Derrington(awesome illustrator) and his wife, if I had 5 minutes to concentrate on it I’m sure I could remember her name but she made this amazing Peach Cobbler. One of the greatest foodstuffs I have ever partaken in. Anyway Tim lives right down the street from where they shoot a portion of my favorite guilty pleasure, Friday Night Lights. Driving through the neighborhood I always felt like I was in the opening montage.

Also hung out with Clint Wilson, yeah he’s a Wilson from Austin I’m sure he’s related to Luke and Owen Wilson…and the other brother, future man whatever is name is. Didn’t hit too many places other than fine eateries which meant I had to stop by Geof Peveto‘s joint: FRANK. It’s Peveto’s world, we’re just living in it…hats off to you sir.
This is getting long already, I’ll just keep blogging throughout this and next week. There’s new stuff up in the store plus the aforementioned Black Keys poster will be available soon and there’s a whole wave of new art prints I can’t even get into right now which will be going up in my etsy store as soon as I can get to it. But designwise right now Ghostland Observatory is on the front burner, need to get some shirt designs and a tour poster done pronto! Before Flatstock at Bumbershoot of course. I’ll be back in a couple days, thanks for stopping by.