MUSICIAN. CREATIVE DIRECTOR. WRITER.
ARTIST. PRODUCER. DIRECTOR.
MUSIC GUY. VISUAL GUY. IDEA guy.
DABBLER. SUCCESS. HACK…

SO, WHY ALL OF THESE DIFFERENT
CREATIVE APPROACHES?

BECAUSE I don’t like to repeat myself. EVER.

BESIDES, ISN’T LIFE MORE EXCITING DIVING INTO STRANGE POOLS, AND TURNING UNEXPECTED CORNERS?

My creative ‘mediums’ can seem to be all over the place; music, visuals, words, or whatever I’m moved by in the moment; but each one of them feeds the other. They are symbiotic and inter-reliant. They are connected by the Search to Discover, Connect and Collaborate.

I used to say that my job was to get into a project, create a plan, and then do my best to f%#$ it up.

In reality, my job has always been more specifically to find the limitations in a group, a project, a scenario; and then push against them, expand them, dig at their weaknesses until the unexpected finally happens.

It’s far more EXCITING to STEP INTO DEEP WATERS than to stagnate doING THE SAME thing over and over AGAIN.

I don’t like to repeat myself. It’s been that way all my life. Since I wanted to be a teenage comic book artist, and then learned how to screen print, then learned drums, formed a punk band inspired by The Clash, switched to guitar, turned down my dad’s offer to take over the flower farm, went to art school, studied painting, left art school, became a folk duo and started learning to sing high Appalachian harmonies inspired by The Louvin Brothers, sold and sold-out of our DIY hand made merchandise at gigs, got a job assisting the rangers at a national park and fell in love with the distance of things, with the negative space in those views, learned to shoot photos using a Pentax film camera, started a screen printing shop, studied literature, and read read read everything I could get my hands on, stumbled through various jobs some successful, some not so, learned offset printing, designed some clothing, made my first album cover, and then designed more, picked up more instruments, formed a new band, made records that never repeated a formula twice, passed that on to other folks in studios and writing rooms, rediscovered painting, recorded a solo album ‘Fürst In The Dirt’, became obsessed with soil and how things grow - coming full circle, til I eventually realized that ALL of it was the DNA of a creative life. The Searching. The Expression. The Creation.

 So,
HOW DO YOU PUT ALL OF THAT ACROSS AND NOT SOUND PRETENTIOUS AS,
…WELL, F%#$?!?

because,

COLLABORATION.

Yes Collaboration. And with people far far better than yourself.

No idea, project, album, photo shoot, photo campaign, or design is achieved without collaboration. Whether it is the studio engineer making ‘magenta’ sound like it should (I admit, I have actually described a musical tone in terms of a color in more than one recording session), the client who inspired you with a simple suggestion and a ‘taste’ of their product, the partner-in-crime pushing, challenging as you pour over sketches and words together, the specialty print house realizing your vision in physical form, the ink supplier sparking new ideas, the paper maker giving your product just the right touch of sensuality, the guitar luthier handing back your instrument repaired and rejuvenated and you finding a whole new set of songs inside. The list goes on and on.

That is what makes all this creative searching possible. The collaborating, the push and pull. That’s what makes it possible to learn something new about the world around us.

I’ve been very fortunate to have had wonderful collaborators along the way to teach me, to create with me and in many cases to pay me to create for them while attempting all of this Arty stuff. I’ve spent my life doing many many different things. Some interesting, some challenging, some dead end alleys, but all attempts at expressing something creative and every one of them worth the struggle, the challenge and the muscle they required to collaborate.

Some of my favorite collaborators over the years…

The Electra Bicycle Co.

Directing the images that would form their world wide campaign for two years and increase their sales by 25%. Being growled at by surf photographer legend Art Brewer for asking the ridiculous and knowing he was only pushing me to ask him for more. And seeing that the owner had walked on set in the midst of our orchestrated madness, watched awhile, laughed with a few cast members, and then left to explore the area deciding that we knew exactly what we were doing.

ELLEN STARSKI ALBUM ART

Album covers for countless Artists, some I was a fan of, some I was a part of. But every piece of art unique to each one of those Artists. The first Dead Rock West cover, slow and laboriously working with photographer Frank Lee Drennen to create a visual world to match the songs he had written, and still one of my favorite all time covers. And most recently, being allowed free reign by Ellen Starski, a songwriter from Nashville, to collage, then paint the entire front and back of her album cover and then get to design the gatefold vinyl to show it off to its fullest. A design that will remain in my top three covers.

ANNE McCUE COLLABORATION ‘BREAKOUT’

Songwriter, co-writer, performer of songs, producer of songs, all of these things a logical part of the whole orchestra I’ve always heard in my head. Begun from earliest memory and will continue until after my memory fails me.

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