Q: You take a lot of inspiration from early album covers, and you've
designed some CD covers yourself. A lot of people are nostalgic for the
days of vinyl, and even for physical CD's. So you think that music has
become less of a visual experience now that downloads are becoming the
norm?

A: It could be, but that's where poster art is beginning to take over.
You used to look at the vinyl package and that shrunk to a CD; then it
became a little pixilated image on your screen, so I think poster art
has that niche now. And that's something that's not as available,
something you have to search for, so it's more of a scavenger hunt. And
that's great-You have to piece together the image and find out what the
band is really about. I remember the first time I heard Metallica it was
on a copied tape, no graphics at all. So I was thinking, Who are these
people and what are they all about? When I found their artwork it made
them even cooler.

Q; You grew up into skateboarding and the metal and punk music that grew
around that. What was the first thing you remember drawing?

A: It was the Iron Maiden mascot, Eddie. I loved that character and
would do him in my notebooks all the time, just sitting there in class
copying the album covers. The schoolteachers would see me doing that and
would offer to take me to church instead. Growing up in the Bible Belt
was a big part of it. My earliest influences were the skateboard
graphics of the late 70s-people like Jim Phillips and Pushead, who did
the early T-shirts for the Misfits and Metallica.

Q: Was there a particular thing you loved about those artists?

A: I would say there were a million. First and foremost, it was all
about shocking images that made the parents cringe. That was always a
big factor in my art. And I was into the early horror movies, all the
Frankenstein and Dracula...To me the covers weren't gory, but they
scared the parents to death and that was important. My own parents were
pretty cool, they didn't mind if I was drawing Iron Maiden covers when
they knew I was bringing home the good grades. My parents took me to my
first Kiss concert in 1979, back when you could still see the original
four members still wearing makeup. I still have the artwork from that
show on my wall.

Q: Some of your own posters took on a psychedelic influence, I see a
connection to Grateful Dead type artwork in sone of it. You even did
some blotter acid art.

A: I didn't start getting into psychedelic art until I got into the
concert posters, that was '99 or so. I discovered those San Francisco
artists like Rick Griffin, who did a lot of the original posters. The
psychedelic art was really done for an inclusive group, you had to be a
certain kind of person to really get it. And heavy metal art was an
extension of that-As the music changed the art had to get heavier, to
say 'We're different from everybody else'.

The blotter acid art was something I got approached to do
via an email; it seemed another venue for self expression and saying
what I wanted to say about the whole subject of drugs. I feel that
whatever a person does to expand their mind is good, it's right. So the
piece I did was a tribute to opening the third eye.

Q: Did it reflect what you saw while tripping?

A: Probably not. I probably can't remember the exact visuals I was
experiencing, but the piece captured what the experience felt like. I
probably would have progressed in the same directions, with or without
the outside influence. And when you get down to it, the biggest outside
influence on me would have to be music. But the blotter art was also a
tribute to the 60s, when you would get the acid and the artwork would be
underneath. Nowadays you just get the paper and there's nothing inside.

Q: Aside from the psychedelia and the metal, you refer to religious
iconography and vintage pinups...That's about as eclectic as you can
get.

A: Yeah, the Hindu art is probably everything I wasn't exposed to in a
southern Baptist upbringing. And I went through a phase of doing a lot
of erotic art, so that influence has stayed in there as well. There's
something running through everything I do, but it's hard to pinpoint
exactly what. It's like making a big stew, all the ingredients come
together and hopefully it winds up tasting good.

Q: When you create artwork for a band, how do you translate the music
into a visual?

A: You always listen to the music first and foremost, pull out your
sketchbook and try to listen to the lyrics. I think a good example would
be the poster I did in 2002 for Built to Spill. Now, "Randy Described
Eternity" is one of my favorite songs of theirs-That music to me was
very Eastern, very spiritual; so I thought I would create my Hindu
goddess and use the lyric to create that entity. It got to where I could
almost see the face, and once it appeared in my sketchbook I took it to
the computer, playing the music and keeping the song in my head the
whole time. I worked really hard to get the style right. You see the
face and she's describing eternity.

Q: You recently designed a skateboard, which brought you full circle. So
you're okay with creating a beautiful piece and having someone put their
foot on it?

A: Yeah! The first thing I tried to do with that design was to forget
about every skateboard design I'd ever seen. It's the same thing when
you're writing a song, you don't want to copy somebody else by
accident-You can come up with something great and then realize you wrote
an old Beatles tune. So with the skateboard, I just made my mind blank
out and said, "First thing that comes into my head I'm going to do."
That's what I did and it turned out great. In fact I always have one of
the scratched ones hanging in my studio. Some kid gave it back to me and
said "I'm sorry, I broke it." And I said "That's great-It's a real
skateboard now."