I asked Mike King to create the Butthole Surfers Poster for the Firehouse Goldenvoice Series at The Regency, in San Francisco. I had the pleasure to spend some time with Mike King in the UK a couple of years ago. We were in Brighton, UK at the Fringe Festival; we both conducted workshops with British artists teaching silkscreening. The artists who attended our workshops formed an artist collective called BRAG – The British Rock Artists Group – and started firing off posters at mind-blowing speed, as they formed from our workshops and were really inspired to start from Mike and my visit. It was pretty gratifying to see that our workshops had made such a tangible impact.

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Anyway, I’ve always wanted to collab with Mike since. I exhibited posters with him earlier this year at Vanish Fine Art, during The Gigposter Book release party. We were hanging out at the show and I thought to ask him to create a poster for the Butthole Surfers. He said, “Why don’t I just send you black color separations and you choose the colors.” The rock poster documentary American Artifact was being released the same week, the premiere was the next day at The Red Vic Theater. Marty Hohn TRPS President, was asking to see my American Artifact silkscreen poster while I was talking to Mike. I busted it out. And Mike reacted, “Dude! Yep, I definitely want you to choose the colors!”

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So with the colors I chose, I went for ultimate eye-fry with multiple color vibrations on the blue/red, green/red, and blue/magenta: all vibrating color combinations. And just to give it that Firehouse touch, the three-eyed kitty is heavy silver metallic with a magenta tint.

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Butthole Surfers, Melvins at the Regency

Firehouse Goldenvoice Series Number 73

Editon of 150

4 colors on 14 point coated cover

23″ x 35″

Numbered

(1 through 50 will be Signed and Numbered by Mike King)

available through Mike King at a future date – check here

It’s been a hectic, hard-working year establishing the Firehouse-Goldenvoice Poster Series, art directing and printing all these great posters, with my friend and partner Ron Donovan. Yes, it has been a year, and we are nearing poster number 70.

If you do the math that’s more than one poster a week. Add that to the other posters we produce (read Eric Clapton and Van Morrison to name but two) while at work on the Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series, it’s been a busy year!

Little did we know what a cool year we would have at the Firehouse in 2009. When Chris Shaw introduced us to his landlord Victor Hanson – who was daring enough to rent to us – Chris set us up and we got the new Firehouse studio. We began to call it Hangar 18, the secret military installation in Dayton, Ohio (my hometown) where alien technology is reverse engineered.

After our awesome trip to the United Kingdom in 2008 – organized by the genius of Marc Malakie, founder of Station 4 Gallery, his impeccable site for art prints produced by the Firehouse crew – including the great Emory Douglas – we set to work on the idea of this Series.

The Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series has also brought out the best in Firehouse; the best in me as well, my artwork, and I hope, brought many new faces here to check out my new designs.

The Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series has also brought out the best in all of the fine poster artists who have been invited to take this crazy ride with me and Ron Don. Thanks to everyone included in the series thus far:

Chuck Sperry • Ron Donovan • Malleus (IT) • Dave Hunter • Alexandra Fischer • Chris Shaw • Dennis Loren • Martin Bedford (UK) • Aaron Farmer • Reuben Rude • Gregg Gordon • Jeff Ross • John Howard • Alan Hynes • Frank Zio • Zoltron • Mike King • Scott Johnson

Thanks to David Lefkowitz of Goldenvoice Presents for inviting Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company to produce this poster series, and for having the vision to know it was the right thing at the right time. Mass props and forever indebted and thankful to Doug Dashiell, the Production Manager of the Warfield, who showed David what was possible to do in silkscreen and brought the idea to his attention. In short, Doug put it all together by changing hearts and minds at Goldenvoice.

Doug, armed with his mighty poster collection, enthusiasm and knowledge of silkscreened posters, pushed the idea. All that was left for David and Firehouse was to just do it.

We have been fortunate to show this series in quite a few exhibits in the last year including:

TRPS Festival of Posters • San Francisco 2008

Art of Musical Maintanance • Portland 2008

Lucky 13 • Alameda 2008

Varnish Fine Art • San Francisco 2009

Ogilvy West • San Francisco 2009

TRPS Rock Art By The Bay • San Francisco 2009

The Best of The East Bay • Oakland Museum 2009

Lucky 13 • Alameda 2009

Rock Art Revulsion • Sacramento 2009

And soon TRPS Festival of Posters • San Francisco 2009

There have been quite a few Poster of the Week awards on Expressobeans – that makes me proud – thanks for everyones’ support! There have been many emergency runs to the paper and ink suppliers, thanks to George Gamboa (KAW!) and Stephen Abramson.

Thanks to the Firehouse buddy-studio Political Gridlock run by Jon-Paul Bail has been a constant source of creativity, ideas (and emergency ink!) at the Firehouse – without JP no cool graffiti, no political compass and no fun!

And many kind thanks to Lulu Ehrhard, one of the very best printers in the Bay Area.

What would a workday at Firehouse be like without a visit from JC Hall of Ideal Posters with his daughter Anjelica along for the ride, who has supported us through many years and made “Bowlio” an international silkscreen superstar; Or without a neighborly visit from Flipper Ted (the band not a poster dealer). And thanks to Chela from PsPrint for the offsets and friendly break from work.

Many thanks and a great big shout out to Nick Cernak who created Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company’s first fully functional website, Hangar 18, and gave me the foundation and design for this site you are reading right here.

Sometimes the Firehouse seems like a cast of characters from a movie – thanks to Merle Becker for committing some of this to film in her brilliant documentary, “American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art,” which came out last year while all this was going down.

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On this occasion, Firehouse-Goldenvoice’s first anniversary, I thought it would be cool to revisit my Mogwai poster, and move it here to my new site – begin to move all the posters I’ve done for the Series here – little by little.

Also supplies are getting mighty low on most of my Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series posters from the last year and thought it best to move them here while I still have some to show.

Here’s some posters included in my updated posts:

• English Beat

• Phoenix

• Neko Case

• Mogwai