The Band

Jukejoint Handmedowns, music

The “covid year” hit the band pretty hard. We were halfway through a new album, and for the most part, stopped getting together for a year or more. We’ve made some tentative steps towards getting back together, with semi-regular practices and a rethinking of our brand. One of the more exciting developments is that we’ve added a new member (after nearly ten years as a quartet), and it has recharged our batteries, and hopefully we will be back out there and gigging again in the new year. Here’s the redesign of our ‘caricature logo’.

Revised CD Cover Art

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ArthurDavenportCDwebusageWell, I wasn’t entirely happy with the colors of the previous version of this illustration, so I went back and added the back cover wraparound, and revised the colors, so they weren’t quite so bright and distracting. I’m a bit happier with how this one turned out. Below is the inside spread (the idea being that the whole thing would be a 360 degree panorama).

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CD Cover Art

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Illustration for a CD cover for Arthur Davenport (a musical artist I met through a musical project of mine almost 15 years ago). Below is the rough sketch (I think I almost prefer the sketch on this one, the woodcut style looks a bit busy to me).

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Still waiting on the go ahead on the big project, but in the meantime have lined up another book project for the fall.

Jukejoint Handmedowns – Call of the Wild

Jukejoint Handmedowns, music, self portrait

JJHDCotWcover1After working on this album now since spring (and the planning for it has stretched back over the two years since our last release), the new Jukejoint Handmedowns album is nearly ready to go to the manufacturers. We’ve got one more song to record this week, and a few tweaks to a few other tunes, and we’ve still got to shoot a band photo for the interior (the one that is shown is a place holder for now). I’m hoping to place the order for the first batch the day after Labor Day, with a lot of production work to finish up over the weekend. This is our fourth album, and the songs are all about our home state of Michigan, covering various topics from notorious tourist traps to urban legends to the growth of the craft beer movement, the decline of the auto industry, the state’s generous bottle return policy to its natural wonders (and several famous and not so famous local ‘characters’ round out the mix). Above, you can see the exterior CD cover, and below is the interior, featuring a cartoon map that pays homage to every one of the songs in one way or another. Further down, is the artwork for the CD itself, and two sides of a trifold ‘lyric booklet’ that will be inserted opposite the CD.

As always, like our previous albums, these will be available at our live shows, on iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon and other online music outlets.

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JJHDCofWlyric2Also, in conjunction with the CD release, we’ll be printing up some new tee shirt designs, which is pictured below (likely these will be offered on grey shirts with blue ink).

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Michigan Album

Jukejoint Handmedowns, music, self portrait

webusagecoverAlmost finished with the ‘car coloring book’ project for Dover, and in the afternoons, have been working on the interior art for my band’s new CD. This is an album of ‘Michigan themed’ songs, so I did a map featuring cartoon images from each of the songs that we’ve recorded, plus place names that have been mentioned in various songs. A lot of work went into it, but it will likely be so tiny on the CD jacket that a lot of the details will get lost. (a good excuse to cut a vinyl of this album just so we can showcase the artwork in a larger format)