Drawing Music is a unique art and music series that combines vibrant visual art and soulful rock musicians. Their latest video, “Come on Let’s Go,” premiered today.
The group of contributors behind the project was dubbed Lovesick Bombs by Drawing Music’s curator/member of 2000’s skatepunk band Secondshot, John Redmond. Each new song is accompanied by a new print of artwork.
Redmond has invited other NYC-based musicians to work on the series, including The Vansaders, Night Surf, and HABITS. The songs and art explore the difficulty in balancing the joy and debauchery of playing live music for a living and attending to adult responsibilities.
Redmond reached out to visual artists such as John Decampo, aka Ghostbat and Michelle Thibodeau, aka Planetskull. The next installment, “Come On Let’s Go,” starts as a peaceful melody that quickly erupts into a punk rock battlecry to relive the glory days with accompanying art of a little girl pestering her belligerently hungover parents. I talked with John about the art, the background work of a bassist, and staying punk while parenting.
In a nutshell, how would you describe this Drawing Music project?
I mean the best way to describe it is, I got a bunch of musicians together from bands that I love in the New York area and got them to collaborate on a bunch of songs that I wrote. And then I took those songs and send them to various artists, specifically some folks that do some really awesome punk rock show posters. And those artists did the visual representation of the songs. So I wrote the songs, but you know, I tried to leave it to the artists. I got to have like these really fun conversations with the artists about what I envisioned and what the song was about. The music is obviously free, but the prints are available online.
So you described yourself as the curator of this project. I was wondering what you’ve learned from that role and your time playing in punk bands has helped you with that.
Absolutely. I’m a songwriting bassist who doesn’t sing. You know, outside of NOFX, it’s often kind of second fiddle work. Because it’s always very much driven by the singer songwriter who also plays guitar. You know, when you’re playing, you have to really concentrate on two things at the same time. But when you’re a bassist, you can kind of sit and listen. My role in bands is always editing and producing. Starting in high school, I was a home recorder and recorded bands.
From the music side of things, I’ve always thought in terms of editing and pairing things down. Kind of thinking about the whole project. In terms of art, I cannot draw to save my life. I’m just a huge art fan. I find people who have the ability to manifest an idea into a piece of work fascinating. This was the opportunity for me to explore the medium and work with people who did really awesome shit.
Yeah, that’s, that’s really cool that all of the artists are people whose work you follow and who you’re a fan of.
Yeah the goal for the project is to keep it rolling. I would love to, whether I wrote the song or not, keep the series going. You know, bands submit songs, and I pair them up with artists I’m a fan of and reach out to more and more established artists.
One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that, with music going more and more digital and away from physical media, this is a good way to keep that tradition of show posters and album art alive, which I think is really cool. Was that part of your decision to do this sort of work? Is that something? Did you feel like album art needed a little restart?
It was always really important to me; I always loved it. And I’m a huge fan of music going digital. I think there’s a new golden age music happening right now because it’s so easy to make a decent sounding record, and the kids that are out on the road right now are not tourists like , quite frankly, my generation was.
I came up in the mid to late 90s. Where you can make a shitload of money playing in a rock and roll band by today’s standards. Back when you could actually go to California, play a high school lunch, and you’d sell out of CDs and a ton of t-shirts. And CDs were incredibly cheap to burn and had a huge market on them, so it was very easy to fill your tank, invest in your own art. But the kids that are on the road now are doing it for all the right reasons. You know, you see a three-year-old band doing 35 days on the road because, they have their shit together at a level I don’t think anybody in my era ever did. They just had to be better at everything in a more crowded scene.
What specific bands have you excited? Like, who are the kids on the road right now who are really making you excited about music today?
I love the Menzingers. There’s a band from Detroit that I listen to every day called the Libbies. The Libbies are an incredible feminist band out of Detroit. I’ve got a daughter, so in my house we play almost exclusively girl-fronted music. I just want my daughter to know that rock ‘n’ roll singers are women, not men.. The artist who did the art for “Freedom” is a woman who goes by Planetskull but she also leads a super-whacked-out band called Krillen. And they do installation-sized costume pieces about being in interplanetary war with another band. We’re really stoked about having her involved in the project.
A lot of the art for these pieces, it looks very comic-booky and kind of pop art. What about that style made you think they would fit the tone of the songs that you’re writing?
To be honest, that’s a bit up to the artist’s hands. I came up in 90s skatepunk culture; there was a lot of that, Fat Wreck Chords, Epitaph, drawing stupid shit in underground scenes and stupid comics, I guess I’ve just always liked it.
So, one of the one of the themes that I’ve seen so far on all of the songs is that it’s kind of like, you know, with songs like “Dad Rock” and “Breakfast of Champions,” they’re about realizing you can’t have the exact same punk rock lifestyle you used to. It’s a lot of art versus adulthood. Do you think that those two things are necessarily mutually exclusive? How are you navigating that conflict?
[Laughs] With alcohol. “Come On Let’s Go” is about that. It starts with a little lullaby, and the song is about, let’s go out and party like we used to, At the end of the song, it says, we’ll be home by 10:00 because that’s as late as the babysitter said she can stay. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, I think there are people who navigate it well, but it’s completely defined by what you were in rock ‘n’ roll for. With the artists and musicians that I grew up with, we were completely in it for the good times. It was all about the party and about late nights and going hard and having a million laughs and smashing bottles and being stupid. You have kind of peter pan syndrome, which doesn’t have to collapse when you have a family, but it does have to change. A lot of it is about the emergency break that gets thrown when you have a kid.
Tell me what you mean by emergency brake.
I think the idea is just hangovers aren’t allowed. When you got to take care of a kid, you have to get up, and you have to be a father first. That collision. I stayed playing in bands for my daughter’s first couple years of life. But that doesn’t work on a Friday night. So, the bands that really do it and really live on the road, it’s a huge choice to make that you’re gonna leave for a month. It sounds like old dad shit, but if you have a six month old, and you’re gone for three weeks, it’s like being away for a year if they’re six. As much changes in that time.
Does your daughter like the songs that you write?
Yeah she sings on a couple of them! I modeled the riff of that song off of her singing. The next song that comes out starts with her talking.
So, do you think that being a being a dad has made you a better and more interesting songwriter?
Probably only to other dads. It would feel so obnoxious getting art made and writing songs about teenage breakups. I don’t even know how to put my head in a place to write anything or commission any piece of art that was interesting about puppy love. This is for other former punkers that are now happy parents. I write for people in nationally-touring bands that are now coaching tee ball.
Well, those people need punk rock, too.
Yeah, you can only go back and listen to the same shit so often.
John is currently looking for artistic collaborators to make a print based on a song he wrote with Chris Cresswell of the Flatliners. If interested, you can contact him here at his website.
