Life's What You Make It

 
  Our good friend April Johnson, quite an amazing stylist by trade, launched a new line this February for Fall 2012 called Alasdair. Much more info to come, stay tuned! See the first collection here.

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John Nordstrom in front of the original Wallin & Nordstrom shoe store, Seattle, 1901. A Swedish immigrant, Nordstrom went West and founded the store with money made from a gold claim in the Yukon.

Today I'm starting a new job as a Creative Director at Nordstrom! I'm proud to be working for a company with such a legendary history in the Northwest beyond, and I'm excited about Nordstrom's potential as it continues to grow. That's all I will say for now but stay tuned for updates and I'll continue posting as always.

Dept of New Acquisitions

. Hand-tooled leather "PS" wallet found in Montana – a gift from Dustin and Erica at hitchcock Madrona. I love it.

If you're in town tonight, stop by hitchcock for the Winifred Grace jewelry trunk show from 5–7:30pm, or tomorrow, 10am–6pm. More info here.

Vibe, Vibrations

Illustration by Brian Standeford / type + layout by me
Mark your calendar, this is gonna be a fun one

Coming to Flex

.Front and back cover of the forthcoming Flexions LP Golden Fjord, designed for the newly-minted Cairo Records by yours truly.

The album is out August 2nd and in addition to band members Robin Stein, Devin Welch, and Tyler Swan, also features Margaret Jones and Morgan Henderson (Fleet Foxes, Past Lives, Blood Brothers, and, perhaps most importantly, Mt. Henderson).

Here's the first video, by Chris Ando and the homey Robert M. Wolfe, who is best known for design work with Wavves and Best Coast:


Flexions play at the Wildrose on July 9th and the release party is August 5th at Chop Suey. Mark them calendars. More info here.

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Blackbird's warehouse sale begins tomorrow. It's in-store only but visit Blackbird's website and blog to browse online anyway.

Sale flyer designed by yours truly.

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Lemons on my windowsill, sent from sunny Los Angeles California by my friend and client Matt Sullivan of Light in the Attic Records.

Art, Fashion, Beekeeping

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Horacio Silva of the New York Times interviews Cecilia Dean, co-founder of Visionaire.

In the Studio

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New Series. So many cool people come through our studio and I've decided I'm going to start taking their pictures.
First up:

Lily and Aoife. Lily is one of our favorite people in the world, and coincidentally Aoife is the coolest baby in the world (sorry, other babies). Among many other things Lily designs Yellow Is Gold by Sunshine & Shadow.

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La Lupe and friends (including Tito Puente, second from right) in Venezuela, 1965 – one of many great photos included in La Lupe: Puro Teatro, the most comprehensive collection ever of the Cuban-born singer's music, designed by yours truly, with A&R and re-mastering by Wax Poetics, and recently released by Fania Records. Check out a review of Puro Teatro on today's edition of Fresh Air, at NPR.org.

Di Doo Dah

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Light in the Attic is on a roll. Their latest release (with design by yours truly) is a re-issue of Jane Birkin's extremely rare 1973 debut solo album, Di Doo Dah. Written entirely by Serge Gainsbourg with arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier, it reads like a sequel to "Je T'Aime...Moi, Non Plus" but, in my humble opinion, delves into deeper and more subtle territory musically. Visit lightintheattic.net to hear sound clips and order on gatefold LP or CD.

Sophisticated Wheels

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A photo by Charles Shabacon from the front cover of another recent Light In The Attic re-release I designed – Gabor Szabo's rare, fuzzy, sitar-infused 1967 LP Jazz Raga.
Here's what that sounds like:


Gabor Szabo "Sophisticated Wheels"

Get more info and pick up the CD or gatefold LP at lightintheattic.net

Serge & Jane

Re-issue projects take a long time – I've been working on this one with Light in the Attic Records for several months and it's finally in stores today!

Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg's self-titled 1969 album features the smoldering cut "Je T'Aime...Moi, Non Plus" among many others.

As a bonus, the LP version comes with this re-issue of an extremely rare 45 featuring the title cut from the equally smoldering film Slogan.


Visit lightintheattic.net to listen and buy Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg on CD or hand-numberd, limited gatefold LP.

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Artwork for the forthcoming Truckasauras album, with photography by Kyle Johnson, art direction and smoke bombs by me, design by Byron Kalet/Popular Noise. More Truck here

Feeling Good was Good Enough for Me

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One of the coolest projects I've had the pleasure of working on (ever) was released last week: Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968–72 collects a whole bunch of the earliest, unreleased Kris Kristofferson tunes, including the first-ever recording of "Me and Bobby McGee."

A little background: When he began his career, Kristofferson had already been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a decorated Airborne Ranger in the Army; he volunteered to go to Vietnam, but was instead assigned to teach English at West Point. Soon after, he picked up and headed south, landing a job as a janitor in the Columbia recording studio in Nashville, where Bob Dylan was recording Blonde On Blonde (Kristofferson didn't speak to him for fear of being fired). In the off-hours, he wrote and recorded a slew of pared-down, quiet demos, featured for the first time in this new collection. A 60-page booklet goes with it, and includes liner notes by Dennis Hopper, Merle Haggard, Kinky Friedman, and Michael Simmons, as well as a bunch of weird old passports and other documents and stuff that Kris and his wife Lisa sent up here to be scanned.

Of all the enjoyable things about working on this project, I think my favorite was when Lisa said "Kris will check over the lyrics when he's done mowing." I found that very relaxing and reassuring.

There have been some nice reviews over the past week since the record came out (The New York Times, NPR, Vice, etc.), which is cool because Light In The Attic has been putting this project together for SIX YEARS. If you purchase the CD – or even better, pre-order the vinyl – directly from them, they'll send you an autographed photo, until they run out (it's also available from just about any other record store). For more info, sound clips, etc., visit lightintheattic.net.

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Two images from a story styled by one of my long-timest and favorite clients, Brooklyn-based stylist April Johnson.

Much more at her website.

Clients

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Pentagram's Michael Bierut on the subject of clients.

From CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

Paper of Record

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Tomorrow is RECORD STORE DAY 2010. If you have a chance, you might consider heading down to your favorite local purveyor(s) of analog audio goodness to pick up releases produced exclusively for the event. Hit up recordstoreday.com for participating stores.

This year for RSD, Light In The Attic is releasing a special Rodriguez gatefold 7" (which I designed). You can't tell from the image but the type and the frame around the photo are silver foil-stamped.

We also did issue No.2 of the Light In The Attic zine. It's 7" square with a cover illustration of Kris Kristofferson by Drew Christie. The page-count is a little lower than issue No. 1, but it's jam-packed with useful info:

Emily interviews Betty Davis about her modeling career and status as a fashion icon (more about that in a later post).

Charles Peterson talks to Jini Dellacio about her photographs of legendary Northwest garage bands such as The Sonics and The Wailers.

Andy Beta interviews Miss Jane B. about her time with Serge Gainsbourg and what that was like. Light In The Attic has a couple Jane Birkin projects coming up that I'm way psyched about.

Kris Kristofferson and Charlie Louvin have a quick convo about old-time country and being, you know, legends.

There's also an excerpt from Andria Lisle's liner notes for the forthcoming Jim Sullivan release, and articles on or by Lou Bond, Gabor Szabo, Rodriguez, Kearney Barton, and more.

So: look out for that at your local record store tomorrow, and enjoy your weekend.

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After a long search, I found a new office, in my favorite building on the Hill. It's a pretty big step up but I signed the lease yesterday and I'm pretty psyched about it.
More photos later....

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Lou Bond, from the cover of his self-titled 1974 record on Stax/We Produce – photo by Tom Nixon. (I designed the re-issue CD and vinyl for Light In The Attic, released a couple weeks ago.) Here's what Other Music had to say about it:

Awesome reissue of a heavily atmospheric and fairly weird obscure soul LP originally issued in 1974 by Stax subsidiary We Produce. It's picked up a bit of a cult following over the years, but it's still not nearly as known as it ought to be, hopefully this Light in the Attic release will change that. String-laden, yet still strangely sparse sounding, with long, slow-burning tracks that gain in heaviness and momentum, you'll hear shades of Terry Callier and Isaac Hayes, but with a more string-of-consciousness bent. Definitely one of the more idiosyncratic soul LPs that I can think of, with a lovely soft folk edge to it considering the nice finger-picked guitar and mellow flute and string arrangements. Late night vibes for days on here people, pretty sure you'll love it.

Visit the (also newly re-designed) lightintheattic.net for info and clips.