album cover
India ink and Pantone marker
on watercolour paper
7" x 7" • 2008
The Magnificent 7s, legendary Winnipeg punk-bluegrass supergroup, hired me to create a cover for their debut CD in 2008. Guitarist/vocalist Chris Bodnarchuk had a loose idea where the fellows were hiding in a ditch while the ladies flagged a passing car, and I thought it might be funnier still if they were all crouched behind Ida Sawabe's enormous double bass. I didn't have an internet connection to Google-image one back then, so I did a drawing of my aunt Cathy's violin and just scaled it up.
The band members all loved Robert Crumb, and asked that I style the piece after his work—at least in a general sense. So there is a Keep On Truckin' reference in the title font, and of course Ida's poweful physique (she specifically requested army boots and torn fishnets) but I still felt the need for something else.
I was deep into The R. Crumb Handbook looking at his approach to rendering country scenes when I saw the famous Harmonica Blues album cover. While my drawing is original, I did picture its setting as the same stretch of road from Crumb's—and even included its house and barn, the ramshackle fence of which had presumably disintegrated around the same time the telephone poles were modernized. One of my favourite career moments happened at Winnipeg's famous Times Change(d) High & Lonesome Club for the album release party when Mag 7s Dobro man & banjo-picker Dave Nishikawa (seen helpfully plying the vintage Walker screw jack) personally thanked me for "puttin' us on the road from Harmonica Blues." It's only fun if the kids find the eggs, y'know?
Most of the costume details are references of one kind or another, too. Ida is wearing a wristband from the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the cut half of a pair of handcuffs; her yellow driving gloves were a reference to something in Faulkner's Sanctuary or maybe The Great Gatsby—I don't remember which. I designed vocalist/mandolin player Ingrid Gatin's outfit to be as archetypally early '30s as I could; Bodnarchuk's desert boots, cargo pants, and shearling bomber jacket are straight out of Indy Jones or the Tales of the Gold Monkey. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Magura is wearing Cebos and an English club tie while doing Derek Smalls' "metal point" from the Smell the Glove band picture; Guitarist/vocalist T.J. Blair was supposed to look like a hayseed Dennis the Menace, but I didn't have a reference picture. That was Dave's real outfit.
The roadsign is an amalgamation of the 1930s 7up logo, the Canada Dry shield, and a stylized bison tuft I made up out of whole cloth. While real old Manitoba highway signs looked nothing like this, the scenery is remarkably consistent with that of Highway 7 South to the west of Gimli. Lastly, I put a grimy old upside-down bottlecap over my signature in homage to the great King Merinuk, who in any other universe would've gotten this job instead of me. Thanks, Baba!
left: the Harmonica Blues album cover, ©1976 R. Crumb; Fair Use citation for purposes of reference.
right: figure guide for The Magnificent 7s "Dirty Roads" album cover, Xeroxed graphite on bond paper
A year later I created the poster for a particularly memorable variety show called the Cabaret of the Dead where all the musicians spontaneously put on skull makeup (except for Poor Andy, who looked a bit skullish already) in homage to the artwork; its Mag 7s portrait later became a T-shirt. Later still, the Magnificent 7s issued their infamous "Red River Beaver Fever" shirt in a direct homage to my then-current WRDL logo. Art by Mag 7s fiddle man Andy Bart, © 2009; Fair Use citation for purposes of reference.
