It all started at the Happening in Newport Beach, California at the Orange County Museum of Art – a two night art, music, film extravaganza organized by The Surf Gallery owner/producer/ and genuinely nice guy- Will Pennartz. This event really changed everything for me. First, I caught the stoke from so many talented artists…guys I had read about in magazines and the like…Thomas Campbell, Barry McGee, Andy Davis, Geoff Mcfetridge, Alex Kopps, Jeff Canham, Harry Daily, and all the guys from Mollusk Surf Shop (San Francisco) … just as you walk out of a gallery and think it couldn’t get any better…the music would start up and over the course of the two nights I saw Money Mark (), Piers Faccini, Rocco Deluca& the Burden, Ray Barbee and the Mattson 2, Matt Costa (), Culver City Dub Collective ()….so in this artistic stupor/overload I resolved then and there to do something too!

I told a friend that I met there that night that one day I would be in a gallery with these guys…it hasn’t happened yet…yet. Anyway, during the second night I came across my ‘opportunity’. In the art gallery that night I happened to see Rand, the owner of Long Beach California’s premier New and used vinyl Record Store- Fingerprints, in the gallery being shown some of the pieces and it was then I realized…to the finger I must go! It turned out that the next day Piers Faccini was slated to play an unplugged solo performance at Fingerprints (being able to see Piers played amplified on Saturday and acoustic on Sunday is just too much to put into words) and I decided then and there I was going to go and ask about a poster.

The next day I did just that. I introduced myself to Rand and asked about a poster opportunity… he asked to see some work…I had like two drawings that I had just done (the first pieces I had done in a long, long time) he agreed to give it a shot as his regular poster guy (Robert Pokorny) had asked for some time off to prepare for a solo show after having done like every single poster for the past thirteen years, or something like that, I had my chance…I was given a choice of upcoming in-stores and I chose Aqualung. So, for the next two weeks I wrote, listened, read, drew, scribbled, googled, thumbnailed, penned, watercolored, and rendered from the minute I got home from work until I had to go to bed…I spent something like forty hours working on this poster…well, I was asked to do another, and another…(see the process)

What started with the desire to see a single framed poster up on the hallowed walls of Fingerprints quickly spawned over thirty something (thirty-six by my last estimate) in-store performance posters over the course of the past few years. If you live anywhere near Long Beach, California get on their email list so you can know about the amazing in-store performances that happen so often, for free nonetheless! This isn’t a blog about the instores that I've been lucky enough to partake in …but if standing 10 feet away from Damien Rice, witnessing Tegan and Sara’s playful banter(), Seeing Matt Hales of Aqualung (my first ) play to a packed house at the Wiltern theatre in Los Angeles on Friday night and then getting to see him play to a crowd of 30 or so on Sunday at Fingerprints…well, its surreal. I could go on and on but many of my top musical experiences have happen in this independent record store in Belmont shores (although Bright Eyes and M.Ward at the Hollywood Bowl was really good too!) I digress. If you’re not in the know, get in, and let’s move on.