Fan mail
Where I illustrate the cover of my favorite magazine
Do you like magazines? Do you still read magazines? Do you still subscribe to any actual magazines?1 Most of the magazines I used to read and subscribe to no longer exist, at least on actual paper.2 I struggle with reading for enjoyment on my devices. My laptop and iPad are work things, and I stare at them all day. Sacha and I used to get The New Yorker, but that’s a lot of reading. It was weekly, and the stack of partially read New Yorkers was getting ridiculous.
But I still get Tape Op. Tape Op is a nerd’s delight, a magazine published for a niche of a niche of a niche. The first niche is people who like music. Which isn’t really a niche, I suppose. Most people like music, don’t they? The second niche is a smaller group, though maybe still not quite a niche, of people who make music. Like playing instruments, or writing songs. The third niche is where it really gets nichey. These are the people who record music. These people probably make music, too, though not always. They’re into how music sounds and how it gets from that saxophone to that microphone, into a song full of other instruments and sounds, then onto that vinyl and into your ears. This niche likes to read about the techniques that other people employ to do this, and they especially like to read about the gear with which people do it.3
Making and recording music is a hobby of mine.4 Something like riding bicycles. I’m never going to win bike races, nor am I ever going to make or record a hit song. But I love the process and the idiosyncrasies of both of these things. I like tinkering with tires and brakes and the challenge of that ridiculous hill as much as I like changing pickups in my guitars and plugging a drum machine into a fuzz pedal to see what happens. Unlike bicycle riding, making and recording music is not a group activity for me5 and it doesn’t get me any exercise. It’s a creative process, and once I am done writing and illustrating, I don’t often give myself the space to go up to the extra bedroom where the music things live and get lost in that.
But I love reading about it. I started reading Tape Op around 2011. I was taking guitar lessons and playing with synthesizers, and I wanted to know how to make my recordings sound better. Someone I knew on an internet synthesizer forum sent me a box of old issues of the magazine, and I was hooked. I read them all, one at a time, cover to cover.
In fact, it was one of these old issues that led me to one of my best friends. Early on, Tape Op reviewed tapes and CDs, and they had reviewed an album by a band from San Francisco called Happy Accident. The review mentioned something about this band running a drum machine through a fuzz pedal, which sounded exactly like something I would do, so I looked them up. It turned out that the leader of Happy Accident, whose name is Blake, had relocated from San Francisco to Philadelphia about the same time as I did. I found a couple of their tracks online, and I liked them, so I sent Blake a fan-letter email.6 Blake replied, we met for a beer, and we’ve been friends ever since. My wife and I even have a date on the calendar to go to Blake’s house and watch Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas with Blake and his wife Julie later this month!7
But more to the point, reading these issues of Tape Op introduced me to this creative niche of people who make and record music. Not just Blake. Producers, musicians, people who make gear. People who make and record music, and, I don’t know, might need some illustration and design for album covers and posters and t-shirts now and then. I sent Blake a fan letter, but I can’t send all of these people fan mail, can I? A large part of my work for the last two years has been figuring out how to get my work in front of a more grown-up audience. Specifically, an audience of people who do things I love and who might need the kind of work that I do. I’ve sent illustration portfolios of my stuff to beer brewers. I’ve sent stickers to bicycle builders. And it occurred to me that a pretty good way to reach this audience of people who make and record music might be to, what the hell, illustrate a cover for Tape Op. So I sent them fan mail. Sort of.
Tape Op is published by a couple of guys who each run a recording studio.8 They’re not a big outfit like Condé Nast or Random House. They’re recording engineers. I knew that Tape Op wouldn’t have much of a budget, so, I treated this like a promotional piece. I sketched an illustration that would fit their cover design, and I drew it knowing that there was a good chance that they might not like it for any number of reasons.
And if that were the case, I’d still have a drawing I liked, and I’d put it on my website. Once that was done, I wrote them what is basically, yes, a fan letter with the illustration atached, and I crossed my fingers.
Happily, they loved it, and they ran it. Here is the full cover:
I was right about the budget. It was low.9 I had the bright idea to ask if we could trade some ad space instead, which they were happy to do.
I’m always excited to walk into the house and reach down to pick up the mail to find a copy of Tape Op. But I gotta tell you, yesterday was especially cool.
Thanks for reading!
• Obligatory cat content: Note the cat on the illustration. For reasons both vague and historical, cats are a cultural fixture in recording studios, and especially around synthesizers. I’m serious. Look it up.
• Prints are available of this illustration, to hang on the wall of your guitar room or recording studio. You can get yours here.
• Yes, some of the music I’ve played and recorded over the last decade is online. It’s not really something you can dance to, unless you dance really slow, and sort of weird-like. But here, go have a listen, and if you like it, download it and listen again.
Real question! Tell me what you subscribe to and read. Road & Track? House Beautiful? Guns & Ammo?
At least on actual paper. I still get a few quarterly magazines in the mail: Fretboard Journal, Contemporary Collage, and Oxford American.
Oh man, the gear. Be it a $29 piece of software that emulates a guitar pedal, or a $6000 hand-built metal box full of knobs and switches, recording nerds like to think about, and read about, gear.
I am totally aware of the connotations around the word “hobby.” It’s something like “amateur.” And I embrace them both.
I know, I could do something about this. I’m a 56-year-old artist that wants to join a band. I play a lot of instruments a little, none of them all that well. But I’m a fast-learner!
Sending fan mail is a thing I recommend. If you like something you read, or listen to, or see, send the person who made it a note, and tell them. I promise you it will make their day. And then their reply will make yours.
In addition to Blake and Happy Accident, Tape Op led me directly to two of my favorite albums ever. The first, I’m embarrassed to admit, since I should have known it for years previous to 2013, is the classic Marquee Moon, by Television. The second is Chris Walla’s Tape Loops.
Larry Crane runs Jackpot Recording in Portland, Oregon, and John Baccigaluppi runs Panoramic House in Marin County.
But not zero, at least, which I appreciate.
That's great! Both the cover and the way you approach them! I read and learn from you :-)
Here is your fan letter, sort of: A year ago I stumbled across your beautiful drawings for These UnCertain Times that led me to your website. There I loved everything, and discovered that I already had a book of yours, translated into French, that we bought for our son because it had a great cover! It was a Frank Einstein (we didn't like the text) with the boy repairing a robot, wonderful inside illustrations too. From there I read your blog and was blown away by the text Getting Paid to Draw. So like you, I suddenly realised that although I have an MA in Painting and Mosaics and a specialisation, so I know to paint whatever technique, and drawing, and etching, and perspective, colours, composition and blah blah blah BUT wait, it seems that I wasn't given the Holy Grail of Artistic Knowledge at university since I know all that but I'm not succeeding in picture book world, nor in selling prints of my illustrations and such! So I decided to take some picture book courses this year and it was a great thing because I learnt a lot of things, what mistakes I was making before, and I met a lot of interesting people. So, apart from the fact that I admire your style, love your humour and find plenty of ideas to think about in the Random Orbit, you have unintentionally and unknowingly been a guide that has brought a great happy change in my mindset. So thank you very much for that too!
Congrats on the cool-ass cover!