Back in August, I attended a poetry reading at the KGB Bar in Manhattan. Among the readers was Rebecca Loudon, who has appeared on the Tattooed Poets Project twicepreviously. Rebecca introduced me to Paige after the reading and Paige had this cool tattoo:
Paige has nine tattoos, and all of her tattoos, she explained, are rooted in her love of music,
She elaborated on this particular piece, what she calls her "Ode to Amy":
"As someone who lived the blues. her lifestyle constantly overshadowed her musical ability. Since she was widely known by her hairstyle I wanted the piece to emphasize her tresses but in a more mysterious way. The most common question I'm asked is, 'when are you going to add the rest of the face?' Seeing as her life was incomplete, it doesn't feel right to 'finish' it. The piece will exist as is, a fragment of what could have been. Recently, I have added the twin hearts to the top. Amy had the same on her shoulder. With the addition of the hearts I feel the piece, in my mind, is finally complete. Amy Winehouse was an undeniable master of her craft. I'm proud of her work and the influence it's had on my generation."
Paige later sent me a photo of the tattoo after it was completed with the hearts, which provides a slightly different perspective of the tattoo on her right shoulder:
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I met Louis down on Broad Street while he was walking some dogs.
I spoke to him briefly about his tattoos, gave him my card, and said we should talk further when he didn't have the dogs with him.
A few weeks later, I spotted him again, dogless. We sat down and talked about his tattoos.
First, this fabulousness:
This is a portrait of the late Patrick Swayze, with the banner 'PAIN DON'T HURT," which alludes to the film Road House.
Louis explained:
"It's a movie I saw a few years ago ... it's so bad, it's good ... I definitely love the movie ... I just really wanted to get the Swayze tattoo ...'Pain don't hurt,' it's laughable when he says that line in the movie ... I also found his biography at a Goodwill for a dollar and I bought it ... I read some of it, he had an interesting life ... the dedication in the front was to his father, who he said 'taught me that a man can be tough and gentle at the same time.' He was a dancer, horseback rider, he did all these fight movies, I thought that was really cool."
"I grew up with the X-Men cartoons in the Nineties, it was like one of those things that my dad use to work overnights, like Friday night, he would work all Friday night, he would come home Saturday morning, he'd bring bagels or something for breakfast ... and we would watch that cartoon, that was like Saturday, we'd live for that. I just remember that as a kid, and also, I read comic books still, and it's one of my favorite characters, as well ... it has a lot of significance to me."
I did mention in the title of this post that it is "Musician Monday." Louis also happens to be the drummer for a Brooklyn band called Ellen and the Degenerates, you can check them out here.
Thanks to Louis for sharing his awesome tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!
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Last September, I was outside of the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, prior to a show of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, when I spotted a woman nearby with some cool tattoos.
I went up and introduced myself and she agreed to share some of her work.
Her name was Marcie and she told me she was a singer, visiting New York from Tennessee. This certainly explained her music-related tattoos. She said she had about 20 tattoos in all, and shared the following:
There's a lot going on in this piece, including Bonnie Raitt's guitar at the bottom of the tattoo and Janis Joplin's glasses. The snapping fingers are also a nod to Stax Records.
Above, we can also see the label from Sun Records in Memphis and the Aerosmith logo.
She explained, "I’m a singer and I really just like the classic solo in the spotlight Barbie so I had him do her a little curvier with the longer hair, like me.”
The "him" she is referring to is the artists responsible for all the work posted here, Matt Hays at New Hope Tattoo Gallery in Huntington, West Virginia.
You can check out Marcie and her music at ReverbNation here.
Thanks to Marcie for sharing her cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!
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It has been a while since we celebrated "Musician Mondays" here on Tattoosday so, it is with pleasure that we return with a musical tattoo.
Last month I had the pleasure of meeting my wife's cousin Erica for the first time.
She and her girlfriend Moki came over to visit for a small gathering at our home set up to memorialize another cousin who had recently passed away overseas.
And, whereas Moki had significantly more tattoos (we'll see one tomorrow), Erica has only one, and she was kind enough to share it here:
People born in the CD age might not recognize this as a "spider," which was a piece of plastic inserted into the center of small 45-rpm records that allowed them to be played on the small spindles on record players. Records were those things that we, back in the Dark Ages, listened to music on.
Erica currently is the bass player for a band called Poof Pony. She has played in other acts as well, including Turbonegra (a San Francisco-based all-girl tribute band to Norwegian punk band Turbonegro) and punk stalwarts MDC (in the 1990's).
Erica explains how she came by this tattoo:
"I got it done at Temple Tattoo in Oakland - it may have been by Jonah Levin but I wouldn't swear by it ... My friend Kristen had twin hellions that must have been two or three at the time - she had an appointment at Temple and let me know in no uncertain terms that I had a choice - I could either babysit the monsters or go with her to get my own. That meant no choice to me! Since I was turning 45 and love records, the tattoo was a no-brainer. Perhaps I should have thought about it though because quite soon after the ink had settled it was pointed out to me that I had actually put the Spin Magazine logo on my arm and that was just about as cool as getting the Rolling Stones tongue logo (not). I have since seen another bass player with it in exactly the same spot, and it's been confused with being both a swastika and a hazardous waste symbol, which just proves that I don't always run with the brightest crowd."
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It has been a while since we celebrated "Musician Monday," but the early onset of spring has brought out the tattoos and last week in Penn station, I met Camille, who shared this part of her left sleeve:
We focused on this segment in particular:
Camille told me she went to her artist, Fernando Casillas, at Think Ink Tattoo in Norman, Oklahoma, and just told him she wanted a bird flying out of a cage. "I just like the idea of setting yourself free," she explained. Work from Think Ink has appeared on Tattoosday previously, here.
It wasn't until the following day, when I noticed that Camille had followed us on Twitter, that I realized that she was a musician. I had caught her while she was heading back to Oklahoma, and was nervous about catching the right train and making her flight in time.
Camille, as it turns out, is Camille Harp, a singer-songwriter from a musical family, who has an album forthcoming called "Little Bit of Light". If you go to CamilleHarp.com, you can download her song "One by One". It's a lovely song that only makes me wish I could hear her in concert. She has a wonderful voice and soulful tone.
You can also grab her record "Like the Rain" here.
Thanks to Camille for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! Please check out her website and/or her fan page on Facebook and support this wonderful artist!
We'll leave you with a performance from 2010, in which Camille sings with her mother in Oklahoma City:
Back in May, I met Justin in the Borders at Penn Plaza and he shared his three tattoos. Justin had recently been signed to a band from Texas called Everyone Dies in Utah and he was moving out from Maryland. He offered up his knuckle tattoos:
Justin has been playing drums for about eleven years and loves drums, which explains these knuckles. Of course, I would be remiss if I mentioned knuckle tattoos and didn't direct you to KnuckleTattoos.com to see more, courtesy of my friend Nathan.
The most compelling tattoo Justin shared was this piece, on his right forearm:
He explained:
"I have a little sister, she's ten now, but it was last year, so she was nine, and she was all bummed that I was moving really far and touring and stuff, so I told her I would get a tattoo for her ... I was trying to think of what would be absolutely unique, and the only thing I could think of was fingerprints. So, I decided it would be cool to get her hand print, so I went out and got a big old ink pad and did her hand print on a piece of paper, took it in, and he [Jason Kramer at Positive Image Tattoos in Baltimore] did all of his magic and got it done."
Justin's third tattoo was this piece on his left forearm:
He told me
"I love Jesus ... simple as that. I was thinking about doing a whole arm, faith-based kind of thing, and I ike the ides of just being able to walk into a room and people know exactly like, well, that guy's definitely a Christina and he's for serious ... It's a good starting piece to talk to people."
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This installment of Musician Monday features Doug Robinson, lead singer from the rock band The Sleeping. I ran into Doug last week in Penn Station and stopped him when I saw all of his tattoos.
Doug has had some of his work featured in Tattoo Magazine and is in the current issue of Tattoo Flash, so I was indeed honored when he agreed to share a piece from his right forearm:
Doug explained that this tattoo is based on a logo created by a friend of his, whose grandfather had passed away and left him his house. Doug's friend, along with Doug and three other guys, lived in the house which they dubbed "Gramp's House." The home was, as Doug told me, "a really important place for all of us," and many of them got this logo tattooed, as a tribute to that special place that they all held near and dear.
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Last week, while passing through Penn Station, I ran into Sly, one of the vocalists from an up-and-coming band called Sloburn.
Sly shared this, one of her seven tattoos:
Sly explained:
"I'm more of a spiritual person. The tattoo is Mary. I'm Catholic, for one thing, but I like wearing rosaries and this is something I don't have to worry about if I forget my rosary. She's always on me. That's one of the reasons I got that, and in commemoration of my mother, who raised me that way too."
She was in New York with Sloburn to do The Real Radio Show. Sly joked, it's Sloburn, with NO "w". "Remember," she said, "we took the 'w' out to whup your ass with."
Sloburn is a Danville, Virginia band that has been together for about four years. Sly told me that Twisted Sister's management contacted them based on a YouTube video, brought them to New York, and they are hoping to explode on the scene with their brand of, what their Facebook page calls, "redneck metal."
Here's a little Sloburn to get your blood flowing on this Musician Monday:
Thanks to Sly for sharing her cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!
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Here on our second installment of Musician Mondays, we have a rockin', self-explanatory tattoo from Ryan, lead singer and guitarist from an unsigned band called The Disconnects:
From her mohawk to her Doc Martens, this punk rock girl and her "Too Fast to Live, To Young to Die" banner totally capture that raw, rock aesthetic.
I met Ryan last month, across the street from where I work, on Seventh Avenue and 31st Street, in Manhattan.
The tattoo was inked at Fat Kat Tattoos in Keyport, New Jersey. Work from Fat Kat previously appearing on the site can be seen here.
Thanks to Ryan for sharing his cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!
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Over the past several years on Tattoosday, we've run into several musicians in our travels, many of whom have generously shared their tattoos with us. We've decided to post tattoos from these talented folks on the first day of the work week, and call them "Musician Mondays."
We got a sneak peek at our first Monday Musician yesterday, as we shared a couple of Meaghan Farrell's tattoos in recognition of mother's day. The tattoos she has honoring her grandmother (here) are truly wonderful.
I was fortunate to run into Meaghan, who loved sharing her ink with me. Her enthusiasm for body art was evident in her excitement. "My tattoos mean the world to me," she beamed, and added that "there is no greater commitment to art." Considering that a tattoo is a permanent installation on one's body, I totally understood what she meant.
Aside from the two of Meghan's tattoos we posted yesterday, she shared a couple of more. Here's a wonderful piece on her left wrist that symbolizes her craft:
Of course the central object in the tattoo is the old-style microphone. As a resident of Queens, she pointed out that the skyline of Manhattan that serves as the tattoo's background is inked from the perspective of her borough, looking west toward the city.
Meaghan also shared this stunning monarch butterfly:
Meaghan explained that the monarch represents her sister, who she spoke of with great admiration. She called her the "matriarch of the family" and acknowledged that she was a solid presence that, despite huge challenges (she was widowed, a single mother, and is now remarried to a man who is wheelchair-bound), she retains the strength and grace of a butterfly.
I love how the artist created the shadow below the monarch's wings:
Like the work we saw yesterday, the artist responsible for these tattoos is Mr. Beans, at Fat Cat Tattoos NYC in Astoria, Queens.
Meaghan is a singer and she shared her debut CD, "Waitress," with me and let me tell you, it's a wonderful album. She has a very distinct voice and her songs are well-written and catchy. You can visit her website here to listen to her songs and see where you can hear her perform. In fact, she has a show this coming Saturday, May 14th, at the UC Lounge in New York City.
Check out her video for "Lost in My Life":
Thanks again to Meaghan for sharing her music and tattoos with us here at Tattoosday!
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