This is one of the images used for the Bright Eyes “Thread” t-shirt. This was at the same time that I made the Wide Awake cover art. I made three layers, one for each ink color. All were made with embroidery thread. Two layers were tangles of loose thread, and this one started as stitched lettering in fabric.
planecrashinc asked: I thought Tilly and the Wall was named after the children's book 'Tillie and the Wall'. The one about the wall and the mouse named Tillie who wondered what was on the other side? Is that partially true but the spelling being a homage to Conor's former pup? (By the way, Hotel Frank's floor totally feels like it's going to cave in at any minute still. There must be a little bit of magic holding that shit together.)
I think you’re probably right, and the spelling is an homage to Tilly the dog. This seems like something I should know, but I’m not sure :) I’ll have to ask.
This is the front and back of the original insert for the “Every Day and Every Night” LP. It was out of press for a long time, but Saddle Creek is reissuing it soon. Conor, Robb, and I laid out the artwork in Robb’s apartment where he used to run the label. Robb didn’t have a lot of room to sleep because he had so many records in his bedroom.
(top half, starting in upper left, clockwise) I’m in the upper left corner, at Conor’s house that he shared with some good friends. It was 1999. We used to play Atari 2600 over there, Tim Kasher was really, really good at Kaboom. Scary good.
All of the graveyard photos I took in Budapest, Hungary. It was a surreal and amazing place. The black stuff on the monuments is pollution from the cars there… they don’t have catalytic converters. Awful, but it made the graves look incredible.
Upper right, that’s Tilly, Conor’s old dog. The band “Tilly and the Wall” is named after that dog, but I don’t know what the “Wall” part is. I’ll have to ask…
Happy Conor and Happy Neely.
Tim Kasher and Jeff Tafolla. Jeff played in the Bright Eyes band way back when, and works for Saddle Creek now. I think Conor took the picture, but I’m not sure.
(bottom half, starting in upper left, clockwise) That’s Ted Stevens of Lullaby for the Working Class and Cursive in the devil mask, with Conor’s brother Justin. Ted was fucking scary in that mask, but he’s not scary without the mask.
Then there’s a house party photo from the place that Conor lived at while writing “Letting off the Happiness”. There are still house shows there, and 10 years ago it felt like the floor was going to fall into the basement, so I’m afraid what it’s like now. It was called the Gunboat for awhile, and now I think it’s called Hotel Frank.
Then that’s Kaite, who did the awesome linocuts and letterpress elements for “Lifted” with Robb Nansel, who runs Saddle Creek and played in Commander Venus back in prehistoric times. Kaite also designed the Bright Eyes “Snake” and “Record” t-shirts that a lot of us have worn. She’s ready for the pandemic.
I’m not sure Conor would endorse this brand of beer now, but maybe.
That’s all.
The photo taken for the cover of Fevers and Mirrors shows my friend Jamie taking the picture. (She’s in Tilly and the Wall, by the way) She was reflected in the mirror, and you can see the camera on a tripod with a cable release. This was before any of us had digital cameras, so it was all old school film.
I hung that wallpaper on one wall in my basement, and got the mirror at the thrift store I worked at at the time. A couple years ago, I used a saw and cut the drywall off that wall in my basement, so I could keep and display the wallpaper. The big section of wall with the mirror is now on display in the Saddle Creek record shop.
The promo poster for Fevers actually used this image with Jamie. I like that it’s kind of ghostly.
Conor and I went to the wallpaper store and he picked out this pattern. He liked that it shows a guy playing guitar to a woman. I should have bought extra rolls… I think it would be cool to wallpaper an entire room with this, but I don’t think they make it anymore.
My friend Matt was playing drums with Bright Eyes at the time, and he was living with me. They had band practice in this room of my house where the wallpaper was hung, while they were getting ready to go on tour. I think there’s a brief clip of it in the Spend an Evening with Saddle Creek DVD… it’s my laundry room :)
This is the official plan for the housing development that the Desaparecidos artwork was based on. For the artwork, I changed the name to “Briar Hills Estates” but “Fire Ridge Estates” was the real development in Omaha. When I was working on artwork, I went to the county office and you can pretty much look up anything and photocopy it. All of the liner notes were based on actual documents filed with the County, and I just inserted the lyrics into them.
Part of this is on the CD face, and more is under the white tray.
Here’s the photo from the back of the CD. I guess I lied, you can actually see some ground. But you have to take my word for it that it’s surreal to stand in one spot and see pristine farmland in one direction, then turn 180 degrees and see this behind you.
At the time, I worked for the local phone company as an installer/tech, and I’ve been in hundreds of these new houses. It’s scary, every single one is exactly the same. You start to think that all of the people inside are exactly the same too. NO ONE HAS ANY BOOKS!!!! Once I was in a really typical West Omaha new construction cookie-cutter house, and had to go into the basement bedroom to check the phone extension. Their kid had a bunch of Bright Eyes and Cursive posters on her walls. It made me so happy, it lasted for weeks.
This is the original photo used for the Desaparecidos cover art. On the CD version this photo is on the front of the insert, under the vellum sheet that has the houses and titles on it. You only see the left half, the trees are cropped out.
Conor, his cousin Ian, and I went for a drive out in west Omaha for the afternoon to take album artwork photos. The sprawl was bad then, but it’s worse now. You’d have to drive even further out to get photos like this.
If you notice at the bottom of the photo (and the album cover) there is crop stubble above the road, and tilled dirt below it. That’s because if you faced north there was working farmland, and if you turned to face south you’d see a solid panorama of housing developments… literally across the street from one another. The back cover of the CD is the exact same spot, just facing south! You can’t even see the ground in the back cover photo.
The funny thing is that the album cover concept for the Desa record became reality. The farm in this photo turned into another housing development a few years after the record came out.
An old Commander Venus promo postcard :) I think the photo was taken outside of Conor’s parents’ house, but I’m not sure.
This was halfway through the gluing of the flame pieces for the People’s Key artwork.
When I started working on the art for the Lua single and I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Conor needed to give me track listings. He wrote out this for me. He has sloppy handwriting :)
