The post was not added to the feed. Please check your privacy settings.
JasonK shared JasonK's image. This is a repost, but I didn't get any 'likes' last time which I'm very upset about... What a cool pic, would love to own one...
In 2013 I bought a used 8x10” large format view camera while traveling... moreNashville story.
Frank Hamrick
In 2013 I bought a used 8x10” large format view camera while traveling
during the summer and had it shipped to Jim Sherraden's house. Jim liked
the tintype’s character and proposed making tintypes of musicians at
Hatch Show Print. He believed folks would sit for a unique portrait made
using an archaic process in an authentic setting. I told Jim I was
interested and the first musicians I wanted to have sit for the series
was Gillian Welch and her partner, Dave Rawlings.
That next year a new version of the Dave Rawlings Machine was
assembled, which featured both Dave and Gillian, along with former Old
Crow Medicine Show multi-instrumentalist Willie Watson, Punch Brothers
standup bassist Paul Kowert, and on mandolin and fiddle, John Paul Jones
from Led Zeppelin.
A
string of dates was booked with the tour ending Friday night at the
Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. I wrote to Jim, who in turn had my letter
forwarded to Gillian and Dave’s record label. Time passed without any
response. More tour dates were added to the itinerary including a
Saturday night show on the outskirts of town at the Grand Ole Opry.
Friday, the day of the first Nashville show, the record label called
Jim. His contact there had just returned from vacation and was now
responding to his letter. Gillian and Dave loved the idea and wanted a
tintype of the whole band. They had an hour and a half window of time
Saturday evening before the Opry appearance.
Due to the tintype’s long exposure time, it was decided the portrait
would be made outside in Jim’s backyard rather than inside at Hatch. The
band arrived already wearing their stage clothes. It became evident why
they were interested in sitting for a tintype when Gillian said she
studied photography in college and Dave made photographs with his Leica
while I explained the wet plate process to everyone so they would know
what to expect.
The
band was positioned under a large oak tree. Gillian and Dave sat up
front while the rest of the band stood behind them with John Paul, the
patriarch, in the center. Each tintype was sensitized, exposed and
developed one at a time. Between shots the band ate BBQ in the driveway
while Dave and John Paul played Neil Young’s “Last Trip To Tulsa”.
Exposure times crept from six to eight seconds as the sun fell behind
the trees. The band posed out in Jim’s field for a final ten-second
exposure before heading to sound check.
That night while driving into town for ice cream, we listened to the
band’s Grand Ole Opry performance live on WSM AM radio.
Two days later I was back in Louisiana making a tintype of Andy, one of
my former graduate students. I showed Andy the final tintype from the
Dave Rawlings session, “You may not recognize him but this guy in the
middle is John Paul Jones.”
Andy studied the image, “The name sounds familiar.”
“Maybe you’ve heard of Led Zeppelin.”
Andy, who once played drums in a punk band, looked into the distance,
“I’ve only heard one Led Zeppelin song and it’s the one where they sing
‘We don’t need no education’, which shows just how much they need
education because that’s a double negative.”
“Andy, that’s Pink Floyd.”
“Well, then I guess I only know one Pink Floyd song.”
Frank Hamrick
Photography & Book Arts
frankhamrick.com
etsy.com/shop/frankhamrick less
In 2013 I bought a used 8x10” large format view camera while traveling during the summer and had it shipped to Jim Sherraden's house. Jim liked the tintype’s character and proposed making tintypes of musicians at Hatch Show Print. He believed folks... moreIn 2013 I bought a used 8x10” large format view camera while traveling during the summer and had it shipped to Jim Sherraden's house. Jim liked the tintype’s character and proposed making tintypes of musicians at Hatch Show Print. He believed folks would sit for a unique portrait made using an archaic process in an authentic setting. I told Jim I was interested and the first musicians I wanted to have sit for the series was Gillian Welch and her partner, Dave Rawlings.
That next year a new version of the Dave Rawlings Machine was assembled, which featured both Dave and Gillian, along with former Old Crow Medicine Show multi-instrumentalist Willie Watson, Punch Brothers standup bassist Paul Kowert, and on mandolin and fiddle, John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin.
A string of dates was booked with the tour ending Friday night at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. I wrote to Jim, who in turn had my letter forwarded to Gillian and Dave’s record label. Time passed without any response. More tour dates were added to the itinerary including a Saturday night show on the outskirts of town at the Grand Ole Opry.
Friday, the day of the first Nashville show, the record label called Jim. His contact there had just returned from vacation and was now responding to his letter. Gillian and Dave loved the idea and wanted a tintype of the whole band. They had an hour and a half window of time Saturday evening before the Opry appearance.
Due to the tintype’s long exposure time, it was decided the portrait would be made outside in Jim’s backyard rather than inside at Hatch. The band arrived already wearing their stage clothes. It became evident why they were interested in sitting for a tintype when Gillian said she studied photography in college and Dave made photographs with his Leica while I explained the wet plate process to everyone so they would know what to expect.
The band was positioned under a large oak tree. Gillian and Dave sat up front while the rest of the band stood behind them with John Paul, the patriarch, in the center. Each tintype was sensitized, exposed and developed one at a time. Between shots the band ate BBQ in the driveway while Dave and John Paul played Neil Young’s “Last Trip To Tulsa”. Exposure times crept from six to eight seconds as the sun fell behind the trees. The band posed out in Jim’s field for a final ten-second exposure before heading to sound check.
That night while driving into town for ice cream, we listened to the band’s Grand Ole Opry performance live on WSM AM radio.
Two days later I was back in Louisiana making a tintype of Andy, one of my former graduate students. I showed Andy the final tintype from the Dave Rawlings session, “You may not recognize him but this guy in the middle is John Paul Jones.”
Andy studied the image, “The name sounds familiar.”
“Maybe you’ve heard of Led Zeppelin.”
Andy, who once played drums in a punk band, looked into the distance, “I’ve only heard one Led Zeppelin song and it’s the one where they sing ‘We don’t need no education’, which shows just how much they need education because that’s a double negative.”
“Andy, that’s Pink Floyd.”
“Well, then I guess I only know one Pink Floyd song.”
Frank Hamrick
Photography & Book Arts
frankhamrick.com
etsy.com/shop/frankhamrick less
I walked down Broadway past a string of bars open early Friday
afternoon. Four of the clubs had live bands playing Merle Haggard... moreNashville story 2015 Frank Hamrick
I walked down Broadway past a string of bars open early Friday
afternoon. Four of the clubs had live bands playing Merle Haggard
covers. Three of them were performing “Mama Tried”. Sandwiched among
faux, Nash Vegas honkytonks and urban cowboy outfitters; in a narrow
downtown Nashville building was Hatch Show Print, a letterpress shop
that had been in business since 1879.
The first ten feet deep inside was devoted to selling broadsides,
monoprints, restrikes and postcards. Tourists flipped through bins of
surplus commemorative concert posters searching for prints of their
favorite stars. On the other side of a counter that divided the
storefront from the rest of the building were a dozen folks dedicated to
using hand carved imagery and hundred-year-old wooden letters to design
and print posters. This felt much different than staring past the menu
into the kitchen at a Burger King.
A tattooed woman with Betty Page bangs stood near the register
rolling a print into a shipping tube. I asked her, “How do I get onto
your side of the counter? I want to make posters, not buy them.”
She picked up a pencil, “The manager isn’t in today. Mail him a
letter with some examples of your work. We’ve had artists come work with
us anywhere from a weekend to six months.” She handed me a
letterpressed business card with the name Jim Sherraden written on the
back.
That next summer I
was an intern at Hatch. Jim Sherraden was on vacation during my first
week but he called the shop periodically to check on things and say it
was ok for the production manager to buy ice cream for everyone. I
learned my way around the shop by reprinting posters of Porter Wagoner, a
country musician who had a television show in the late sixties and is
remembered for hiring a young woman named Dolly Parton to sing duets
with him on TV. The next poster I reprinted was for Dolly’s 1974 concert
appearance in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I was slowly reliving
country music history one print job at a time.
A large cat named Huey lived at Hatch to control the rodent
population and another cat named Maow was there to keep Huey company.
The shop’s walls were covered with band posters and insider’s jokes
about letterpress printing. A small container up front near the register
was labeled
Ye Stupid Questions Box, which contained quotes from visitors like, “Do y’all make the big checks they award contestants on The Price Is Right?”
On Memorial Day all the interns were given tickets to go visit The
Country Music Hall of Fame. There was an exhibit focusing on Ray
Charles’ country & western period. The most interesting artifact was
Charles’ brail edition of Playboy, which must have been topographic. It was as thick as the Atlanta phonebook.
After leaving the Hall of Fame I walked past the record stores and
souvenir shops back towards Hatch. Trucks on steroids cruised lower
Broadway. The sidewalks were packed with music fans that had descended
upon Nashville hoping to meet their favorite country singers at the
annual CMA Music Festival.
Inside Hatch a mom was leafing through the poster bins as her
teenage daughter gazed around. “Baby, would you like this poster?”
The daughter responded, “Does it say ‘Badonkadonk’ on it?”
“No, baby. It doesn’t.”
“Then I don’t want it.”
JasonKFrom Frank:
The Dave Rawlings Machine tintypes were made in the summer of 2014 at a mutual friend’s house outside of Nashville.
A
year later, 2015, Gillian contacted me about using one of those images... moreFrom Frank:
The Dave Rawlings Machine tintypes were made in the summer of 2014 at a mutual friend’s house outside of Nashville.
A
year later, 2015, Gillian contacted me about using one of those images
for the Nashville Obsolete cover and had me return to Nashville to make a
tintype for the back cover, which is of Dave standing by his guitar.
The
original tintype is 7.5 x 9.25”. I can make you an archival pigment
print reproduction of the field image with JPJ at its original size for
$100.00 plus whatever it cost to mail a stiff, flat envelope to your
address across the ocean.
If
this works for you, send you address to me and I will calculate the
shipping costs and can get you a total to pay via a PayPal gift.
Below is what I wrote for a collection of short stories. This one leads up to the making of the DRM tintype.
Thanks for your interest in my work and your support of Gillian and David. They are great people.
Frank Hamrick
Photography & Book Arts
frankhamrick.com
etsy.com/shop/frankhamrick less