Screenprinted Poster - 12"x12"
A show I will never forget. We were asked to play in the First Avenue mainroom as Knife World. Upon completing our set we were asked to stay onstage and be Daniel Johnston's backing band for the "Rock" portion of his set. We dutifully rehearsed as many Johnston songs as we could along with a Beatles cover and a Lennon cover. He's apparently a huge Lennon Fan. We then arrived at the club to sound check. In walks Daniel, his brother/manager, Dick, and music-collaborator/longtime friend Brett Hartenbach. We had never met him or rehearsed with him prior to that moment. He ambled unto the stage and introduced himself and opened up his large binder with all his song lyrics. We told him what songs we knew and we quickly plowed through all eight of them. We hoped that he wouldn't think we were wretched, but at the end of the cram session he was excited and said we sounded good. After the sound check rehearsal deal, we were invited to eat a pre-show dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe across the street (a place I would under any other circumstances never go). It was there that I got to talk with Daniel about a number of things: the horrible taste of diet sweeteners, his prior backing bands that didn't rock hard enough, Lenny Kravitz, and comics.
The poster I made for the show features a major moment in the life of the International Clam, a Knife World song character. "International Clam" is a story about a boy clam that gets swallowed by a whale. He spends his youth in the isolated wet darkness of the whale's belly. As the whale grows old and dies, the clam climbs to the top of the floating gelatinous rotting whale carcass and rides the blubbery raft to all corners of the world. In this poster the creatures of the sea have come to pay their respects to the dead host whale, but also to wish the International Clam well on his journey ahead.
