Weekends in high school, I’d stay up late playing guitar, and then I’d watch Austin City Limits. Though I’ve visited the KLRU studio twice before, last night was my first time seeing live music there. I couldn’t have asked for a better show than Iron and Wine.

I’ve been a fan of Sam Beam (who now lives in Dripping Springs, about 20 miles SW of Austin) since I was in college, when his first album came out. He sounded like a southern Elliott Smith, whispering hushed songs from his bedroom. Each album of his has gotten better and better, adding more players, more instruments, more rhythms and intricate parts. The band last night was a downright funky bunch of eight musicians—the core was Sam on vocals/various guitars (he’s a fantastic finger-picker) and his sister Sarah on backing vocals/violin, filled out with Calexico pedal steel virtuoso Paul Niehaus, a Rhodes/piano player, a bassist, a drummer, percussionist, and guitarist/vibe player. (I wonder how many of the musicians were local…if anybody knows, please comment!)

I didn’t draw too much or take down a setlist because I was having too much fun drinking free beer and enjoying the music and Meg and watching the people and the lights and the camera booms swing around. However, there is a funny story behind this drawing:

When I saw the pedal steel player come out on stage before the set to tune up, I doodled this little cartoon. I love the sound of pedal steel. Meg bought me a lap steel a couple Christmas’s ago, but I still haven’t mastered it (I’m a decent guitarist, but not great on slide). I didn’t recognize him as Paul Niehaus of Calexico (huge fan). Later in the concert, Sam announced that it would be their last show with Paul for a while, so for the rest of the show, people shouted “Paul!” and Sam encouraged us all to “give another hand for Paul.”

The pedal steel player was the most popular guy in the room!

Here’s a good video of Sam and Sarah singing together, and here’s a good video of the band on Letterman (with a different piano player). You can read two other bloggers on the show here and here.

The show airs on November 15th. Don’t miss it!

Doodle of Mark “Baby” Cakes done during the Brad Neely Animation Showcase

She was made out of the universe’s best ingredients….When I was around her, I felt like a goblin made entirely out of wicked genitals….I was free to love her! To show her what the inside of a poem looks like!—Mark “Baby” Cakes’ Diary #4

Went with Meg, Adam and Marsha to a showcase of local Austin, Texas cartoonist Brad Neely’s animation at the Alamo Ritz downtown last night. 90 minutes of animated hilarity ensued.

How a simple slideshow set to music and words can engross us. How such simple drawings can pull us in to such a fully-formed world! The poetry of Baby Cakes. The beautiful difference between watching videos on your computer and in a darkened theater with a live audience.

If you’re not familiar with Neely’s work, here’s some links to get you started. Get ready for raunchy genius.

• Creased Comics website
• Videos on SuperDeluxe
• Interviews with the Austinist and the Austin Chronicle

I’ll post some of my favorite videos in the comments below.

Artist/cartoonist Gary Panter signed his new book and gave a slideshow presentation at Domy Books last night. My buddy Adam has the last word:

Here are some good pictures of the same event at the Houston store.

My wife loves to sew and she’s quite the craft-blog connoisseur, so this afternoon she dragged me over to the first Austin CRAFT Magazine Release Party for a little bit. Amazingly, I wasn’t the only guy there. I sat and doodled and ate cupcakes and watched everybody crafting, and it got me thinking about do-it-yourself, and how our generation as a whole is becoming more interested in making things. (Witness Maker Faire.)

I also started thinking about artists who not only make their art, they TEACH others how to make art. This, in a way, not only makes them even more beloved to their pre-existing fans, it also makes them new fans, and new patrons: when you teach someone how to make a certain type of art, you are, in effect, generating more interest for your art form, and creating more consumers for it.

But even more important, you’re welcoming people into a club. “You too can make art! It helps your soul grow! Join us!”

“The market for something to believe in is infinite.”

Not only that: the market for a club to belong to is infinite.

Jessica Abel and Matt Madden were in town this weekend to promote Jessica’s La Perdida and Life Sucks, and their brand-new comics textbook collaboration, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures (great title). Yesterday they talked about the books (in that order) at Austin Books and Comics. There was a small crowd, not much A/C, and a keg of beer!

The biggest treat was that we got to buy a copy of the new textbook, which doesn’t officially come out for a week or so:

Some things I took away from their talk:

• Jessica’s early stuff was drawn with a pen very realistically, with tons of detail, so for La Perdida, she went for a sketchy, brush drawn look, which she thought turned out to be more realistic, because readers could fill in the world around the significant, selected details. This came out as sort of an off-the-cuff remark, but as Meg pointed out to me, it’s one of the most important lessons of comics: less is sometimes more, and since every comic drawing is a visual metaphor, there’s a balancing act when it comes to the level of abstraction in your drawings (see McCloud).

After she said that, when I was flipping through the book I found this cool example:

• Meg mentioned how much the technical skills (pencilling, layout, inking) of comics resemble architecture. That got me thinking: someone who wanted to study comics in a traditional academic setting would likely first think to seek out say, life-drawing and creative writing classes, which are fine, but they might be better served by design (typography, page layout, the grid), screenwriting (dialogue, visual storytelling), or poetry (economy of words, laying them out in space).
• Their book is aimed at three different types of comics creators:
  1. Students in the classroom
  2. Ronin — lone warriors out on their own
  3. Nomads — small groups (i.e. a writing group that meets once a week at a coffee shop)

  The book is formatted so that each type of creator can benefit from the lessons.

• Men seem to like the idea of having a separate studio space away from the house, while women seem to prefer a room at home. (At least it’s the same for Meg and me. Discuss.)
• Matt and Jessica have a new baby, and Meg noted that people always seem to ask “male-oriented” questions at those events—she wanted to ask how you keep a house running and still find time to create (but didn’t…and it would’ve been a great question, too!)
• Comics is a language, people!
• Jessica’s #1 productivity tip: get a calendar, and stick to it! (More details)

Since both Matt and Jessica are teachers at SVA, I asked them if they saw any pitfalls, teaching comics in the academy. Is there a chance that comics programs could turn out like MFA writing programs, with students turning out uniform, quiet, lit’ry, “workshopped” New Yorker types of short stories?

They both agreed that “it all comes down to the teachers,” and “if comics can’t withstand being taught in the academy, what kind of medium is it?”

I mentioned Lynda Barry’s new book as a great antidote to the “bad” kind of creative writing teaching, and Matt had a great reply:

(He was referring to Lynda’s art teacher in college, Marilyn Frasca.)

Overall, I think this book is extremely well done and worth checking out by anyone who’s interested in making comics—it’s probably the first book I’ve ever seen that could actually serve as the lone textbook for a comics-making class. I think it will sell like hotcakes, and, as Jessica and Matt hinted, we’ll definitely see a sequel focusing on “advanced” topics such as coloring and webcomics.

My complete notes from the talk, if anyone’s interested:

Thanks to Matt and Jessica for swinging down to Austin!

My buddy Tim and I went to see writer Michael Chabon (”Shea as in stadium, Bon as in Jovi”) at Bookpeople last night. There were at least 100 people there. I picked up a copy of his beautiful new non-fiction collection with a Jordan Crane-designed cover.

During the Q&A, Chabon remarked of one of his characters, “He was too verbose and too Jewish.”

When he signed my book to “Meg + Austin,” I said, “Meg is my wife—she really likes your stuff.”

And Chabon (who seems like a really nice guy, by the way) joked, “Oh, and you don’t think it’s so hot?”

And I blushed and restrained myself from quoting his Q&A.

(Brilliant storyteller, but dang, he can be long-winded!)

Here’s Tim and I hanging out beforehand:

Good times!

PS. Wonder Boys is one of the greatest movies ever made. Not joking. And it has a kick-ass soundtrack. Go watch it.

PPS: The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon.

Went to see John Pierson interview Matt Stone, co-creator of South Park last night at the Austin City Limits studio on campus here at the University of Texas. Here’s a little write-up. I took some crummy sketchbook notes—could not for the life of me figure out how to draw him, so I just drew him as Kyle.

I have a kind of sentimental attachment to South Park: it came out the summer after my parents divorced, and my dad and I used to sit around in his little apartment and watch it and laugh our heads off. Humor when we needed it.

So, it was a real pleasure to hear him speak about the show, and his collaboration with Trey Parker. His thoughts were funny and intelligent.

Some highlights for me:

• The show was originally supposed to be a “X-Files set in the mountains” with all the townspeople seeing aliens, etc. That premise got quickly worn out, but they kept the small town setting, which would later serve as a little microcosm for America, keeping the show continually fresh.
• Their method of cut-outs was born out of procrastination: they do each show in only a week, and the quickness of the whirlwind process keeps them from getting bored. Stone said he barely remembers the shows after they finish them. He quoted Danny DeVito as saying, “Movies are never finished, only abandoned.” (There’s a different origin to that quote, but it’s true for all art forms.)
• Stone said they always used to start a project by making a trailer first, and they’d use that to shop it around.

• He listed three things that make his job the best job in Hollywood:

  1. Complete creative control
  2. Working with friends
  3. Living five minutes away from work

  When you think about it, that’s the formula for any great job…

• Speaking of formulas, here’s the formula to most South Park episodes:
  1. A controversial issue
  2. Two extreme sides screaming at each other
  3. Kids stuck in the middle

  And again, when you think about it, that pretty much describes America.

Lots of other topics were discussed: Youtube, the original “The Spirit of Christmas” short, the Scientology Episode, the Britney Spears Show, lawyers, the 80s, the writer’s strike, Cannibal: The Musical!, and the genius Universal Studios Employee video.

Great, great event. Thanks to Janet for inviting me!

“Ever had one of those nights where you just couldn’t get drunk?”—Bill Callahan

No, I haven’t.

We got to Bill Callahan’s “secret” show with Jonathan Meiburg and Thor Harris (both from the band Shearwater) just in time to listen to them warm up during their soundcheck (and snap a picture through the window). Callahan is one of my favorite songwriters, so I was excited to see him again (we saw him a couple years ago in Cleveland).

Jonathan Meiburg opened up with a round of songs on banjo and guitar. Then Callahan came out with Meiburg on guitar and Harris on drums.

Great set. Harris and Meiburg gave the songs a heavy edge—much different than the Cleveland show with a fuller, subtler band (including the fantastic Jim White on drums!)

Setlist:

• Sycamore
• Nothing Rises to Meet Me
• Our Anniversary
• Diamond Dancer
• Say Valley Maker
• Rock Bottom Riser
• Cold Blooded Old Times
• Vessel In Vain
• a new song about birds: “too many birds in one tree…“
• Let Me See The Colts

Encore:

• The Well
• In The Pines

Here’s a four-minute Youtube reel of video clips I shot:

Links:

• Bill Callahan, Retread Session
• Jonathan Meiburg and Thor Harris, Retread Session #2

Beautiful weather. Great venue. Fantastic lineup. Thought I was going to pee my pants waiting in line for a port-o-john, but ended up okay. We had a great spot in the shade:

Drew & Sonia (they’re getting married tomorrow!), my old friend Marty (4 years since I saw him!), his fiancee Marion (I finally got to meet her!), and Meg.

Marty with a $1 PBR and a free ice cream sandwich. Doesn’t get any better than that.

Yesterday Meg and I went to the Texas Book Festival. We were hoping to catch Shalom Auslander at the book signing tent, but he didn’t show up, so we walked downtown and got some Jimmy Johns and ate it on the lawn of the capital. Beautiful day. We finished up lunch and went to the House Chamber (which is pimped out beyond belief with the most comfortable leather chairs I’ve ever sat in) to listen to Tom Perrotta read:

After that, we went to see the always-fantastic-certified-genius George Saunders:

That last panel is a response to a (kinda lengthy) question I asked in the Q & A: “You’ve written about Charles Schulz and Peanuts before. David Michaelis’s new biography questions whether Schulz was as good of a family man as we’ve been led to believe. You strike me as a genuine family man, and I detect the great theme of work vs. family in your writing. So what do you think is the relation between being a good artist and being a great family man, and which do you think is more important?”

That night, we walked downtown to see a screening of Little Children at the newly-reopened Alamo Ritz. I love Tom Perrotta, but he really seemed uncomfortable in the setting:

All in all, it was a great day.