I've been making music flyers for 30 years. I started out drawing them, coloring them by hand, then I went into splicing photos together and xeroxing them; once color xerox came onto the scene it made my work a lot easier...then when computer graphics got big I started working on that end of the spectrum. Here are some that I made over the years and as recently as this week. Cheers, WC1

This picture is used on the website. I changed the color of the stage curtains from the purple shown here to red for the holiday season. We took the picture in August at the cruise ship terminal in Galveston one night after we'd played a show there. I'm John. Anyway, this guy had a portable studio set up there and he took this picture. As you can see, it sucks. We're cropped off on both sides and right below the ankles, with Pee Wee's trademark spec shoes not shown, and his backdrop doesn't even come close to covering the area behind us. The lighting is uneven and Ronnie came out 5 shades darker than the rest of us. Pee Wee's wife came up to me a week later with that picture, and she goes, this oughta go on the website! Look how nice of a picture it is! I recoiled. I didn't say anything, I just took the picture. Over the next 3 days, I scanned it and started reconstructing it, doing the best I could to get it to look like something halfway decent. I added Clem's right arm to Hank's left by copying it and pasting it back in and flipping it over, I added my left arm to Sylvester's right using the same procedure, I copied Ronnie's left hand and flipped it over so it would be his right hand behind Sylvester's shoulder, and I duplicated his head and lightened a transparency of it. I completely removed the awful background and replaced it with a stock photo of some stage curtains and changed them from gold to purple, I took a picture of Pee Wee's shoes from another picture and changed them to fit his kneeling pose, removed the parrot head from the corner of his shirt that was hanging between his legs that on first glance looked like his dick sticking out, and I created lower legs on everybody, put shadows in and finally said OK, now it oughta go on the website. That photographer shouldn't have gotten paid for that picture, he should have been prosecuted for it. Anyway, here's the picture of the Pee Wee Bowen Band. Cheers, WC1
First picture, the one from the cruise terminal
Second picture, the one I made from it in Photoshop

The Whiskey Saints, from 2006. James, Lanis, Richard, John, Nick. I joined Pee Wee on guitar early in 2007. Cheers, WC1

A flyer for the Citykings' CD from 2005.

I was with Shakedown for a few years on keyboards, this was from one of our gigs. The picture is manufactured out of several that I put together for this one flyer. It was around this time that I started having severe hearing loss. Now I am almost totally deaf.

I made a flyer for my friend Annette a few years ago when she had a high=profile gig in town. More went into this one than it looks like. I had to redo the background completely because her band wasn't shown...it was another band that she was sitting in with. I designed the little logo with her smile on it, she smiles all the time. She's a doll and a wonderful singer. I ran into her a while back and she's doing fine. She opened a Creole restaurant on the Northeast side of town.

This was on the website this summer, I just removed it last week.

I drew this one in FreeHand on the computer. Pee Wee likes it, he said I made him look handsome. He is like a magnet to women on stage...he's a dynamo of energy, range and passion...most nights, they're hanging on him in groups. His wife is cool with it, she knows he's faithful, but man, that must be tempting at times...he was voted Entertainer of the Year in 2008 for the Houston area...runner-up this year...it's about as great of a gig as anybody would ever want, what I have with him. On top of all that, he has been a loyal and caring friend to me and my family. I take George and Ludwig (Van) over to his shop and work on them on his lift. He's been right there all the way for me. When I was out for 6 weeks after having surgery in January, he saved my spot in the band until I came back, and he called me every day to see if I needed anything and how I was doing. There aren't very many people walking around on this earth that I could call equal or better than Pee Wee Bowen. I've made close to 40 grand twanging my guitar behind him over the last 3 years, and he keeps us out there, busy and prosperous, getting top-dollar for the band. But like I say, his friendship towers above the material rewards.

Wicked!!!!!!!!!

Your stuff looks like it could have been done during the roaring 20's, the big band era or yesterday.

To cool!!!!

Thanks, Carl. The Roaring 20s were a huge influence on me...I grew up in a Victorian-era house in Galveston's Historical district, and the 20s were still big-time modern back in the 50s even...today I made a flyer for the band's gig coming up on December 19th at Capone's in Houston. It is a very cool place and I decided to bring this picture up out of an archive I had. The folks in this picture were a couple of vaudeville comedians that were playing a show somewhere, and this was their flyer. I love working with the old stuff. The guy's right shoulder was gone and her face had been scratched, the background was ragged in spots. I re-framed it out, removed the lettering from the old ad, made a new layer and put his right shoulder on him, removed the wilted boutinier from his lapel and fixed his bowtie...the guy was a slob, but I shined him up nice for that chick. I also tried a version of it without her hat. Looked bad. Empty. I put her hat back on. Maybe one without the dress would have been good. Come to think of it, the style those people have is from earlier than the 20s, isn't it...it's from closer to the turn of the century. Pre WWI? Pre-Suffrage? Pre-Prohibition? Pre-Food and Drug Act? I'd put it at about 1908-10. Looks like Taft-era fahsion to me? Anyway, here it is. Enjoy! WC1

That is so cool.

My dad was born in 1918 and mom in 1922 so I grew up listening to the music of the roaring 20's, big band era etc. I remember albums of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, The Mills Brothers, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Arte Shaw and many I can't remember. Lawerence Welk was a weekly thing. Eddy Arnold was also heard in our house.

Then came rock and roll and my mind went to mush...lol

Same exact deal here, man...I used to hear "I Love The Ladies" by Eddie Cantor on a 78, dude sang into a megaphone or something?...also "By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea"...my Mom played a ukelele and taught me and my sister to do the Charleston...then we got 45s..."Hot Diggety" by Perry Como, "Moonlight Gambler" by Frankie Laine...when we got the Hi Fi set in the 50s it was Hugo Winterhalter, Spike Jones, Dixieland, Hank Williams, Victory at Sea soundtrack...and so on...I think the first rock n' roll record I had was "One-Eyed, One-Horned Flyin' Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley...

nice work man

Thanks, fellas...my memory kicked in...it was "Rock 'n Roll Waltz" by Kay Starr. No wonder I'm crazy! WC1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJX7nli ... re=related

I just finished this for the January front page of the band's website. There's 7 of us, so I had to go and get the Booker T and the MGs cover of "The Other Side Of Abbey Road"...got Booker T, Steve Cropper and Al Jackson outta there to add to John, Paul, George and Ringo...also replaced the Bug in the original Abbey Road picture with George, then I went well, I might as well replace all the cars in the picture with Phantom Kruisers. Way in the background is Terry's Mustang, that's Lupe's 40 Ford in the left lane. Pee Wee's 56, Mike's 36 Chevy, Boudreaux's Mercedes450 SL, Butch's 57, Jack's 37 pink Chevy, Jim's 57, Bob's 32 Vick, and Eddie's 40 Lincoln Zephyr. Whew. I didn't mean for it to get that involved, but once I get going, I can't stop. I also worked up some flyers for our Capone's gigs next year. I found this cool shot of Bogie, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe, it was black and white and it still looked cool...Bogie always looked cool, but here he is fumbling with a napkin and ogling Marilyn's rack (with his wife sitting right next to him)...same thing I would have done. Anyway, I put a .45 caliber automatic cigarette lighter in his hand and two cigs in the other. Colorizing isn't easy, I work with color overlays and I have to get the right shade and the right opacity, but this one came out good. Enjoy! WC1

I'm on a Capone's kick this week. I made some more. I'm playing up the Bad Girl thing. I don't know if I mentioned this or not earlier, but there are quite a few single ladies that go there...all of them are high-maintenance eye candy. Some of them got up and danced, even a couple of them did the Jungle Boogie. But I want 'em to go crazy like they did at Club 21 in Galveston before Hurricane Ike wiped it out. We don't play there since they rebuilt it (they paid us the equivalent of pocket change and wouldn't give us a raise even though we packed the place to the rafters every time we played there). The band always gets over, but even with a few drinks in 'em, the ladies at Capone's still cling to an air of reserved sophistication while they're squirming in their chairs. I want 'em to get up and shake their money makers. Here's what I came up with. At least this might get them in the mood to show their stuff subconsciously or something. Cheers, WC1