Rest easy, we’re here to answer your questions and help get everybody familiar with Broken Crow in preparation for brand new art print diptych we’ll be screenprinting and publishing! We will be debuting the print set at our booth at Flatstock 24. Drive around Austin and see if you can find all of their new murals, then take the prints home with you.

 
So just who is Broken Crow? Introduce yourselves!
Broken Crow is John and Mike. We cut holes in things and paint through the holes. We like to do this as large as time will allow.

 
Why stencils?
There’s really nothing more bad-ass than playing with knives for a living. Cutting stencils is the exact opposite of making artwork in public, and we need balance in our lives.

  
Can you briefly explain your process? How do you go from the initial idea in your head all the way up to a gigantic painting on the side of a building?
We have lots of conversations. Then, we make lots of drawings. Throw in some coffee, some whiskey, some sleep deprivation. We pick the drawings we like the best, spend 20 hours turning them into large-scale stencils, and find a wall to paint it on. 

How did the mural project in Austin come out? What is the connection with the art print?
Austin came out better than we could have anticipated. We ended up doing 10 walls in 6 days, it’s been a total whirlwind. Billy Bishop of Obsolete Industries has been our cultural ambassador down here, and went above and beyond anything we could have expected. 

When we were coming up with concepts for what we were going to paint in Austin, we got really excited about the new drawings we were working on. At that point we got ahold of Ben, he was into it, and the rest was history.

Broken Crow Stencil Mural – 1 Day Time lapse – Lion Man from The BFC on Vimeo.

 
What other artists’ work have you been enjoying lately?
Carrie Thompson, C-215, MF Doom, M-City, Eelus, Logan Hicks, Erik Burke, Doomtree, Blu, Maria Juranic, Elbow Toe, Sten & Lex, The Chicharones, Four Tet, MOP, The Weakerthans, El Mac and Retna, Meggs, Drew Peterson. We could go on and on…

FLATSTOCK 24
Thursday March 18, 1 – 6pm
Friday March 19 & Saturday March 20, 11am – 6pm
Austin Convention Center, ground floor, Exhibit Hall 1
more info here

Along with dozens of our postermaking peers, we will be exhibiting our art prints, rock posters, t-shirts, sticker packs, and more. We’ll have everything from the common to the rare, from the old to the brand-spanking new. Bring a little money, come say hello, and take home some new art for your home, your office, or for your friend!

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NEO OBSOLETE POST NASAL SURREALISTIC CARNAGE
Thursday March 18, 7-10pm
Obsolete Industries (1700 East 12th St, Austin TX 78702)

From the warped mind of Haze XXL, the same man who brought you NON-CONSENSUAL POST DADA CONSTRUCTIVIST CEREBRAL WARTS, comes another destructive combination of art and music. Check out art on display from a slew of Minneapolitans: Burlesque, Broken Crow, Haze XXL, and Grant Hart from Husker Dü. Hart will also be performing music, as will Gay Witch Abortion. This all goes down at East Austin’s Obsolete Indutries screenprint studio.

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DO IT TO IT 3
Thursday March 18, 8pm – 2am
Silhouette (718 Congress Ave)
21 up / Free with RSVP here: burlesquedesign.com/doittoit

What would SXSW be for us without a party at Silhouette? Our favorite sushi and karaoke duplex is once again letting us take over and fill the room with BASS. Here’s the lineup of DJs for this year’s festivities:

8:00 – Jimmy 2 Times (Get Cryphy / MPLS)
8:45 – DJs Pump & Hedspin (Eh! Team DJs / Calgary, Vancouver)
9:30 – DJ Mel (Rock the Casbah / Nasty’s / Austin)
10:15 – Mike 2600 (Burlesque / Crossfaded Bacon / MPLS)
11:00 – Prince Klassen (Fully Fitted, Austin)
11:45 – Smalltown Romeo (Hai Karate / Plant Music / Calgary)
12:30 – Cubic Zirconia (live performance / Don’t Cry / NYC)
1:15 – Bird Peterson (Undocumented / BP Americo / CA via TX)

At the party, we will be releasing DO IT TO IT VOL. III, the third (duh) in our series of Do it To it musical releases. This CD features brand new and exclusive tracks and remixes from Do it To it veterans Bird Peterson, Mike 2600, Smalltown DJs, and Prince Klassen as well as BK-One, Nick Catchdubs, DJ Ayres, and many more! Stay tuned to the BRLSQ blog and newsletter for a sneak peek at the full CD packaging.

Have a listen to all of the tracks right here:

Do it To it Volume III preview by Mike 2600

OK that’s it for now. More TX news as we get even closer to the festival!

BRLSQ: Tell the readers a little bit about Landland.

DAN BLACK: Landland started in 2007…it was me and Matt Zaun and kind of Jes Seamans (even though she was living in San Francisco at the time). Matt and I had been following each other from job to job for the last seven or so years, and the whole time kinda messing around with screenprinting in different basements and wherever we could set up shop. After moving all of our stuff around a few times, it got old and we set out to find a more permanent space. I knew Wes from around town and at some point asked him if he knew of any spaces that were opening up…that was how we ended up in you guyses’ building. I think we got the room that someone was using to store sculpture stuff in…there was nothing built in there at all, so we got to work building all the stuff we’d always complained about not having in our cramped basements and weird garage situations. We spent the first summer just building, and a few months after we’d pretty much moved in, Matt died of a heart attack. I was talking to Jes about it shortly after, and she offered to come back to Minneapolis to help out with things, which is pretty much one of the most amazing things that anyone’s ever done for me. So now it’s me and Jes, and we’re making things all the time and trying to spend as much time in there as we can without pissing off {1101 Stinson-mate and graphic designer Michael} Cina too badly with all of our noisy equipment and me singing along to stuff I listened to in high school.

BRLSQ: How did you end up moving in down the hall from us?

DB: I guess I covered that in the last answer…we really couldn’t have ended up with a better setup. The building is great, and it’s rad to be next to you guys all the time. Also, with the karate studio upstairs and the armor shop at the other end of the hall, I think it’s probably one of the more fortified spots in Minneapolis, so we’ve got that going for us too.

BRLSQ: Who are your favorite poster artists these days?

DB: I think I’m kinda partial to the weirdos lately, and I mean that really affectionately…Sonnenzimmer, Scott Campbell, my roommates Dan (DNML) Luedke and Casey Deming are turning out some amazing stuff. I have really been loving what Jay Ryan has been doing lately…it seems like something snapped in there in a really good way. Ryan Duggan, Nate Duval, people like that. I’m really trying to refrain from saying anything about you guys, because I talk you up a lot when I’m, you know, not talking to you. There’s like a million other people that I’m all about. If you want me to keep going, I can.

 
BRLSQ: What can people expect when they come to this art show on Saturday?

DB: Every single thing that we’ve made since moving in, including some new art prints and a bunch of work we’ve done for out-of-town shows, which is a relatively new thing for us. We’re releasing a record on Saturday…it’s a split 12″ with the incredible Nate Denver’s Neck on one side, and Jes’ band Best Friends Forever on the other. It’s the first release on a kinda separate thing we’re doing called “Landland Is Not A Record Label,” which seems a little like a record label, but it’s not, because I don’t have the patience or the time to actually do the all the ugly work of real record labels. We just want to put things out periodically…records, books, whatever. So it’s all that stuff, I guess. 

BRLSQ: Isn’t Jodi awesome?

DB: Yeah, Jodi’s pretty awesome. If I could make a list of five people that I would want to let me into our studio after I’ve locked myself out, she’d be at least four of them. I have a feeling she also has to deal with me singing along to stuff she probably hates, and she’s never once mentioned it, so she’s a good person for that too.

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Don’t miss Landland’s “Soft Targets” show, opening Saturday February 27th
7-10pm at First Amendment Arts (1101 Stinson Blvd at Broadway in NE Minneapolis).
Live music from Best Friends Forever
Free admission / all ages

RSVP on Facebook

Find out more about Landland right here: http://landland.net

It’s February 19th, the day after Dre Day. Nevermind the 18th, today’s the day that needs to become a federal holiday. No one’s getting any work done and they really need the time to recover. Seems that people nationwide are choosing to celebrate all week long from the slew of parties that have been popping up! We don’t even know who some of you guys are but keep spreading the Dre gospel far and wide. Also, get in touch so we can send you stuff! We’re gonna put up a world map and stick pins in for each town that’s started observing Dre Day. Or maybe a globe so we can spin it. We really haven’t thought it through. Kinda like when we first thought of Dre Day back in late 2002. Here’s an exclusivo interview I did with Tigger at citypages.com that goes into the Dre Day origins.

BTW If you’re in Chicago, your celebration is tonight! With Psalm One at Darkroom. Here’s a few of Ben’s photos from last night at the Triple Rock. Check out his Dre Day 2010 MPLS flickr set for way more. The entire BRLSQ crew was there and had a ton of fun, maybe too much (…the phrase “Wes! I’m drunk! Gimme the keys to the truck!” may or may not have been uttered.) Everything went smoothly with setting up, Triple Rock staff was their usual great selves, and the crowd was hellbent on doing nothing but partying all night.

Oh, and next year?
February 18th, 2011 aka Dre Day falls on a Friday.

*Also, keep up to date with Ben’s awesome photos with the handy flickr feed on the left. It used to be linked to mine but I haven’t uploaded in ages. Once I start adding stuff again, I’ll put mine back up. Ben shoots a lot more than party photos too!