Maverick ZINE — Tattoo Culture, Art & Artist Stories

People go like, "Hey man, just do anything you want. " He does 1-hour sessions. He'll do like six, seven people a day, but each one only gets 1 hour because the more you do, the worse it heals. Okay? The worse it heals, the more cleanup you have later. " For the most part, tattooing's fine. But once every 3 to 7 months, [ __ ] happens in a tattoo [Music] [Music] shop. What's happening everybody?

This is Austin Spencer with Support Your Local Tattoer. I am real real pumped today to sit down with a man that I've been tattooing in the same city as this man for me personally about 20 years um if not a little more. He has some great apprenticeship stories, some really fascinating just your your body of work as far as a tattooer is in hodge podge inc. It's dude incredible slow motion hodgepodge. But anyway, this is Clark North, man. And uh thank you guys for tuning in. So, chilling. How's How's your day going?

It's going good. It's It's I like the cold weather the best. I like when I can actually layer a little bit instead of just wearing a t-shirt. Yeah. Sweating, man. You start to get you get to express yourself through your style. Yeah. Yeah.

I know. It's like sweating sucks. So, let's see. You've been tattooing. I know you've you've been tattooing in Vegas now for I've been I've been here since 04 04 03. Uh came out just to see if I really wanted to for a minute and then 04 made the move. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And you kind of been like pretty lowkey. I feel like you hide out. Yeah. Yeah. It it it was awkward. Uh I don't know. Standing out too much.

Just I don't know. That's not me. Yeah. We did that TV show that was 200 well 2004 but it didn't air till five 2005 to seven. So was that what brought you out here? Yes. Yeah. So yeah they they um they had asked me for like three four weeks if I was in magazines before all that and Thomas Pendleton is somebody that that I helped uh him with his uh career a lot okay back in the 90s.

Yeah. " What the [ __ ] is this? It's like um I don't know. There were weird things at that time. There wasn't reality shows. I didn't know what it was. No, I know. That's why I was going to ask you, too.

I in my mind, I pictured it as like a documentary. Oh, I didn't know what they didn't say reality show even. They weren't saying, you know, they just a TV show about a tattooer's life and different tattooers. And so this is the shop. And it was like just a bad day. I'm from LA, Orange County area. It was just a bad day out there when I finally said yes. Really?

It was just one of those moments where Yeah. Somebody was like mad at me for for uh chipping the workstation and leaving cabinets open and bending a hinge, which I did none of. But the night shift, it was just one of those where I was I don't know. I I ain't saying that it was like wrong. Uh they were attacking me and so I got the [ __ ] out of there. But I was I was just like, you know what? When a door opens, why not look inside? So, and then they said, okay, you got to be here in 3 days then.

Oh [ __ ] Yeah. So, I had gone out I had come come out Las Vegas. I had come out in 03, checked it out. Thomas had, you know, invited me and then um they were filming like I I guess they were filming the pilot at that time. Yeah. Okay. And um I was just like that's not for me, man. This is awkward and weird and and and and I have no to be honest, no peers.

Yeah. Everybody was at least 10 to 15 years younger than me and it just felt not right. But then my wife, well to be honest, um, my friends Mark Mahoney, Rick Walters, yeah, they are the ones that said, "If you don't [ __ ] go out there and do do this, we got to have somebody from our peer group involved somehow. " You know what I mean? Yeah, they were saying at least have somebody from from the old days in in there and they're not asking us, so you go. That was really That's cool. " It's like I like their forward thinking, though, and I'm positive outlook on it. And you know, I was worried that you were going to be getting a lot of [ __ ] from your peers or, you know, I did get [ __ ] from I would imagine like all of us any, you know, artists are so cringey when it comes to new things.

It was the late '9s was when a whole bunch of people started tattooing and we felt it, you know, we you you go from well, my first professional shop that I worked in was Carrie Barbas. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where I worked until I moved to Las Vegas. She had it was in Anaheim or Yeah, at that time there was one shop that was Anaheim. I went into that shop back in the day. Yeah. Yeah.

I worked there for a decade. Okay. So, I bought some Dennis McFale prints in there, I think. Uh is Oh, he's the artist. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

The 3D wall or Yeah. Uh he did like all the hot rod kind of like pin striping and illustrations. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now I know what you're talking about. That was that was before she did the 3D walls. But yeah, it was it was just them saying, "Do it.

" And I'm just like, "I don't know. I just Well, it's just weird. I don't want to be on TV. I'm not looking. That's not my life is tattooing. So, yeah. It just felt weird like, but I did it. And then, um, yeah, then, like you said, the peers got angry.

But yeah, that the late '9s, a whole bunch of people started tattooing and everybody felt it. It went from like 8,000 tattooers in the world for reals in the early '9s. No [ __ ] Damn. Yeah. People don't realize how um it was a small community. Yeah. There was like 8,000 tattooers in the [ __ ] world. Now that's like in a county, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. A US county. But yeah, it just um it did affect everybody's income at that time. Just all of a sudden um you couldn't buy annually raise the price and that started happening like Yeah. Like I remember we raised the price in 93 or 90 94 that's when I started carry shop was 94. We raised the price from $40 an hour to $60 an hour. That was normal.

You go from $40 an hour in 934 then to 60 and Okay. It was like uh you know the same as groceries going from $40 a bag to $60 a bag. Same thing. Yeah. And then a couple years later, we went up to $80 an hour. Then we went up to $100 an hour. And that was by like maybe 98. Then it's like 99 20000.

" And that wasn't really happening before. I mean, guys have always been around, but not hundreds of them, which is what happened in the '9s. So, everybody was taking a hit and tattooing was getting slow. It was It Everybody was feeling it. Oh, [ __ ] Yeah. So, so from like the year maybe 2001, 2002, 2003, we were feeling it. " No, you can't. It's like It's weird balance.

Then I was doing the TV show and then as soon as it started airing, even as soon as the whispering was going out that it's being filmed, oh, really? I started receiving physical [ __ ] hate mail. It was bizarre. " And the [ __ ] is all this [ __ ] Which is always like from people that really want to be doing what you're doing. It's a weird thing. And and I didn't hold grudges. I wasn't like, "Fuck them," or anything. I was just like, "I get it, man.

" Yeah, at that time I had um a 9year-old and a 10year-old and I'm like I I I am paying alimony child support. I need to figure out my future just how to grow within your So it it was bizarre when the show first came out there was a lot of anger um a lot. The only times I ever was like what the [ __ ] who the [ __ ] is this guy was when they threatened my [ __ ] family. Yeah. [ __ ] weird. and with a with a [ __ ] writing in there. What? Just weird [ __ ] Oh my god.

" Yeah. " Yeah. Because it started making the public not afraid to go into tattoo shops. For sure. One of the things I'm proud of is is is u it's a weird balance. You know, I wished it was still underground like it was. It was small and special. Yeah.

Now it's not as special. But so there's weird responsibilities, but so many tattooers started saying, "I'm [ __ ] sorry. " Dang. Type of thing. Okay. Yeah. So, it made tattooing, I think, more accessible to a lot of people that wanted tattoos. Yeah.

But just like tattoo shops were like, you don't know if you're going to a bike or den. You don't you didn't know, you know, people were afraid. What's it like inside a tattoo shop? We single-handedly felt it. I mean, our shop opened up. So, I don't know if we said it. This is for Hart Huntington was the show that you were on in Las Vegas, and that was uh the first Yeah. inked and that was the first or second.

Well, we were filming it. Yeah, we were filming it. Yeah, they filmed it for like 8 n months, but by our seventh month of filming um then we heard a production company or crew got together and are um putting out a TV show and they just started filming it after we'd been filming for seven months. Yeah. Yeah. And so they actually busted out their [ __ ] So it's a weird thing. It doesn't matter to me. No, no, no.

For sure. " But we didn't go on air until 9 days after their first episode. So, they filmed for 2 months and then had um I guess 3 four weeks worth of episodes. And we we were filming for like seven, eight months before the TV show ever came out. So, it was hard filming it, too, because nobody knew. What the [ __ ] Why is there a tattoo shop in this in this casino, which was a first, too. It was a big deal for Vegas. Yeah.

It's like, what the [ __ ] is that? Which they changed the zoning for and everything because we were all as tattoo shops and owners, we were all forced to be in like an industrial zoning. So, it was like strip clubs and Yeah. I had to get seven permits. Yeah. uh seven permits and something like $6,500 to get permitted for myself. Each one of the people in Hart and Huntington had [ __ ] It was crazy just the permits and all that stuff was changing things. Yeah.

Well, so kind of back to what we were talking about how explosive it kind of became right as those shows started taking off. Like our shop opened up in 2003, right literally down the street from the casino that uh Hart and Huntington was in. And you guys opened up like was it right before us or like 2003 or 2004 it opened? I can't remember. Um I know we opened like right around built in 03. Okay. Uh December was when I came out. 03 December is when I came out and they filmed that um pilot I guess is what it was.

But that was like a grand opening party. Yeah. cuz it opened up and then the it took a while for the TV show to kick off, right? A year or so. Like you Yeah, we were we were they were filming from 03 and you were already there trying to survive as a tattoo artist in this new environment. It was probably I was borrowing money from everybody for months and months and months. I was borrowing money, borrowing money. It was hard.

You were lucky if if you got to do something little twice on your shift. Yeah. But then after the TV show started airing and people started, you know, watching it, then the line was like there was literally I remember seeing the line go outside even. And then so then those people were getting uh frustrated cuz they couldn't get access to the tattoo shop. So then they were coming over to us. So like freakishly we opened up down the street at the same time and we were brand new. So it kind of helped us out. We would recommend Yeah, we would totally recommend you.

So I remember that. Yeah, everybody was nice in there. We got We got four. We got three. Wait, three. Three. I keep thinking four because of the um set the next shop, but three tattooers at a time. The shop is only like 40 40 ft deep.

Yeah. 15 ft wide, something like that. But yeah, uh we couldn't get to everybody. Every once in a while, there'd be some gnarly fights in the line. Like we would we would unlock the door at 11. What? I think it was and you know the girls would go like yeah the there's about 150 people out there and you're like you can't tattoo 150 people. So she would tell them like if if you're wanting t-shirts let's form a sec separate line and then that would weed it down to maybe like 80 people that wanted tattoos and then it would take first in line.

But then people get in fight to out in the lines outside. Security had to deal with that [ __ ] Then when we would open the door, they would come in and then they they'd talk to the uh the helpers and they would go, "Okay, well this sounds like it it should it should go to to Josh or this should go to they would split it up. Yeah. Yeah. And so then uh I'd be like, "Yeah, okay. I'll take that. " Okay. And so then they would come back, but then this Oh, [ __ ] The gnarliest was, you know, was funny is the producers, they they were like all in their 20s and 30s.

Yeah. " You go, "I work with cash. " And um I remember like as they were filming they started going, "Well, this is kind of boring. Maybe if we" And I like, "No, man. " Yeah. But um they didn't have spice or something. " And I'm like, "It just would get gnarly sometimes. " They're like, "What?

" And I'm like, but this one day because of the line, Yeah. say the fourth and fifth people, so three are getting tattooed, then the next two, one's told to come back at like 1:00, one's told to come back at 12:30. So the 12:30 guy comes back around 12:30, but the guy that was told that he heard told to come back around 1 was already in the shop. Oh [ __ ] So he's thinking that guy's taking cuts. And the girls, they get scared as soon as somebody gets a little agitated. And um so I was tattooing in the back and they were filming like each tattooer would have a producer sitting over the clipboard in case you say something cool. They're like jotting it down and what time and what to look for. And then there's um one or two camera people on you.

There's there's boom mic guy. So, you're sitting in a little 10 by10 spot with you, your client, and at least four. And um then that's also going on with other the other tattooers. It's not just one tattooers being filmed. " And the next thing I knew, I had this guy down. Yeah. The next thing I knew, I had his knife in my hand. Oh my god.

And u the [ __ ] security, she called the security. She called 911. " And it was bizarre. So yeah, this guy misunderstood that just because that guy came back a little earlier than him didn't mean he was going to get sacked earlier. Yeah. But the guy was also obviously drunk. Yeah. Being a [ __ ] drunk.

But uh but then I remember going, "Fuck, that's so cool that you guys go. " Cuz I was thinking, "That's cool. " Yeah. Nothing gone. And And I went and they were in the in the um in the clean room and they shut they panicked and hid. What? Instead of filming and they didn't follow. They did.

They just freaked out because it all happened. It was bizarre. I was like, "Oh, there you go. That's awesome. You guys got that for the No, you didn't. " These youngsters. Yeah. They were Yeah.

Damn. Instead of assisting you and making sure you're good. They they they were they were all like um they ran and hid. They were all scared to go into tattoo shops, you know. They were the kind of people that the show ended up teaching that not all tattoo shops are going to rob you or beat you up or throw you in the dumpster pillowcase and dump. Yeah. Yeah. I So, I did hear a little bit about the I don't even know where to start.

Let's go Well, before we get into that, let's kind of get back. I really always enjoy hearing how you you got into tattooing and but I see that you were you were doing hand poking before. Yeah. You got into Well, tattooing was never weird or foreign to me. It has never been. Um when we first moved to California, I was four years old. We moved to Maywood, Los Angeles in in that was in 667. That was the 60s, the early 70s.

the the I guess it's okay. My my parents are both gone. It's it's it was open marriage season. Okay. Okay. So, it was awkward for for uh me growing up a little bit. But my dad, he had girlfriends. Okay.

And my mom, she had boyfriends. Okay. I think my mom's boyfriends were in reaction to my mom, my dad's girlfriend. That could be. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, big.

But my my mom's boyfriend, he he was a [ __ ] hell's angel and he was fully [ __ ] tattooed. Um that was her boyfriend. And I I called him my daddy I mean my daytime daddy. My my day daddy. Okay. He he was there while my dad was gone. My dad he would work till like 3:00 or 4 in the afternoon and then he would go out until like 8 9 at night with with women. Okay.

And um my mom's reaction was [ __ ] that. I want some too. Yeah, that was the 60s, late60s, you know, the whole [ __ ] hippie free sex [ __ ] Yeah, that ruined the the [ __ ] I don't know. But anyways, so um I have very very vivid memories of them sitting at the table. We lived in a small apartment, just a little table, round table, but they'd be drinking coffee and giggling and talking. " And then I'd come back in and my mom's knees would have scabs on them. I was just not talking [ __ ] but you know, her husband was doing this [ __ ] to her. Yeah.

And her reaction and she found a guy that really made her giggle. Really, really was cool to her, but he was very tattooed. Yeah. Well, I liked his tattoos. " It was just like, yeah, I'd seen, you know, I don't remember tattoos being like, whoa, what is that? I never had that experience. I just remembered there's tattoos. I don't remember thinking, what are tattoos?

Nothing. It was just there was no question. Yeah. You know, it's just natural is there was never any like what are those? But I liked to draw. I've been drawing since I was four. Anyways, him being heavily tattooed and being a bit of a thug, he actually poked a tattoo in himself to show me what what a tattoo is. Oh, cool.

When you were a little guy. When I was four. For real. Okay. So, yeah, he used to have like outline of um a topless hoola dancer front or no topless hoola dancer back, hot topless hoola dancer front. Oh, that's fun. Um, and he would let me color in tattoos. Um, that's when I actually started drawing tattoos.

I didn't start drawing per se until I didn't have an interest. Yeah. Yeah. Until I was like, that anchor's neat, that butterfly is neat. I want to draw those. And so he would sit there with his arm on the table and my mom and him would be chitchatting. And we we didn't have regular paper back then either. the only thing to draw on at the time in a household would have been typing paper.

Are you familiar with typing paper? The texture on it. It's it's got it's got a film that when the ink touches it, it's kind of a sticky paper. It's got like I don't know what on it. I remember drawing on those and trying to um draw with pencil that didn't work. And so I started drawing with ballpoint pen. But yeah, that's when I started literally drawing tattoos. That's cool.

Your very first like exposure to art in general. And then um so I was four. By the time I was six, seven, eight, I started drawing tattoos on friends and birthday parties. They would they would have like a clown or something and and maybe whatever. They would have different things. Yeah. But I was like a novelty in our little quarter mile neighborhood and I would set up a little pretend tattoo station and draw tattoos, you know? to be like six, seven kids standing in line and then I would draw, what do you want?

They're like, I want a ship. I remember even trying to figure out like, okay, I'm going to let them either have a butterfly or an anchor because a ship takes too long. You're already I had seen tattoo shops because of the pike down in Long Beach and there was a bunch of tattoo shops in there and um we would go down to the pike, you know, starting when I was like 5 years old. So, I knew they had pictures of what they would do for you on the wall. I would draw little here's what you can get, you know, later life. Now, I know that's Flash and I I didn't know any of that. I didn't know. But I did at least seven or eight birthday parties as a little seven-year-old tattooer pretending to be That's cool.

I remember one time when there was like five, six kids, you know, waiting for their tattoo cuz they're all like 5 years old and I'm I'm the big old sevenyear-old and they would want the tattoo more than the cake. I remember the mothers going, "The cake's ready, kids. " Just so that the the moms would be being upset. They would give me like3 four dollars. I was going to say you started a little entrepreneur. You're starting to get paid real quick there. That's cool. But yeah, as far as like hand poke, you know, people people back then did not consider hand poke a tattoo or real, you know.

Now there's hand poke. I'm a professional handpoke tattoo. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. It's come back. Yeah. It's pretty wild.

That's awesome. But yeah, I I um I put a little tattoo in myself when I was four years old. I put a little tattoo in myself. Oh [ __ ] But you can still see to this day when I was nine even. Okay. It's just a little thing to see what it felt like. Yeah. But as far as really tattooing, putting a picture on somebody that started when I was 13.

Even a lot of my friends did not like tattoos. " It it was never a separate thing for me. It was just like drawing and tattoos go together. I liked drawing. I like they weren't separate from me. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I started started poking on myself pictures like actual pictures and then like friends and you just draw on and then just start poking on over the top of that. Then yeah, sometimes people have asked me like what's the first tattoo you ever did?

I have no idea. What's the first professional tattoo you did? I have no idea what's doing it. Do you remember if you were doing it with like sewing needle and then you would wrap the thread around there and then sew? Exactly. That's what my mom's boyfriend showed me. Okay, cool. Was Yeah, basically he would he would poke one needle out in the middle and he would wrap five around it.

Okay. And then um that's more advanced than I was learn taught. Yeah, it was like But he also showed me different things too. Like you you can you can put them on a um popsicle stick. Yep. and basically just showing me I don't know. He thought I was a cool little kid, you know. I still remember his name.

His name was Jean Tunk. I'm pretty sure that was Jean Tunk. It was um just a normal part of my life. Hand poking. " Yeah, that's basically it. Same as tabori needles, you know? Yeah. It's just anything that'll break the skin.

And then how do you just fasten it together so it doesn't fall apart while you're working? I was doing that until I met Mike Brown. Mike Brown, I think I met him in 79, probably 80. I don't know. Yeah, he was still at the Whittier Tattoo Land. Tattoo Land was in on Whittier Boulevard. Okay. Um before it moved to Anaheim.

That's when I met Mike Brown. And he had tattooed me. " I'm like, "Yeah, it's like he's like,"Well, what are you doing here? " You know, we didn't have the word tribal back then. Yeah. Okay. But, you know, black tattoos, but not no shading, no color. Just think of a shape.

You know, you can do a black diamond. Do do a floor in, you know, basically they started calling that all tribal in the '9s. But Mike is the one that showed me, you know, um, use a chopstick and shave it down like that. And then, um, you put the needles on like that. And, uh, he taught me how to sanitize better. He taught me how to, that was like a brief maybe 3 to five months hanging out with Mike and him showing me how to make needles and he told me how to stretch the skin. Ah, that's one thing I didn't know. Yeah.

Like with tabori needles, you don't just stretch and poke any direction. You want to stretch and and flick in the direction, you know. Okay. He's the one that taught me that. He taught me how to do a, you know, larger grouping like 11 needles and then double stack them so that when you're at an angle, both rows are hitting at the same time. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Years later, I figured out, oh, he taught me tabori.

That's cool, right? Yeah. Mike was uh very special to me. Yeah, that's awesome. So, okay, so he was uh this is all out of the Long Beach area or were we still in the Pike area? Pikes. Uh we moved from Maywood to I don't even remember Watts Downey. Yeah.

Um we moved different places. uh Pico Rivera. Then we ended up moving to Garden Grove and then we moved to Huntington Beach. I I I've counted I've moved 17 times by still together and like doing their thing. Yeah. That that Yeah, they were together about 20 years total. So you started when once you learned how to do that, were were you starting to [ __ ] around on your friends and stuff like your buddies at 13? Yes.

Yeah. Okay. So, yes. And some parents were like Yeah. My dad hated on your door. Yeah. My dad was in the Navy during World War II. Okay.

And during Korea. He was both in both of those wars. Oh, wow. And he was a pilot. Okay. During World War II. Then during Korea, he was a lieutenant commander aboard an aircraft carrier in charge of pilots, I guess, or experiment. He was in charge of weird experiments, too.

Anyways. Yeah. So my dad hated tattoos. He said those are for enlisted men. Those are or those are for the [ __ ] those are for the I don't know. He used to talk [ __ ] about tattoos. He hated tattoos. I remember he thought this.

Okay. I did that when I was 13. Damn. Okay, cool. That's a pretty bold move right. It wasn't though. To me it was to other people. They were freaking out telling me I'm go to going to go to hell.

Leviticus says you're going to go to hell. You're a sinner. Um all this stuff that just tripped me out. But no, to me it wasn't no big deal. And I even had friends that like, I don't know why you're doing that, man. You're never going to get you're never going to get a good job. You're never they're not even going to uh girls aren't even like all this stuff, you know? So, some friends talking about tattoos was just I learned, you know, don't talk about what tattoos with Doug.

Don't talk about tattoos, you know, with certain people. tattoos, but it was never these days at a young age, tattoos are cool. It doesn't seem like that was really what it was like back then, but maybe it was just my small world. It was they were normal. " Like, were we a part of the same team? Yeah. So, I tattooed I tattooed um I tattooed friends off and on from the 70s up until um my wife at the time got pregnant and when when we were going to have a a a child is when I started realizing I want a career um talked to Mark Mahoney. There's a convoluted area in the 80s where um I got I got injured real bad.

I got I was in bad act. I got blown up. Yeah. Lost my eye. Uh, got lots of fractures, lots of shrapnel. Some of it still comes out of me to this day. I had a piece of shrapnel come out right here, like two years ago. Just a little little hump.

Anyways, in 85, no, in 1986, I'd been talking for like two years. One of my good friends, I don't want to say his name, but um about learning it be an apprentice, you know. I didn't even know what an apprentice was, but it's like I want a tattoo. It's like, yeah, it's just not the right time. And then they were always like, um, I I'm going to say they, you know, I don't want to say a name, but they were always like, man, you're just you're just too nice of a person, man. We it'll this will change you and [ __ ] and you don't want to do this. And after like a year and a half, he was like, you know what? Um, so and so just finished um is going to be finishing soon.

So, I want to fit you in, man. I got to talk to somebody about it. You know, you got to get permission pin permission back then. Yeah. I want to talk to somebody about it, but um anyways, uh it looks like Sure, man. You you just keep going and I'll teach you. Yeah. And it it was a vague like, yeah, it's between you and so and so.

And um anyways, that weekend is when um my girlfriend at the time, which became my first wife. Yeah. And uh my best friend Steve, who ended up hitting on my first wife. Anyways, [ __ ] not at that time. But anyways, literally, we went out of town to celebrate and we went down to Mexico. People always want to know how to get blown up. That's what I'm telling you. Oh, okay.

Okay. Yeah. So, we went down we went down to Mexico and uh they have like these things called M80s. They have these things, you know, just the firecrackers. They have all these different things. Yeah. But we went down there with like a couple hundred because we wanted to buy the biggest [ __ ] fireworks they had. I've done the same thing.

Okay. So, you know those those ones that are big since they don't they don't go bang. Yeah. They go boom. Yeah. It's just different. It's very close to the the um July 4th fireworks. It's like crazy.

And we bought 10 and they were It was in 1986 and they were $10 each. Oh, [ __ ] In Mexico. So that tells you they were like $100 each things. And uh yeah, we we're blowing them up and people were telling telling us from like a tenth of a mile away, knock it the [ __ ] off. Yeah, we blew up an outhouse. like literally blew up just [ __ ] [ __ ] up a wooden outhouse. We were down Yeah. Down in Insanada or Labufodora.

A little farther than Insanada. Little partying involved. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't shitfaced, but I was buzzed and that's what, you know, one of the reasons why I don't really like Corona no more. I haven't been able to drink a Corona since that day.

No [ __ ] And enjoy it. It's just a smell. It takes me back to a moment that was [ __ ] up. But um yeah, the [ __ ] we bought 10 of them and the 10th one is the one where I stuck my cigarette to it right here. Oh no. Yeah, it was just it was just right there and it [ __ ] did not use the fuse. The fuse was you know like that long. I touched my cigarette and it went it was [ __ ] weird.

Like I still remember floating like not your ears ringing and that was after Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you remember Saving Private Ryan? Did you see that movie? Uh, yeah. " There's um something blew up in front of Tom Hanks when he was on the bridge and it was kind of and you and it it's like you're kind of coming back into focus and it had um thrown me about 7 8 ft. I spun around in the air, landed face down on the hood of my friend's truck and um slid off and was realizing that I felt in slow motion the skin peel away from my skull and I felt my mouth.

I felt it tear in the back. It was slow motion. [ __ ] Why am I telling this? Oh, I don't Well, I think people people always [ __ ] want to know. So, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it's it's a weird it's a weird sensation for each person has their own experience, but I went in very slow motion where it felt like it took about 20 to 30 seconds in the air, which must have been like boom boom, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But it was very slow motion. I felt it I felt it go and then that was fast. It slowed down and I felt everything tear. Oh my god. And I remember thinking, I'm going to feel bone when I went like that, but I didn't. Okay. So, I think what I felt was like the imp when your skin stretches really far from a from a hard impact.

Oh, okay. Because it tore my uvula off. It tore my Holy [ __ ] Down your throat. [ __ ] Yeah. My mouth was open. Um, it tore a whole bunch of gums and and there was also pieces of shrapnel. Yeah. whatever was pieces of stuff everywhere like glass.

My right side was um full of holes. It went through my Levis's. It went and it cracked this bone. It broke my nose. It cracked up here. Um and shrapnel, the big big piece um went in my eye and um cracked the back of my orbital. Oh my god, dude. And um I yeah I still remember thinking like I'm going to feel I remember when it went like that I went my face is ripping off inside my head.

I can't believe it didn't knock you out. Slow motion kind of I was very aware. Yeah. Yeah. That is insane. Um and it was slow motion but um [ __ ] why did I go off on that? I don't know. Okay.

So that's now I know why like and then I was in the hospital and um the first surgery was just to explore um the second surgery was to remove shrapnel. Okay. And the third and fourth surgeries were plastic surgeries. Okay. I initially my mom was a nurse. She said don't if something happens don't go to the hospital in Mexico. You'll get an infection. That's how people die.

Um, so we drove from Labouodora up to San Diego. We went into the San Diego emergency and that's where they did the first surgery. Yeah. So all the surgeries were in the States. Yes. And then and then after the first surgery um I remember telling uh my girlfriend like u Yeah. The doctor brought his son in this morning and pulled my bed out from the wall and had his his son was like nine or 10. Yeah.

" Oh, no. " Oh, wow. But anyways, I told my girlfriend and another good friend of mine, and then they took me from that hospital up to another hospital. Oh, okay. And Chock Children's Hospital. But I was in my 20s. But nonetheless, that's where I got my my shrapnel removed. So, the second surgery and then a couple days later, because I was getting they said if we don't do plastic surgery, which you don't have to have.

Yeah. Um plus they they wanted to start getting the eye ready for a uh prosthesis. Oh, all right. All right. Which Yeah, it didn't work out in the long run cuz I lost half of my bottom lid and a third of my top lid. So I don't have, you know, it's like prostesis fits in an opening like this, but I have an opening like that. So yeah. Yeah.

But um those plastic surgeries and then um got home from the hospital and about 10 days later my mom died. Oh man. Yeah. I swear my hair started growing in white that month. And you your girlfriend was pregnant at the time too. No. Okay. That Yeah.

There's a convoluted spot where I was going to get to start learning to professionally tattoo. In 1986, we went to celebrate. I was blown up. Yeah. And then I was dealing with a bunch of [ __ ] Yeah. And then um I kind of lost myself. My mom's sister in Florida, she knew me real well and she um told me, "Come, come live here. " Yeah.

Anyways, so I went there for a year and a half. Oh wow. Okay. And almost opened a tattoo shop in Florida just cuz all of my family, you know, my cousins are like, you know, cuz I was tattooing for the [ __ ] of it. " But yeah. " It it let's just like [ __ ] Anyways, it and I'm not saying that was totally the reason why he didn't after that. But I still remember that like saying, you know, like I've never seen a good oneeyed tattooer. And so that fell through and that was in ' 86 87 um 19.

And you know, I still would tattoo friends all the time, you know, at least all hand pokes still, right? You move to Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, like this right here, you know, like two hours.

Yeah. No doubt for it to be as solid as it is. Anyways, then in ' 91 when we were pregnant with Ian, my first son is when I went and talked to Mark Mahoney. Yeah. And he was working at Gilman shop, a tattoo mania. Okay. And um No [ __ ] Mark had, you know, done some some time in the in the later 80s and that's also [Music] [Laughter] but he was working um Gil at Gilmani shop and um he's like yeah Gil didn't like me you know like at first we we're friends now totally you know friends but back then I was what what would I have been I would have been like 27 29 years Were they Were they roughly around your same age at the time or a little old like Mark Bony and like me and Mark the same? Yeah.

Okay, cool. Yeah, G. I was trying to remember if you were like younger. I was born I think in ' 62. I was born in ' 63. Okay. Gail I think was born in 59. So you guys were in your late mid20s, mid to late 20s.

Like this would have been late 20s. Yeah. And then um yeah, my son Ian was born when I was 29. Anyways. Yeah. So you got to yours were pursuing uh you know Mark couldn't teach me at Mania. He he couldn't teach me at Mania. Gil was like I don't know you know I don't know [ __ ] another Orange County punk [ __ ] cuz that's you know as punk in the [ __ ] Oh okay.

Yeah. Not not black black flag punk more like Sex Pistols punk. Old old you know long-haired punk. Yeah. " And um he owes me one. And you got $400. " Yeah. And he goes, "All right.

Um give Rick a call and he'll tell you, you know, how to Anyways, I went down there to Rick and I'd seen him. I'd been kicked out of Bert Grims, but Okay. You know, I That was the Pike. Yeah. The Rose Tattoo at the Pike was the shop I hung out in the most was the Rose Tattoo or the Rose on the Pike they called it. Yeah, that was another Bob Shaw shop. Okay. Bob Shaw owned um the Rose and Burke Grims.

And anyways, Mark worked at the Rose and um that's where I used to go and hang out with Mark, but then he had worked in Anaheim at Tattoo Land and then he had his own shop, Shamrock Tattoo, and then he went to did a little time, got out and worked at Tattoo Mania. And um that's when this happened was when he was working at Tattoo Mania. And then I went down to see Rick and um and he's all you bring the money. That was the only thing you wanted to know. How did he say it? It was it was funny. He goes he goes he goes uh you got the money. " He got I got the money I was going to use for rent.

Not saying it's snotty like that. " And he goes, "Too bad. " And and um he goes he gave a a call to National Tattoo Supply and back and told them that I would be calling and then I got my power supply and started getting stuff from National. That was Dang. So that was like your your end to be able to actually legitimately order. Yeah. And then Rick would work at uh Burke Grahams. He was the manager of Brams, but he would work there from like 11 to 5, 11 to 6.

Okay. Night crew would come in at 5 or 6. And then um I would work my day job. This is when Ian was in diapers, you know, um maybe right before he was born, but I would work my day job where I was working at a um custom print house where we did we would retouch old 1800's photos or we would do head shot for movie stars, Michelle Fefeifer type head shot. Yeah. And I would work there from like 4:00 in the morning until like 11. And then I would go down and hang out with Rick and watch him if somebody came in to get tattooed. Or he would teach me how to make needles, make machines, how to paint, flash, and you all that's the type of stuff he would do there.

Great. Um, but he also had apprentices that were working there that he had apprenticed before like Scully. Um, and and I think Mule was already tattooing or it was I can't remember uh Douggee Douggee Mitts. Anyways, they paid him money for their apprenticeships. Yeah. And and um I don't know what I don't know what Rick owed Mark. Rick helped me out for nothing. Um we became really good friends.

Um, I would I would go down there like at noon and then leave when or before the night shift came in. , okay? Like if he was coming in that night, I would leave at like 3, you know, because he he he would have been [ __ ] pissed if Rick was helping. I don't know if he wasn't in the loop of permissions, maybe. I don't know. Anyways, um, and he was a cool guy, too, but definitely different. Like he he didn't keep a machete on his hip like the other guys. He kept a hatchet on it.

It just different. Spicy dude. He was a different guy. Even his wife used to get in hatchet fights. Oh my god. They were they were funny. But anyways, Rick helped me out that way. But it was like Rick was like, "Yeah, man.

" Cuz he didn't want to get no [ __ ] from like Skully who had worked off his apprentichip. Oh, yeah. as a [ __ ] a new guy. Paying your college dues by being the [ __ ] janitor for a couple years and I wasn't doing that. So that was one of those things where it's a trip you you know I I've been tattooing since the late '7s but only professional since ' 91. That's when I started learning from Rick how to be professional. Yeah. So I'd work my day job then I'd hang out with Rick.

I'd go home and I'd tattoo people at night and then um I'd bring them into Rick even for him to look at the tattoos and um that that went on for uh two two and a half three years. Yeah. Of him getting me to be a professional tattooer. You know, I didn't know how to make ink color ink, you know. Yeah. So all this stuff that you know I knew would be like a professional tattooer as opposed to a scratcher which I considered myself a scratcher. Now I would have been called a handpoke tattooer but nonetheless that's the way I thought of it and that's what everybody considered it man. If you're not professional you're a scratcher.

So I was learning how to be a professional tattooer. Yeah. And then um in 94 is when I got a job with Carrie Barbara and um everybody was tripped out too cuz I was like like the first traditional from the traditional world meshing with the new school school. Yeah. And it it was like it was a big it was a big deal for some people. They're like, "No way. You got a job at Carrie Shop. You're the first one of us, man.

" That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Even though she'd been tattooing since like 1980. Yeah. Yeah. But definitely she's pushing the envelope on her style. Yeah.

She's the first one to do good color portraits. Yeah. That's I Yeah, I remember going in there before I Paul Rogers idolized her ability to do beautiful realistic color. Yeah. Yeah. She was the She was definitely that. But anyway, she gave me a job. She's like, "Well, we'll see.

" What was it? She I remember somebody told me Yeah. Carrie They just heard Carrie Barbasa's hiring um because she just expanded the shop from this big to this big. Yeah. And so she could have, you know, someone else come in and give her money because they're tattooing for her. Whatever. That's how you make money, right? For you.

Can't make money doing it. You got to make money taking it. Anyways, uh that's a joke. [ __ ] joke. Diversify. It is with a knife. Yeah. Yeah.

know she uh she's like we'll see we'll see you know we'll see how it works out. I remember I met her and she's like well she's like um I how come you're here? Don't you guys hate us? And I'm like I'm like no I you know personally I remember seeing her in magazines and [ __ ] but I didn't you know but she wasn't like oh my god yes. Then the next day she called and said, "Um, you know what? " And I found out later Rick gave her a call. Okay. " That's what I was going to ask is like how the transition went from that shot.

Yeah. Rick did me a favor. Mark did a favor giving me to Rick. Rick did me a favor giving me to Carrie Barb. Huge. So working with Carrie Barbara was your first full professional full time. So you were just learning and just practicing the Yeah, for three years I was tattooing um at least three to four nights a week, sometimes seven nights a week at home. Oh, okay.

So yeah, I would funny thing like Okay, Josh, uh we used to call him Dizzle 20 years ago. Okay. So, Josh, he was saying I remember one of the things on the TV show was he I don't know why that why Clerk was telling me how how much weight he'd lost when I was learning to tattoo cuz I was like, "Man, you're not taking this [ __ ] seriously. " Oh, yeah. Because me when I was learning, I was working a [ __ ] full-time 40hour plus and then learning with Rick and then tattooing at night and then getting three to five hours of sleep. sometimes two to three hours of sleep. Damn. And doing it again and again and again.

And I had gotten I'm 6'2. Yeah. I had gotten down to 125 pounds. Oh my dude. It was just And I was given also giving all my money to alimony and child support. So, um, I didn't eat a lot. I got really [ __ ] skinny. So, I just thought And I remember everybody that I've ever seen as an apprentice, they would get skinny.

No [ __ ] Back then, you know, you just you're working so [ __ ] much. skinnier and you don't have money to [ __ ] eat steak. So anyways, I still remember Dizzle like tripping out like I don't know why he thinks I should lose weight since I'm learning that tattoo. So then Barbara's your experience with Carrie was amazing or you learned a lot there I would imagine. Yeah, she's definitely um if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have been able to to afford to to pay my children's support and alimony. Yeah. You know, and and it's it's just a blessing, you know. You got to Did she spend I mean, you guys became friends and she got to spend a lot of time with her.

She actually had me manage um manage for her for a couple years until I quit managing because that's a whole different managing. It's two different hats. It's not. Yeah. So, it's like I'm going to give you um 85% instead of 60 60%. But I'm still bringing them less money cuz I don't have time to tattoo. Yeah. So, percentage of nothing is nothing.

But anyways, yes. Uh yeah, we became really good friends. I I remember like there's some of the things I've learned from Carrie is like you can't just say everybody heals a certain way and here's the afterare. You can't. It's everybody's skin's different. Plus me and Carrie learned each of our techniques are different. Just the way she stretches the skin. " Um because Carrie basically I've I've always done natural heal.

Okay. Which is all you know all it was back in the day was keep your tattoo dry, kill bacteria for the first couple of days with rubbing alcohol. Oo. Okay. That's it. Straight. That's the way tattooing was was was a tattoo's ugly while it's healing. So nobody was going like, "Oh, I got a tattoo last week.

" because you're just going to see ugly colored bacon on your arm, right? So, that's a norm for my generation. But also, the way that I tattoo doesn't heal good the way Carrie Barbara has her clients heal. Okay? You know, a shop has to have an an umbrella. Uh, it should at least some sort of an ally explaining. You have to have an umbrella afterare where everybody's doing the same thing. That way, if there's a variable, it's easier to find out what the variable was and it protects the shop.

You know, if nobody's been having any weird reactions with any clients and everybody's doing the same thing and then some client comes in and goes, I didn't give this to myself cuz I was at the hospital rubbing bacteria all over my tattoo. You did this. But then you can say, well, nobody else had any problems in the past. We're all using the same umbrella coverage. But anyways, I learned we learned together. It's like when she would have her clients heal with the way that I've always or Rick or Mike or Mark, anybody would have their client heal the tattoo, it didn't didn't heal right for her. She was using like uh A&D and wrapping it with cellophane or Yeah. So, um when I did that, it it really made the tattoos very milky and blurry.

very milky and blurry. Yeah. But when she does that, it doesn't. Um, when she had her clients do natural heels, their scabs were like five layers of skin deep, you know, and it can't go deeper than three of the remove tattoos. So, yeah. Yeah. We just we just learned like, well, there's no, you know, she's like she was like, "Oh, it's I'm excited because I get to ask you like what do old schoolers do here? What do traditional artists do here?

What how do you guys think about this? And what did traditional artists do? And like stretching the skin and all that stuff's different. Yeah. So, yeah, it was great. Do you get to work with some other great artists there? She was always She notoriously had like Yeah. Always coming through.

Yeah. Yeah. Lot of travelers. Paul Booth. Yeah. It was pretty normal just to have anybody from Europe or the West Coast Japanese tattooers um would always come in and spend a week or two. You know, that was the '9s. There were not a lot of tattooers at that time.

Like I said before, like 8,000 tattooers in the world, I think in '94. Damn. So then in the '90s, the tattoo magazine started coming around too, right? Yeah. Like the tattoo magazine. Okay. Easy writer magazine used to have an annual tattoo section. Okay.

Yeah. So that's Pisano Publishing. Okay. So I grew up with Easy Rider in our house. So I would always like look Easy Rider magazine um had an annual I believe and then it slowly turned into a monthly tattoo section and then uh they would have an annual separate mini mag. Yeah. the same size but you know less pages of of Easy Rider fans sending in their tattoo pictures. Yeah.

And then that would that's how it [ __ ] happened, man. Is is like Easy Riders had a tattoo section in in the magazine and and then they started putting out an annual Christmas or something um edition where you got Easy Rider magazine plus a bonus tattoo magazine. " So then they made Tattoo magazine. Yeah. It's it's all it is is just an off brand from Easy Writers. Okay. Yeah. So I had that in the house, too.

I remember that. Like stealing those from my dad and that's where I learned what tribal was. The only place you could see pictures of tattoos in the early 80s was a section in Easy Rider magazine. Yeah. Yeah. And Carrie was real good about promoting herself through the using the magazines, right? took her. Did you learn a lot through her and working at that shop on how to promote yourself also too?

And [ __ ] no. I am the worst at self-promotion. I am so not good at self-promotion. I'm not I'm not I'm just not good at it. You never got into like your pictures? Yes, I [ __ ] done it. I [ __ ] done it. Yeah.

And it's like um Well, I was in magazines a lot. Okay. Carrie is the one that would help helped. Okay, good. Absolutely. That's great. Yeah. Yes, but I am the worst at self-promotion.

I'm like, man, if I've got like 30 paintings to sell, they just sit there and collect dust. I'm just like, it's embarrassing to try to sell [ __ ] It's embarrassing to try to [ __ ] make yourself look like something special. That's just me, though. Yeah, it's I think the artists in general, we have we struggle with that. Like Yeah. A businessman Yeah. and a tattooer coming together is is success. And I've I've always been bad at business.

I I'm so bad at business. You you stick with your craft and it's good. You you've always you've had a long successful career. You're the body of work that you have is like it's man I mean for someone not good at promoting yourself. You seem to get clients in the chair for a really long time and now you're knock was this transition to uh like have you always really been focused on Japanese work? I mean Oh man. and you start really here's here's a trippy thing is I've been drawing since I was little. I can remember in church we were Baptists when I was a kid and I I would bring the typing paper and I would draw people's faces and I remember by the time I was seven or eight I could draw a face and you could tell who it was.

Yeah, that's great. Okay. And I've been drawing at least two three hours a week ever since I was four. At least you know if not a lot more. But when I was 11, 11 years old, there was a magic store in Costa Mesa. This is when we were living in Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa. Um was right up the street. I would ride my bike down to the magic store.

Just dug it. Yeah. This magic store used to have, and this was in 1974. They used to have um tattoos that you could put on, you know, the temporary temporary tattoos, but full size like sleeves and back pieces. This magic shop, they sold some other stuff. It was a novel. So anyways, um I can remember buying like um buying like a a a Japanese rose, which is what I called it, but it was peie. Okay.

Red peie temporary. 50 and that was so much [ __ ] money. Anyways, I was in that magic store one time and the owner um you know he knew I wasn't stealing. I could hang out in there and I would I would read in there. I would be in there for like an hour and a half, sometimes three hours cuz my home life was a little weird. I would take off. Anyways, that was one of the places I would take off for hours. Yeah.

And one time I was in there and three Japanese men came in and um they were the ones that were selling him the oh the temporary temporary tattoos. They were Japanese. They were connected. They were they were going out to Hollywood, LA, San Diego, San Francisco, all these places and um selling different things. And one of them was those. And and anyways, and knowing now they they were definitely Yaka. But really, well, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Tattoos 1974. " And they they had a translator. So I think it was two the two guys and then a translator. Anyways, so three of them he they they asked him to lock the door and I remember um he locked the door. He knew I was in there and he went like just you know stay over there. Don't [ __ ] around. I'm doing business.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, I remember they took off their shirts and I had never seen that kind of tattoo before. That was the day. That was the day. and they had, you know, they didn't take off their pants, but they took off their shirts completely. And I remember how proud they stood there.

And I don't know, it was just I was like, that was the one spark where I was like, that's [ __ ] beautiful. That's like a painting, but on the skin. It's not a picture on the skin. It just I don't know. like a scene out of a movie. I could just see your little kid. Oh my god. A little kid or something, you know, around.

So, ever since then, I mean, I started like a love for it at that time. There was nothing you could purchase back then or anything, but man, every once in a while, a movie would have I was like, those are so different than everybody's tattoos that I know. So, I got I got very well established, very well known for my realism in black and gray. black and gray realism. Okay. No way. And in the 90s, you might remember that nobody liked traditional tattoos. Yeah.

It was just like, "No, man. " And, you know, just like that's what everybody wanted. And I became very well known and established as realistic black and gray. I got to do something Japanese one to five times a year if I was lucky. And those were the [ __ ] you know, he's like I people go like, "Hey man, just do anything you want. " Okay, I'd love to do a koi. No, I don't want one of those. or do anything you want.

" Nobody wanted traditional. That's when that's when um the graffiti influences coming in stuff too, right? Graffiti, I think, is the surge, you know, that changed from 93 to 2003, that big influx of tattooers, it seemed like, were graffiti artists. Yeah. Yeah. The graffiti artists came in and then all of a sudden, I had to learn how to do graffiti. I'd never drawn graffiti. I wasn't a criminal doing graffiti.

I've been into tattoos. I feel like I became a decent painter, a decent artist because of drawing tattoos. I don't feel like I was an artist that learned how to do tattoos. It just seems flip-flop. Mine I think mine's just different than a lot of people. A lot of graffiti artists. I had to learn graffiti. I had to learn geer, you know, or biomechanical.

Yeah, I even had what I was doing. Carrie called it organic bio, which was biomechanical, but it was organic tissues and plant matters and stuff. You remember like the leaf man, the leaf? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's kind of where it all came from doing leaves and but it looks biomechanical.

Yeah. Well, and just But there was no mechanics. The flow of working on the body. You started doing a lot of drawing on magazines started printing was my organic bio portraiture and that's how I became established or enough work to pay my bills. Yeah. Were you doing conventions at the time? I mean were conventions like conventions they were real small and intimate back in the day, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, the first convention I remember going to was in 81 and it was on the Queen Mary. Oh wow. Okay. And um yeah, it was like a bunch of guys in their 40s and 50s and I was 18 years old. I didn't know they didn't. Lot lots of lots of gay men that really really were like to me. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It was it was um Yeah. The Queen Mary in ' 81. That's I think that's the the first convention I went to. But I wasn't a tattooer going there. Yeah. I tattooed, but I never considered myself a professional tattooer.

You know, Rick Walters has the same history. Is he started tattooing himself and friends when he was 13. Okay. And then he didn't learn professional tattooing. That was in the 1950s. He didn't start learning uh professional tattooing until 1970s when he got out of prison. Okay. Yeah.

He was connected affiliated. Phil Sims taught Rick Walters how to tattoo I think in 1971 when Rick got out of prison. Maybe two. 71 or two is when he got out of prison for shooting a a guy's face with a shotgun. Anyways, he shot he shot the side of his face off. Holy [ __ ] And he did he did time he did six or seven years not in the shop, but he'd been tattooing since the 1950s because he'd been doing hand poke and then professional. So it's taken me a long time to absorb that. That's okay to say I've been tattooing since 1979.

Yeah, that's even though I wasn't in a shop. Rick said the same thing. He's been tattooing since 1959, I think. Whatever it was, 57. Even though he'd only been in a shop since 71. Yeah. Damn. Damn.

Oh my god. So you have you have so many ties to all these old any other like just real great old school guys that you that you kind of as far as like being friends enough to have dinner with and stuff. Yeah. Just like it was hard for me to talk myself into doing the TV show. Yeah. It's hard for me to be a named dropper. Oh yeah. No, I just And it's awkward for me, but I have very very special very special ties and moments.

Right now all my friends are dead. Yeah. So, it's it's a different time, but they've all passed away. La. Tuttle was a good guy. He was a cool guy. I got to have lunch with him and Yeah, I I had lots of dinners with him. He was funny.

Yeah, he's full of Did you know that Ly Ly was um totally blackalled from the tattoo community in the 70s? I didn't. A lot of people don't know what um there was a show called the Mike Douglas Show and it was on in the afternoon after school. I remember um Lyall Tuttle was on the Mike Douglas show and he was saying how the tattooers um are they don't know how to draw their stuff doesn't look good but his stuff did and he was like name dropping by tattooing Janice Joplain and you know it was and he upset a lot of [ __ ] were pissed at him really took him I remember it was the 90s once he started being embraced by the younger people coming up. Okay. Rick knew him the whole time. I think Lyle might have done done a couple years at Bert Grims even in when Rick was manag or in the 70s.

But wow. They they they were always friends. But Rick was like, "Watch out. " Damn. But it took a long time for Lyall to, you know, get that off his shoulders. " Yeah, I could see how that could piss a lot of people off. Yeah, I guess there's people doing And that was when tattooers, you know, like even Rick, he never considered himself an artist. " Even though he drew all of this [ __ ] on, you know what I mean?

Half of it he just tattooed without drawing a single thing. Yeah. It's uh but he's like, "No, I ain't an artist. " He But he used to call me an artist. He he uh well because you know what Rick did uh when I first started there maybe after I'd hung out with him for a couple months when Mark sent me down. " I remember. " And I brought down a stack of drawings that thick, all on just like, you know, yeah, typing paper, Xerox paper at that time. But um and he he he like looked through it and I remember Scully was there too and he cracked up when he saw me bring it in because he knew what was going to happen.

" Yeah. " That's cool. And it was like it was a year later. Oh, okay. Okay. He had all my [ __ ] I remember Skully was cracking up cuz he knew he was going to do that. Some wild stories. And uh you know talking about just [ __ ] popping off in tattoo shops.

And back in the day it was like a like you said it was like every 3 to 6 months like something weird would [ __ ] happen. And our shop we didn't open until 2003 and we were in a kind of an interesting area. So but still it was like that. And nowadays like luckily it's pretty mellow. But yeah it was it's always been like you know some people wear tattoos as their flag or their banner. um as their club. And um one thing that I I hope I've done is helped bring tattooing by the TV show, you know what I mean? Help bring it in into the world of being respected.

Like I used to um have people not even drink out of the same [ __ ] drinking fountain as me. You know what I mean? Or cross the street because I'm tattooed. They don't know me. Yeah. But um these days that don't I I used to hate going to the bank because security would follow me everywhere as if I'm there to [ __ ] rob the place. " Yeah. So I I'm I'm proud and I hope that I am one of the people that helped bring it out of only crime thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I like all all aspects of it. Absolutely. I got, you know, I love I love all of it. But yeah, it's like uh it's it's nice to not be just thought of as people used to call me scumbag cuz I have tattoos. Friends even would go, "Man, that's so scummy. " And I'd be like, I I'll never talk to you about it again.

Yeah. I remember getting out of a car in Houston and my I don't know, I was like maybe 99 or 98 or something. And I remember this I was with my dad and he jumped out of the car and I think he had shorts on at the time and shirt, you know, it was pretty heavily tattooed and some dude just gets out of the car next to us and looks at him. " And then I had to like calm my dad down and get him away from him. I'm like, "Let's just go and we're you're with your dad. That's been said to me. Let's just go to dinner. like get the [ __ ] out of here.

You say that tattoo guy, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Obviously a very condescending tone. Yeah. Yeah. It was so It was so different. Yeah.

Yeah. With all of your passion kind of channeling into Japanese work, have were you able to uh have you traveled over the years and been over to Japan or No. No. One thing that the TV show did was it syndicated in Japan after after it was off the air here. 2007 was the end of the show and so 2008 it became syndicated in like Greece and yeah which we never think about if you don't know how the business works and um um Horio the first reached out to me the first thing he said was um are you really blind in one eye and and I was like yeah man I like got [ __ ] up he couldn't speak English but um he told me later that he had his apprentice translate for him so we wrote emailed back and forth plus wrote paper mailed back and forth and um but yeah he was like that guy's wearing a [ __ ] eye patch because he's trying to be cool because he's blind in one eye or was blind in one eye.

Anyways, he was he was like offended that I would be wearing or pretending like I was whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But nonetheless, I called his bluff. And then then he uh we wrote back and forth a lot. And that's cool. So I consider him a mentor, you know, for that year, year and a half before his death. It it was uh it was maybe 2 years of us chitchatting.

Also, um I got to hang out with Koname for three four days. Um Konami Ozuma. Do you know who that is? I don't know. Um the names sound familiar, by the Yeah, he he's he was he did he did tattoo in the ' 60s '7s bit, but he's the uh painter that did the silk paintings of tattooed women. Oh, okay. They were really [ __ ] famous in the '9s and the 2000s all the way up until Zuma Koname. Um I got to hang out with him or Ren a little bit before she got cancer.

Um but that was here. I have to be honest I when I was making good money Yeah. I was supporting my children. Yeah. And that was what was important. Yeah. You know, I'm I'm proud to say I was I was never criminally late ever with child support or alimony, you know. So that's cool.

That's just the one thing that I could I could never travel. Yeah. So yeah, but yeah, I've befriended some some I mean even um sound like you were in good places where a lot of people were coming through. Oritoshi the first used my um my room uh for 3 days that he was here in town. That was at Hart and Huntington. But I I had to like cancel my appointments for him. So I said as long as I get to watch you. So I get to watch for Toshi work for 3 days straight.

Plus his translator was real helpful with me. But uh I consider you know Hikio first and Uzuma Konami very very strong influence. Yeah. I'm helpful in a lot of ways. Like Ozuma Konami is the one that told me like quit fighting your natural westernized flavor. And because I was like oh yeah I was like my stuff doesn't look authentic. Yeah. Yeah.

And he was like, I wouldn't have even noticed your work if it was if it was you. Now, he said that the reason I knew who you were is because your work has stood out to me obviously as somebody that has a passion for traditional Japanese. Yeah. And not just, you know, oh, I'm going to stick 14 antlers on a [ __ ] dragon and I'm going to [ __ ] show them how it's done type of thing. I I I've been in love with the Japanese tattoo and it's only been since like 2007 or 8 that people started accepting or liking traditional Japanese tattoo. Right now it seems like there's thousands and thousands and thousands of tattooers specializing in traditional Japanese and uh it's awesome. Yeah. But yeah, definitely uh before 2010 there was only a few man.

There was only a few in the whole [ __ ] world outside of Japan. Yeah. That um loved it. And I've loved it forever. And it's nice to finally be able to focus on what I love the most. Do you paint large scale like pretty regularly these days or have you uh my my uh my tendon tore my tendon right here came loose? So every once in a while I test it to see but it's been years. It's like if I tattoo I can't paint.

If I paint I can't tattoo. tattoo. How So, how many days a week do you roughly tattoo right now? You have you have a private studio here in town or Yeah, I'd like to say that. Um or I work late night in friends shops. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.

Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't been to where you go where you work, but uh so you'll do uh five days a week. That's a lot. Yeah. Normal. Normal.

Yeah. Five days a week. My days off. Yeah. Mondays, Tuesdays, my days off. Yeah. But it it's it's been it's been sporadic. Uh this past year's definitely been different.

Yeah, this year was rougher. I mean, if you're saying it seems like there's a lot more tattoo shops. Oh, more than like there used to be 8,000 people tattooing in the world. Now I think there's 800,000 people tattooing in the world. " Yeah. Yeah. And they used to just leave us alone. And there's so many tattooers now.

So anyways, there's a lot of of of tattooers doing traditional Japanese. Or no, you know what? Not traditional, but Japanese. Yeah. Modernized, westernized. I still love the true traditional. That's what I love. That's just like, you know, I still I still love Van Go more than Da Vinci or or Michelangelo.

I I like that rough look. It's like traditional Aztec um art, traditional Mayan art, traditional Hawaiian art or Mayori art. These are traditional old old styles. Yeah. Traditional Japanese is the same to me. It's a very old style. Sticking with certain subject matter and whatnot. I mean, well, it's a style.

It's a style. A lot of people don't think about style anymore. They just think like, oh, it's a dragon or a koi, so I'm going to I'm going to do these wacky lips and eyelashes, you know, or something like that. Well, it's just a style. It's like if you were to say draw or paint in the style of Veno and then you you love that style and you're not like trying to, you know, like say I'm the original or nothing, but you love Veno style and then you do that style. Yeah. Or or that. Well, it's a style.

" It really is like that with Japanese, but it's these days it's been stepped on and changed, which is fine. Yeah. But I love the original. Yeah. So that's great. You know, the biggest change between uh true traditional Japanese tattooing from, you know, like 1830s to 1880s is when it really from Kunoshi became a style. Okay? It all the traditional Japanese style is is kunoshi style.

Okay? If you can't, this is this is what I've been told by Zuma Koname and Horoshi and Horio is if if you can't say that looks like Kuni Yoshi might have drawn it, then it's not traditional. But I'm not saying traditional is better than westernized. I'm not saying it's better than modernized. It's just just like traditional Hawaiian tattoos are not well, you say what you want, but don't change those, but go ahead and change Japanese. Well, I don't know. It's a it's a weird thing to me that it's been so changed, but still called traditional. That's like when um Sheay uh is that his name?

Where is she? uh was they they awarded him the best traditional Japanese tattooer in in like 2008 or 2010 and his style and he said I am not traditional Japanese. I this is this is a different thing than traditional. Yeah. So it's Yeah. It's just a different style. It's beautiful. I love watercolor tattoos.

I don't do them. I I I I love you know these things. They are specific. If if you're saying I'll do a watercolor tattoo, then you go and do a graffiti uh with bold black lines and well, it's not. You've changed it, but you're still calling it that. That's what confuses me sometimes where um I love the traditional 1800s style. The big difference between the 1800s and now is the backgrounding like more dimension or or I mean I'm thinking I think a lot of people don't even realize that you know the isobars the uh just your that those weren't being done in the mid 1800s at all. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What were they doing? I just big um blocks like fades or you know I think in my bag I actually have a I didn't bring it for any reason except for I grab it real quick. Yeah, [ __ ] it. This is traditional Japanese mid 1800s. Okay.

Do you see the isobars? Okay. The tattoos that these people are wearing, they don't have the isobars. They have the cascades. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Those cascades eventually turned into the isobars.

Okay. But see what's poking out from under. There's a great one. Okay. So, as far as the backgrounding, it's slowly been morphing into what you see today. Yeah, like even H O Kio, what I loved about his work is his work looked like it was done in around 1920. But that's one thing too is like just studying photos of tattooed people like there's photos that were taken in the 1920s and 30s of 80year-old tattooed men from Japan that were tattooed when they were like 20. Oh wow.

So they were tattooed in say 1850 and such. They do not have the tight isobars. Yeah. They have big It's just different. The background has been changing. That's where you as an artist get to show your own flavor. Yeah. Um and of course the uh you know the shifts of Okay, there's more than Kunoshi, but Kunoshi is the godfather of traditional Japanese tattooing.

Okay, a lot of people don't know that either. " But Hocusai only actually ever drew three tattooed people, period. " And then he put out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of paintings with tattooed people. He started tattooing people. He started drawing four tattoos. It's like um Kun Yoshi is the godfather of the Japanese. Damn. It's a beautiful.

I didn't I mean this Yeah. 1800s, late 1800s. Is that Well, yeah. The the traditional Japanese tattoo or say like a back piece has been being done since like the 1830s, but um this is what it looked like back then. This is a depiction of a tattooed man. " No. you you probably at this time would have sung the the man that he drew or this might have been one of the people that Kunoshi tattooed anyways. So it's it's like saying um there's a Van Go movement.

Yeah. And then people are still doing Van Go and then 200 years later which is now compared to Kunoshi is not connected to Van Go. So yeah, it's like that's all it is is very traditional thinking, very traditional style, you know, like a cartoon style. If if if the guy that drew say the Peanuts like Snoopy and such started drawing Batman, it would be in the Peanuts or Schultz style. Yeah. So basically the traditional Japanese tattoo is of the kunoshi style. Yeah. I think what people do now is they just um don't like traditional.

It's that simple. Well, it's [ __ ] I mean within the tattoo realm. I mean there's the the styles that younger tattooers are being exposed to nowadays. It it's right. So where we your eye, you know, was like you were either Japanese or traditional. And then I started seeing black and gray like come out of like LA coast. Yeah. Yeah.

So those were like the three options to do as far as artists. And well then the graffiti like all the graffiti just started taking all of those and mashing them up. Like the graffiti kids would get in there and you know you're more of your like new school type stuff. And I guess that's probably what I would fall under. And like that's was what I was incredibly fascinated with cuz if somebody came in and started saying like I'm doing what you you know love and [ __ ] and then you look at it and you're like well that doesn't look like it but you can call it that. It's okay. It's weird. I don't compete and I don't think tattoos are sports you know there's no winners.

No no totally. It's it's just what I love is the tradition that's really connected to Kunoshi. Yeah. That's great. I love it. like you you when you're looking through like your social media specifically, it's just really really cool. It's really impressive. So that really made me proud about um in 2009 is when I put up my current website.

Okay. 2009. And and um [ __ ] it's still still rolling. Uh it's my website. Anyways, um yeah, I wrote basically here's one thing that I'll run into is like somebody say, "Hey, I want to get tattooed by you, man. I saw some stuff he did. Okay. So then they come down and I go, you know, what are you thinking to do?

And they're going, I want to get like five dragons on my left arm and and like, you know, 15 koi on my right. And I'm like, well, a dragon's head is this big. Yeah. Um they're like, what? And anyways, I started running into people not understanding what I love is the traditional and people just being confused by it because they've been seeing a full dragon that you know a 25 foot long dragon shrunk down to 4 in or whatever that's which is beautiful and awesome like you know that to me is a specialty micro tattooing that's a specialty but then they were confused when I would say well like but no I do I do traditional style I'm way more traditional. " Anyways, I wrote a page on my website. It's about the traditional Japanese style. Yeah, that's and it explains it.

It's It's like a thesis, you know? I mean, it ain't short, but it really made me proud because going through this uh there there's a a lot of cut and pastes in in the a lot of this I wrote. A lot of this was from my website. " I go, "Fuck no. That's so cool that the [ __ ] Boston Museum of Fine Arts Yeah. found info from me that that they felt helped describe That's awesome. " Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, it's it's it's its own style and it gets it gets hard for some people to understand. You know what I've I've learned? " You know why? Why? I'm like, "I don't know. " Yeah. And they just [ __ ] and they love them. Or, you know, some people like, you know, like diecast models.

Yeah. I love traditional Japanese tattoo. And I have since I was 11 when I was in that [ __ ] magic store. Yeah, that's cool. Gobmacked. Is there any newer newer artists that you can kind of think of that um that you're seeing out there that you're enjoying their work and maybe influencing you or I'm seeing a lot of the real traditional looking from the South Koreans and sometimes the Vietnamese. Um theirs looks very Japanese. Um they they don't so much use Kunoshi though.

Okay. They they use a couple different artists more of the the artist that designed, you know, like uh Kunoshi, he designed his paintings to be for the Ukui, which are like, you know, 17 in by 12 in, whatever the size is. That's the that's the size that he designed. But um other things that were being done that work really translate well to tattoo is like the little Japanese card games. They didn't have TV, you know what I mean? They had they had, you know, like a a drawer full of entertainment, which could be things on paper. Yeah. So, anyways, there's there's um there's a style that's more along the lines of the Japanese card toys of the 1800s that really looks good as tattoos.

Yeah, we'll have to. But it seems like they they really really love the traditional Japanese style as well. Yeah. Like once you start getting into more of like a storybook airbrush style Yeah. You know, like airbrush story book realism. It's just it's just different as all. It's it's it's beautiful. Yeah.

You know, it's but it's not what blows my hair back. That's all. It's like uh I I like the the old Chevy. Yeah. So that's fun, man. That's cool. But as far as Yeah. new artists.

Um, I rarely see one that I see as very connected to Kunoshi. Um, but all of the old ones, you know, my my my world comes from uh the 70s. Yeah. And the tattooers of that time, very connected to their teachers who were very connected to their teachers who were very connected to their teachers. And right now it's a little different. It is really different right now. I remember when I was working with Kell, he was um he was like, "Oh, I don't know, man. " And he's all what?

" And I don't think people pick up on it that Horoshi 3 has evolved into his own world, his own style. Yeah. And he himself, if you go back and read interviews, you'll see where he says starting around that time, 2006, 200 Yeah. You don't know that I I no longer doing true traditional. I'm doing my own style. Yeah. Which is saying I I'm not doing traditional. Don't copy meat and thinking you're learning traditional.

Okay. Okay. But a lot of Westerners that was their first exposure to toe in the door to be able to study it because it it's it's not been easy. I didn't have books. You know how I used to be able to study the Japanese tattoo. I I learned early on you don't need to look at the tattoos to learn the Japanese traditional tattoo. You need to study Kunoshi. " And I go, "Kunioshi artwork.

" But the imagery, that's where this is. This is a traditional traditional. It's not this person couldn't draw a human face. It's a style and that's based on kunoshi. That's all it is. Okay. But as far as people thinking they're learning traditional tattoos by studying Yeah. Horoshi the third.

Yeah. Okay. Or Hor Toshi the first. It's like, you know, they're they're doing their own thing. Horritoshi is more traditional than Hor Yoshi the third, but his backgrounding is very modernized. Very very with the isobars that are like, you know, one inch isobars. beautiful, but they're they're they're not traditional. They've changed with him.

He's he's started doing traditional backgrounding as well, but even his backgrounding has become um less asymmetric. You know, asymmetrics are part of traditional Japanese art. Yeah. And so to to symmetricize and and balance things is a very modern um individual thing. Yeah, but that's his style. And then Horoshi third, his his style is it's just not traditional. But yeah, it it's beautiful and you can learn a [ __ ] lot. But once you start getting into like 19 colors, you know, a traditional Japanese tattoo is is is a twocolor tattoo.

It's black, gray, and red. A two that you know that's a twocolor tattoo. You know why? No. Gray is not Well, yeah. It's it's faded black. Yes. So, black and red is a two-color tattoo and that's the original color tattoo was red which they make made with a type of toxic ink which would put them on deathbed for 3 days.

Do you know that anybody any Japanese uh person that has red on them that was tattooed before the 1980s was on their deathbed for 3 days because of the red the red and it's it's a it's it's just showing your bravery. It's showing you're willing to shine brightly. You know, the the the hopes thing, you know, is is is the red was made with a toxic mineral that would put you that's why most of the peies the red pianies that were done from like the 1980s and older are always around 3 in. Oh. Put you on a fine line and you'd be bedridden or die. Good lord. So, I'm guessing they learned that the hard way at times like by some guy. Yeah.

No, absolutely. People died in the 80s. People died in the 70s. People died in the '60s, '50s, 40s. Do you know what was specific that was in there? I mean, what what the hell were they put? Oh, okay. Yeah, that's wild.

Yeah, that's how they made their red. And that was the first color. Yeah, but you could only do a little bit at a time. But if you're if you're if you're afraid and if you're I don't know, a wimp, you'll only get this much. If you're very brave, you'll get a full three inches. Whoa. Oh, and then your body would metabolize that and you would work your way through it. And yeah, it's a poison bas and the mineral the residue would stay in in your fatty globial layer, but the toxin take 3 days for you'd be very you'd be on your deathbed for 3 days.

The bigger the more red you got, the more challenging death you were doing. And I've met some guys that were tattooed in the 60s and 70s with those reds and it makes me very humbled to be around them. It's like they're they're they're scary [ __ ] Yeah. And Yeah. They not afraid of not afraid of red. On top Well, just on top of the whole tattooing experience itself being a big deal. Then you're and having to work through that. That's wild.

Yeah. But that's one of the things I love about the traditional bodysuit is it's way more profound. It's very special. Yeah. You know, so not only am I just like into tattoos, but that whole thing was it was different than tattoos. It was like there's something different that their pride. Okay. They should be proud.

You know, you have to torture yourself for a decade to get a bodysuit. Yeah. you know, um, if you go in every two weeks, um, because of the swelling and and the difficult time your body has for dealing with larger, I don't think a lot of people realize that getting a, you know, a 10-in tattoo in one session, you know, like, oh, we did this in 6 hours and it stopped hurting and all this stuff. Like, no. When you're working on a bodysuit, it's a whole different realm. It's not the same healing. Healing is devastating. You know what I mean?

Nothing heals easy. The bigger you go, the harder the heel. Um, so you have to be able to to deal with pain well. And if you're tightening up and then relaxing and tightening up and relaxing, the tattoo goes deeper and shallower, deeper and shallower. So to have a beautiful tattoo, it it took being able to control yourself during pain, being able to relax yourself, being able to finish what you say you can do, that's commendable, being able to manage your money because this [ __ ] ain't cheap. No. You know, if you're buying a beautiful painting for the wall and it's $50,000, people understand that. But they don't [Music] understand,000 tattoos, you know.

Anyways, it's commendable. You know, I've tattooed it at least 30,000 hours, maybe. Yeah. I wonder how much. Yeah. 35 40,000 people at Carrie Barber's shop. You know how H Heart and Huntington was busy? Yeah.

It's a trip. " We used to, it used to be a very famous, popular shop. People used to come from Canada, Japan, Europe, Germany, England, everywhere. Carrie Barbara's shop was so [ __ ] well-known and a st it was just a trip. And so we would often have five people waiting for there were always four tattooers. We were all busy from beginning to end of shift. Damn. And anyways, I like that energy.

It was fun. Always like being that busy. Oh man. Yeah, it was a good time. Less tattooers puts more people in your in your lap. Yeah, these So, this is kind of like going back to what we were talking about about pain and going through this uh this life experience. Uh it I'm It can be very special. It can be.

Yeah. But I'm seeing this total opposite stuff we're seeing right now with the anesthesiologists like coming into tattooing and they're putting people down. Well, this is like really interesting. One thing I've learned is I love tattooing. So, if it would take that to to allow me to do what I love, I'm okay with it. I'm not against it. But one thing that I have never heard come up is what about if the next day during their severe swelling Yeah. they go into shock and die.

What if that they're forgetting that it's an injury, you know? Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. It's a very gnarly. Yeah. Trauma, you know. It's not like losing a hand or but you uh you're definitely going to be swelling.

you're going to have a harder heel. The more you injure, the harder that heel is, you know? Yeah. So, most That's why traditional Japanese tattooers only work one to two hours per session. A lot of people don't know. Yeah, you know, Moroshi 3, he does 1 hour sessions. He'll do like six, seven people a day, but each one only gets one hour because the more you do, the worse it heals. Okay?

The worse it heals, the more cleanup you have later. " I heard someone say that about Horoshi 3 one time. Like Yo Yoshi was this um guy, he had some a beautiful bodysuit and then he was very famous and he put on his maybe it was MySpace at the time or something. I'm going in to get touchup on my tattoo and he went to Horoshi and he touched up for like 9 hours. You know what I mean? Because the [ __ ] don't heal easy. It needs clean up. " It's like your body Well, in every Your body's having a [ __ ] hard time dealing with holding this mineral.

So, clean up, touchup is a normal part of body suits. Yeah, it makes sense to me. I don't. Yeah. Like you said though, I'm I'm not seeing when they're doing anesthesia. We're not seeing this followup of the week after. Like I want to really I don't want to talk to those people. " No, your whole body.

It is saying that your body is not that tattoo is not going to look as good. It's going to look blurrier and milkier. The harder time your body has healing a tattoo, the more blurry and milky it looks. It don't make a tattoo go away. It might be 5% blurriier or it might be 25% blurriier, might be 5% milkier, might, you know, and it's like, but the best scenario is take it easy on the body and your body will heal it better. The easier it is for your body to heal a tattoo, like young 20-year-olds that are healthy, I'll tattoo on them and they'll come back two weeks later and they've already dropped all the [ __ ] dry and everything and I'm like, man, you are healthy, you know? And then the older we get, the harder it is for your body to deal with cuz your body just ain't what it used to be.

A lot more sensitive. So yeah, it's it's it's thinking that healing has nothing to do with the tattoo that trips me out. It's like if you're doing you got three three people each doing six hours. So you've got 18 hours worth of tattooing in one session and it's this big. Okay. " Okay. So you take pain pills for 9 days or whatever while it hurts and it's you know and all this and it's going to be pussing and oozing and rescabing and and then the whole thing is is like but that also ruins the look that it could have been. It could have been crisper.

It could have been you know less washed out, less milky. Huh. Yeah. So that's that's the stuff that trips me out how it's just not thought of as the look of the tattoo is what is important to me like the look of a painted canvas rather than the moment the canvas was was painted we all sang this chant and we all threw our [ __ ] high heels at the wall and did you know it's like no it's not about doing the painting it's about the painting but that's just dionic art and there's two types of art. There's Dionic art and appalonian. I can't remember the two. Anyways, one type of art is uh for time like Leonardo da Vinci's few paintings he did. We're so grateful that we get to still admire those uh Michelangelo sculptures his frescos those are I can't remember if it's appalone.

Anyways, that's the that's a type of art. I like that type of art. There's the other type of art where it's of the moment. Back when I used to tattoo at this at a in a street shop, there would be people like like um like all going while the music's going and I go, "Hey, man, sit still like, "No, man. " Well, slayers. And you know, and then they're bragging later like, "Oh, [ __ ] or they'll say like um they'll call you a sadist cuz they they think you're the same as them. " Yeah. Okay.

Art of the moment like a ballet. Okay. We can't see a ballet that was done 400 years ago. Um so that's two types of like yokoono screaming. Okay. That's this type of art which is the people that are all about the [ __ ] like moment of the [ __ ] [ __ ] yeah man [ __ ] hurt and I was [ __ ] cool and [ __ ] the blood was squirting everywhere. It's like that's not part of the tattoo for me but some people it is. So, the two types of art is so people showing off is what I feel like it is is showing off that they've got money.

So, they're paying their $6 to $16,000 for anesthesia. What doesn't matter to them is that the tattoo looks great later. Yeah, I don't think I don't or But to me, what the tattoo looks like later, there's not right or wrong and it's all good, man. I I I love tattoos and it's awesome that they're getting tattooed and it's awesome that they're promoting tattoos and it's just different types of art. I don't say that's wrong and I don't say what I do is right. I have the same exact outlook on it. I don't I I don't have a strong opinion machine. I'm just genuinely enjoying watching this happen and wondering like what the hell is this?

I'm kind of intrigued and I would like to maybe it would be cool to go sit in on it and just see the experience, you know, but it' be wild. Yeah. I don't think that it's thought of like will this tattoo look good later since we did it this way. Yeah. But then that maybe that don't matter. That's why I was talking about the two different types cuz the presentation of that moment of getting the tattoo is what's gotten all the attention. Yeah. Right.

It kind of turns into some [ __ ] you know? Yeah. Nobody knows what the tattoo was. " No, they thought of the moment of the anesthesia, the three tattooers, and Yeah. or more, you know, and it's like that's the performance. A performance a tattoo. This is not performance. This is experience.

Yeah. It's long lasting. Yeah. Yeah. As long as I am. Yeah. Well, dude, any I mean, anything else that you like to talk about? I like um I really enjoyed this.

This is fun. I could I I want to talk to you more too about Japanese the history and maybe we can get you back and specifically just talk about like genres or anything like that. Yeah, that's real fun, man. I really like that. So, um and drawing. So, we want to do some stuff in the future where we sit down and draw together while we Yeah, absolutely. I love drawing. Yeah.

Um I used to I used to um draw an hour every day, period. That's great. I did that. Well, once I started wanting to become a professional tattooer. Yeah. " Yeah. This will look like [ __ ] in the skin. Then he taught me the differences.

Once I started learning that, it's like um I draw on the skin. Everything I do, I draw on the skin. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And and so anyways, I set myself a a thing where draw an hour a day every day and set a timer. I used to set a timer for like four or five years. I would set the timer for 1 hour and I would draw and sometimes it'd be like, why isn't the timer going off?

And I look and it's like, [ __ ] it's only been 25 minutes. And then I'm like, okay, you still got to draw until the timer goes off. Then other times, yeah, I would uh be drawing and then I've always learned, my mom taught me, um, inspiration comes from motivation and motivation comes from action. Um, so if you're waiting to be motivated, you you know, it'll be rare. It'll be few and far between once a month or something if you're lucky. So anyways, I learned, you know, action and then sometimes that hour would turn into four because it felt like an hour. You know what I mean? It would ding and I'd be like, "Whoa, I, you know, I wouldn't even pay attention.

" Yeah. But drawing um I think is important for someone that would call themselves a tattooer. But at the same time, like Rick, he he could draw all this [ __ ] right on or tattoo it right on without even drawing it half the time. Um because he'd done it so many times. So that's why I started drawing an hour a day every day. It's like that's also why a lot of my stuff like if somebody goes, you know, I want to get a koi. will you draw it for me? And I'm like, well, have you seen my koi in the past decade?

And they're like, yeah. And I go, well, you already know what it's going to look like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, you know, a Vans tennis shoes all of a sudden changed their style. It wouldn't be Vans to you anymore.

So, I I have a style that's very natural out of my hand. And drawing has done that. I don't know why the [ __ ] I went on that tangent. Natural. I mean, I'm I'm huge supporter of like uh illustrators in general, and I feel like these days right now, if you're there's not a whole lot of illustrators that specifically stand out with their drawing on paper. Hands on paper is gone. Yeah. I still My son Cameron, he uses um you know, the sketch pad and the pen.

He says, "Dad, it speeds me up a lot in the tattoo shop because I can't draw as fast as you. It might take him 40 minutes to draw the same rose. It takes me 3 minutes to draw. Yeah. " Yeah. Or like actual art, painting on paper and stuff cuz there was a little while where I was seeing some really neat stuff and I would ask the tattooer, "Oh, I love that. " You know, might just be a little flash of something. " Yeah.

Yeah. It's not physical. " Yeah. I can't buy it or appreciate it as wall art. It's just I don't know. There's something special. Yeah. A hand on paper.

No, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have a great amount of appreciation for digital artist. Yeah. NFT. I want to I want to sell some NFTts, too. Yeah.

Well, that's good, man. So, um Jeez, I don't know. Like, I think we only got on two topics. I apologize. No, it's good. I really enjoyed it and I'm uh I want to like come back and talk some more for sure. It's fun. I would love to have you back.

And well, I am um a weirdo. I'm a [ __ ] homebody. I I think I've become a a bit agorophobic. I've I've learned I've got PTSD and but I only I'm I'm 60 going on 62 and I've only learned that this past year. I've never I've never Well, you know, back when I got blown up or the I've had so many things, man. I've been shot. I've been stabbed. I've been blown up.

I've died twice. Okay. Literally died twice. It's a trip. It It's like u But I never thought of anything like, "Oh, I've got troubles from it or anything. " Yeah. Where, you know, you don't you don't wear all that [ __ ] out on your sleeve and you don't ask for um sympathy. You don't ask for attention.

But a weird thing is is I probably should have had sympathy and attention. So anyways, I've become a bit agorophobic. Um getting out and doing things. Um it doesn't scare me. Yeah. But it it makes me react sometimes and and so it's it's nice. This is almost a good therapy for me getting getting out there again. I mean, I've been on [ __ ] national television for two years.

It you know what I mean? It's it's like for somebody like me to say like, "Yeah, I I don't I don't like people looking at me. " All this stuff has just changed for me over the years and I think it's slowly doing some sort of a morphing and I'm I think I'm better for it and I'm getting better with it. Yeah. Do you tattoo at night or you tattoo in the mornings? Um during the day usually daytime. Yeah. Yeah.

I I'm not a vampire anymore. Yeah. Yeah. m. at Carrie Barbara shop and that was on the schedule 4 days a week and then or three days a week and then the other two days were 10our days. That's how much I love tattooing. " Yeah. No, I'm I was in my element.

I loved it and everything. But these days I work alone. I I I've I I work well with others. I do. And I and and and I love watching other people work. But I started learning that my personality does make people nervous. Um younger people that I've worked with um after a few months will start to think I don't [ __ ] like them. And I've learned that that's just just because you're quiet or something.

I've learned if I don't say like, "Oh my god, I love what you're doing, man. That's really creative. " I'll find out. Like, oh, so and so wants to know why you don't like him. " I I do. Yeah. But anyways, it's just changed over the years where I think I just come from a different generation. That's made me a bit agorophobic and I think that's the word.

Yeah. I'm learning this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a lot of younger artists that work with me over the years that have the same thing and I don't ever think of myself as like crass or grumpy or anything. You know, I'm all I'm frank, but they want me to like pay more attention to them. Yes.

Let them know that you you think they're special and and it's like at least five times a year I'll tell somebody, "Man, your [ __ ] is so [ __ ] cool. " that that style you do is you. And u then if I don't do it like on every [ __ ] Monday, pretty soon they're like going, "Why doesn't Clark like me, man? " And and I'm like, "I do still [ __ ] like you, man. " [ __ ] busy and I'm a grown man. I'm doing my own thing, too. But little things. That's funny.

But I still I still if I don't like you, you know it. I [ __ ] you know, all I do is say, "I [ __ ] like you, man. I do not [ __ ] like you. It's as simple as that, you know? So, if I'm not saying that, that means I'm I'm cool, right? I've always felt like if I'm not pulling you aside and talking to you, then you're doing a great job. Or if I don't care about you enough to take you aside and talk to you, that means I'll tell you to get the [ __ ] out of here. If I like you, I will talk to you.

Yeah. If I don't like you, I I won't I'll just say I don't [ __ ] like you. [ __ ] make space. That seems like a really perfect way to communicate because then everybody knows where they stand and you'll just stay out of the way but they don't have the different you know it is a different generation. What year were you born at? I was born in 1980. So you were doing handpoke tattoos when I was Yeah. Yeah.

It's just different generations, man. That's like um what I was talking about with the punk [ __ ] It's like um I used to like the weirdos, the Avengers, the Dills, uh the Germs, these [ __ ] late '7s punk bands. Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Cramps. Even DVO at that time was so [ __ ] you know, it was part of Blondie. It was like that was my generation. And then I've had people go like, "Oh, man. " They're all bad Brains. This is what particular that happened.

" And they're like, "No, they were [ __ ] really early and [ __ ] also can't be around to see everything. I Yeah, I think I think I'm like a I think the you know the late '7s world is like a reaction to the hippie [ __ ] Yeah. And and the [ __ ] coddling in the [ __ ] sex with everybody thing that started ruining things and don't spank your children started ruining things. But at the same time, you know, I feel pretty fortunate where I came into tattooing. I I appreciated and I was able to be around a lot of old school guys too and I looked up to them but then I was also having all these younger like graffiti guys around me influencing me too and and it's awesome [ __ ] and I was genuinely in love with like all aspects of what I was and I still am too in love with all aspects but what I love doing with my hands as a tattooer.

Yeah. Like when I paint I still love doing portraiture. No [ __ ] Yeah. Oh yeah. you you're uh you have this like interesting kind of your watercolored approach where it's like droplets almost and then it builds up this texture. I thought that was beautiful. It's cool. I remember watching my mom um she's been waterc coloring ever since I was a little kid.

I would just be sitting at the dining room table and she would and it's got its own [ __ ] thing. And I tried a little bit when I was just kind of trying to do like more of the American traditional stuff in the very beginning and then but I'm just like all over the [ __ ] place. I'm like I like having access to all the materials and then just kind of throwing them all together and seeing what happens. Yeah. Something about [ __ ] has very specifics like, you know, very specific records I like to listen to while I'm tattooing. Very specific style I like doing with my hands while I'm tattooing. Very specific style I like doing when I'm oil painting. Very specific style I like doing when I'm waterc coloring.

And each of these are different. Yeah, that's cool. That's Speaking of records, I got to invite you. We're doing a vinyl record art show for our shop's 21-y year anniversary. Vinyl record? Yes. We're going to paint Zia Records donated 120 records. Oh, really?

So, I'm distributing them to tattooers all over. And Oh, and for the sleeve. Nope. We're going to do on the record. Oh, no way. Yeah. So, a lot of us like some guy, you know, like I'm going to gesso mine, I think, and then build up texture on it. Uh, some guys are doing like cold pressed paper, doing real nice clean watercolors.

Some are doing I mean everybody's kind of have 3D printer guys that are gonna print [ __ ] and like attach it to the record. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So I think it'll be pretty fun. It's a charitable art show or raising money for You know what I did with my mom's records? Oh [ __ ] She She was a Bobby Soxer from the 50s like Elvis and some of her records that would probably worth a lot now. I I made like potato chip bowls out of or the sleeves. Um, it fit over my head.

And I used to like this show called Inframan. I think it was Infram. It was a Japanese show where his helmet kind of looked like that. Yeah. And then I would put a slit, cut a slit in it. I would wear the record sleeves. They were probably like from 1956. Do you collect vinyl now or you say I still have um I have all my mom's 45s and I have a couple of her 12 in.

I have my mom's 45. Yeah. And I still have um all of my coming of age albums. I gave my children um I had like 3,000 albums in in 1979 80. I worked in a record store in Huntington Beach. Oh, cool. Yeah. It was like before there was record stores for punk, you know, there was like all you could find at that time was like Journey and Yeah.

But anyways, um great album covers. Yeah. She used to sell me the records at cost and and and I had accumulated three to 4,000 records, but I still have Yeah, I still have That's a good collection. I think we counted 700 records. Okay. I still have like my favorite bands like the Weirdos. They were my favorite band to see back in the 70s was the Weirdos. Okay.

They were so cool. Uh the Avengers, the Dills. I still have like all the [ __ ] that I grew the Ramones, the Sex Pistols was the stuff that I collect. " Yeah. But that's the [ __ ] that I was listening to when I was a teenager. Yeah. But sometimes when you put it on, it takes you back. Yeah.

So, at one point, maybe about 10 12 years ago, I went through my records and if it didn't take me back and I gave it to my children and then so my boys each had, you know, were given I don't know how many a thousand records or something. Gave those to them. Dang, that's cool. Then they got stolen from from them. M. Yeah. That's a bummer. Well, and you got an open house full of parters.

Yeah. So, do you said does your son tattoo? Mhm. Oh, okay. My youngest Cameron hate tattoos. Um, me and my ex-wife put my oldest our oldest Me and my ex-wife put both of our children through college or into college. Okay. Um, our oldest finished college and he is now a um construction manage manager.

He he um he works for the National Park System. So that when they're having buildings built, they they have a construction company. Then they have their team that's like the designers and [ __ ] Yeah. Well, he is on site while they're building to communicate communicate between the two. So he just actually finished a job in Colorado for the past since March, I think. And that's for like um a ranger station. Yeah. That was burned down in the forest fires a few years ago.

Two years ago. He's getting ready to move to Maine for another national park job. So Ian stayed in college and he's making decent money. And then Cameron wanted to keep quitting college. So, I think we put him into three or four different college things, but it didn't work out. And then he he became well, I taught him how to tattoo. I taught him for one year and then Rick Walters uh took him on for his first year. So, Cameron Cameron u Yeah, I taught him for one year and then he worked at Rick's shop for one year after that and then he's been tattooing I think eight eight and a half years now.

Wow. Okay. Is he in he's not in Vegas or No, he's not in Vegas right now. He He's had some ups and downs with things and he's messed himself up a bit with um he's he's having a hard time with life. So, he's um he's he's definitely on a recovery road. Yeah. But yeah, he's been tattooing eight years now. Okay, cool.

And he's a good tattooer. He just um you know maybe because of his parents' divorce. I don't know. He's just We'll get there. He's a good tattooer. He's in his He's in his 30s. Once he's in his 40s and 50s, that'll all be in his past. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah. Stick with it and be in love with it. I feel like tattooing has helped me learn so much about life and really helped me stick with something, too. And I've always been over I bounce all over the place. And there's just nothing that I've stick with more than tattooing. And I I just love doing this now, too, cuz I'm still getting to talk. I'm I'm not tattooing as much as I once was. But it's just great to still be involved.

And I just love it. I love talking about it with all different people. Yeah. It's really cool. It's like, but it's helped me out a lot. And it's brought me a lot of great stuff. It's also brought me a lot of stress and stuff, too. Yeah, it's ups and downs just like anything.

Like I just think if you decided to be a full-time oil painter, you know, you're going to go through the same types of things. If you're going to be a full-time 7-Eleven owner, you're going to be going to Yeah. It's once it's a job. Yeah. But we're lucky, man. Very lucky that people like what we do enough to sit in our chairs. I struggle big time when I hear people complain about it. I'm just like, man, just oh, you're obviously doing it wrong, then like you should just be in love with it and like it's Yeah, it's like it's it's it's gone in waves, man.

There was there was in the 70s tattooing became very very [ __ ] popular. Um, it's gone in these little waves where had this slump in the late60s, then the late 70s climbed and then it it goes in waves. And right now it's another wave of of um tattooers not easily paying the bills. Yeah. But that has come and gone in my career three times. And then as far as watching my friends careers, it's it it happened to Mike Brown. It happened to Mark Mahoney back in the 80s. Yeah.

It comes and little waves and if if you if you love it enough, it's okay. It's hard. [ __ ] hard. You just have to figure out other things to sell and then hopefully people will admire you enough to buy those other things, right? It's cool to see Mark Mahoney still tattooing. Yeah, he's I know. Yeah, he I think he was 19 when we met. I was Oh [ __ ] Maybe he was 18 when I met.

Whenever he moved from New York to to California is when we met and he was at the Rose Tattoo. I think that was in 79 or 80. You know what's funny is I went down to see him and um and uh went in and he wasn't there and there was this other guy that was like a helper before. " And he goes, "Mark's not here anymore. " Oh, no way. And then uh found out later that that was Jonathan Shaw's first first day tattoo. And I have it. What?

Yeah, I am. One of Jonathan Shaw's first professional tattoos. Dang. That's fun. You've been tattooed uh by some pretty inspiring people or did did you when you were younger go or I don't know how long recently you've been tattooed like go to the people that you wanted to be inspired by and learn from and get tattooed by. I didn't think of it like that. Um, it just ha happened to be that I grew up in the neighborhood with these tattooers. You know, Mike Brown, Mark Mahoney, uh, well, you know, even Rick and Yeah.

Phil Sims. I come from the town where Bob Shaw and Colonel Todd Yeah. were, you know, tattooing and and and then being part of their family. It's like, you know, Rick taught me. I I have this, I think, on my website and I put it out there sometimes. I'm very proud and lucky to have been taught by Rick. Rick was taught by Phil Sims and Phil Sims was taught by Bob Shaw. Bob Shaw was taught by Bert Graham and Bert Grim was taught by Charlie Bars.

So, it's it's like each one of those figured out a little bit, you know? That's wild. Yeah. I think my lineage goes right back to there. I I have to ask Phil Luck again. He always breaks it down for me and I I get lost in in between. But um there was a guy Hinge that I think learned from Oh my god. Somebody out there and then he taught um my mentor and Aaron Delivadova and Dave Log and then I So I learned how to cool.

Yeah. So I got to I I learned So he was my mentor. So yeah. So So you have his family. The people that taught him learned things from the people that taught them. And hopefully that was all given to you. Yeah. And then you've learned things as you tattoo.

And if you teach somebody else, you've got their knowledge plus a little bit more. Yeah, that's what a family tree does. I'm excited. I'm going to have Willie Cutlip. He's a fantastic illustrator and tattooer. He he lives here, but he's one of the guys that I taught how to tattoo and he's going to come on and so we're share stories and stuff. And I'm hoping to get Dave on here, too. So, we'll just kind of Very cool.

It's, you know, something that I don't think too many people have been doing, but to have all of it documented and listen to people and their perspectives and stories and stuff is I'm I'm pretty excited about continuing on to do this. It's cool. Yeah. So, yeah, I just happen to be in that neighborhood. That's how I happen to learn things from those people. Yeah, I've fell into it completely. " And I was like, "Oh, okay. So, I mean, yeah, I'll get a tattoo.

I don't I was terrified at the same time, but and then I ended up drawing something up that he tattooed on me and then it just kind of we clicked from there and then Yeah, it was fun. That that's one of the things I um Mark did that on me I think in 81. Really? 81. Yeah. That's that's a drawing I did. " Cuz it was just a dagger with a woman's face on. And at the time it had a a thing for women with shaved heads.

Okay. Fetish thing. Anyways, that's a Yeah, a woman with shaved head and the dagger and Anyways, that's that's an old one. Dang. From I have Yeah. Mike Brown. Rick. Yeah.

I have bunch of friends that have tattooed me. Yeah. My children tattooed me when they were three and then they tattooed me again when they were like 14. Yeah. Uh what we used to do on a boring day was play tic-tac-toe. I have a bunch of tic-tac-toe on me and none of them have I ever won. One just losing matches up your legs. Yeah.

Yeah. My wife tattooed me the other day. She never tattooed. She doesn't even illustrate or anything. Yeah. We switched little tattoos. My wife Terry um worked at the tattoo shop at Carrie Barbas for a decade. Oh, no way.

Okay. It was her day job. She works at the hotel. This was out in LA, but she worked for the Hilton um group coordinator um during the day. Um but I worked until two in the morning. So only time we could see each other, you know. We've been together 30 years now. No [ __ ] That's great.

Yeah. But um the only time we could see each other is if she came down. So she was hanging out at the shop for like 9 months or something. Carrie said, "You're here all the time. " and her being around the tattooing so much. And she was even around when I was tattooing at home before I got I tattooed my Terry, my wife now. I tattooed her while I was still married to Holly. Use tattoo out of my house, you know.

No way. And uh anyways, she did a tattoo on me probably around 2000 or 99 somewhere in there. And it was crazy. And it is still a perfect tattoo just from her being Yeah. listening and the stretching I think is the most misunderstood part of tattooing these days is stretching is is not just stretch and that's it. It's there's particular stretches and positions. Yeah. Yeah.

Especially all over the I think that's lost, but she she like she nailed it. She got the shading, she got the color, she got the line work, and it's all that's like 20 24 25 years old now, and it's still a good tattoo. That's awesome. Dang. Yeah. My mom tattooed my leg. That was the one and only tattoo she's ever done. Yeah.

She's been an illustrator. She was the most inspir inspiring person in my life as far as art. Um and then my dad tattooed me and my sister tattooed me. She's never actually my sister was she was working the front counter for years and she was this real pretty blonde. All the guys want to pay attention to her and she con we drew this little logo for her. Uh it was a little corn dog like throwing a her nickname is corn corn dog. Uh, so she she would do that little piece of flash on all these random guys and then would let her see Dave's outhouse that little outouse with the money on the door. Yeah.

Or Rick had his um I'll shoot you. No, he had his um little [ __ ] Yes. Sam Rick Walters buddy downtown or the Rick Walters Rose. He had a little he had a little stick drawing of him that I know he's tattooed on a bunch of my buddies. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Little things like that.

So, well, [ __ ] man. I say we wrap it up. Um, yeah. Yeah, that was good. That was great. I really appreciate you taking the time to come down and I'm like I'm super excited. I want to talk more about this in the future and and then if you have any other fun stories to tell or anything, just hit me up. Yeah.

It's like we'll get you in on the drawing night program we're or project we're putting together. I think that'd be fun. Sometimes Sometimes I don't remember [ __ ] Yeah. I'll reach out to you. Yeah. " I know. You ever had a client [ __ ] on you? I haven't had [ __ ] on me, but I've had uh just some wet farts working on the ribs.

Those are that, too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could We could end the show with a [ __ ] story. You want a [ __ ] story? [ __ ] story. Give me the [ __ ] story. [ __ ] it.

There was this There was this Yeah, there was this guy I used to tattoo. He was maybe in his 40s, late 30s. And this is while I was in my 20s, early or late 20s, early 30s, somewhere around there. He's a little older. He worked at Belleview Hospital, which was a mental Okay. criminal mental hospital. Yeah. So, um, every time he had a close call of getting killed, he would come in and get another luck tattoo because he needed more luck.

Oh, wow. And and so like every three to five months he would almost get killed at his job and he would come get more tattoos. And then he had a girlfriend and um like one time she wanted to get tattooed. I don't know why I brought him up at all, but it was about her. She wanted a cute tattoo on her butt cheek. And so she was she's laying on her on her belly. " And I'm like, "Whoa, let no problem. " Anyways, um after a little while, I came back out and I was working.

I had her panties off, you know what I mean? just I was working and um as I was working I was like what and I looked and I had a little raisin and and I go oh [ __ ] and she goes what and I go I got a little pooplet oh my god oh my god I go yeah you gave me a little [ __ ] razor like all I could figure is like as I was working her butt cheeks were slowly working it out my Yeah. And it was right. Oh my god. I'll I'll never forget that. Just for you. Just a little little treat. Yeah.

At least didn't get on my shoes. It was just little. Well, I think that's about it. We ended it with a [ __ ] story. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Clark. Um, how do we get a hold of you? com.

Um, right now I'm out of my book, but um my book's going to be back in stock soon. Hopefully. hopefully in time for the um what is it called? Black Friday. Hopefully in time for that. So I've got my um it's it's it's drawings I've done over the past uh 15 maybe 10 years past 10 years just of tattoos or ideas. Yeah, it's just a bunch of drawings kind of like a coloring book. I have that.

Um, I also am all you got to do is search Clark North Art and uh even on Amazon, Clark North Art on Amazon, you'll get shirts, posters, paintings, lithos. Um, or just Google search Clark North Art because if you don't, if you just search Clark North, you get like North Clark County. Oh, yeah. Or Clark Street. North Clark Street. So, it thinks it's a direction or a town. But Clark North Art or Clark North Tattoo and um that's your Instagram too. And my Instagram is Clark North Tattoo.

Yeah, Clark North Tattoo. com. Sweet. Those are the the main ones. And I'm probably forgetting something I should plug, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and uh yeah, don't don't be afraid to reach out.

I I uh I scare people until we get to know each other. That's what I'm told. So, you're a sweetheart. Yeah, that's good, man. Well, thank you again. I greatly appreciate it. And uh thanks for tuning in, guys. We will see you around.

Keep up um on the next episodes. All right. Bye, guys. Bye. Peace.

I would come into work and like my inks would be somewhere else or like half open like somebody was using it and I'm like what the [ __ ] So I locked my box when I left and the manager called me up and bitched me out over the phone because I locked my toolbox. So obviously the manager was taking my I was like what the [ __ ] dude? And I grew so fast because I was around a bunch of artists that were way better than me. My artwork's different. It's a different twist on things. And I think people like that because it's refreshing. They're not seeing the same [ __ ] all the [Music] time. What's happening?

This is Austin with support local tattooer. Today is a beautiful day. It's Friday over here. I don't know when we're going to drop this podcast, but we got my man Mike Biggs in the house. He's a tattooer. He's a freaking all-around extremely talented artist, and his work ethic is unparalleled. I'd say you're you're quite the hermit. You uh That's true.

You like you like to work and work only. Yeah, pretty much. You told me that you would like to if your food would come in a pill form, you would you would do that so you didn't have to ever leave your garage. That's true. I wish it was like a three course meal in pill format. Take that and go back to work. Just pull two out of your pocket every day and or every couple hours. So, as as far as tattooing right now, you're you're kind of almost taking a not a break, but you're you're doing guest spots and stuff every once in a while.

I I don't really tattoo as much lately cuz I moved too. So, if I was still in town, I probably would do more tattooing every once in a while, but And you're in Prescat now? Yeah, Prescat, Arizona. And so, uh, yeah, I got to link you up with Alex Hamilton. He's a fantastic tattooer and he lives in Prescuit. No way. Yeah. Yeah.

He's an awesome dude. Incredibly kind dude, too. So, [ __ ] We always like to kind of get a little feedback on I I just like to hear people's stories like how you got into the industry. Yours is kind of fun. You You got into it in Las Vegas. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I was born and raised here, so I've been here my whole life. But, I don't know. I just always like fall into weird odd jobs cuz I I was a graphic designer out of college. Oh, okay. So, I did that for like I don't know five or six, seven years just doing graphic design, but it was all like dumb Vegas casino type of [ __ ] Yeah. For a firm or anything or just freelance? Um, well, at first it was like a print house that printed like the casino graph like the stuff for slot machines and things like that. Oh, no [ __ ] So, I was set that was like my first job out of college, but it was like N bucks an hour and I was just setting up the plates cuz at the time they were still doing screen printing on glass.

Oh, and you learned Oh, yeah. No [ __ ] Yeah. I did color separation. That was my first job. I would take all the artwork that the artists make for the And then I would separate all the plates and then they would print those and then [ __ ] screen print on glass. That's rad. Super wild job. Okay.

I have a few of those like old school glass out of slot machines and stuff growing up. So, I did that and then I got I worked at Ballet Gaming as an artist there and I just did I didn't like it. I didn't I I don't know the whole like Vegas like casino artwork thing. It's very cheesy to me but and you have to learn Adobe Illustrator which I hate that program but it's very technical. It's not like Photoshop, you know. It's like real technical. So, you went to college and you had a real job. I call it a real job.

It's a real job. Before you started tattooing. Yeah. And you know, I got sick of the semi-professional graphic design thing. And so, I I quit and started doing like kind of like freelance graphic design on the side. But even that was really hard and it wasn't consistent and the money wasn't that great. So I would get these odd jobs like I worked at lids at the airport. Okay.

As a like a nighttime closing manager or something just so you could draw all day long or what? I literally just I was just drawing while at the airport and like people would come buy hat every once in a while. Okay. It was an easy ass job and I would close up and uh I don't know. But it was weird cuz like I wasn't like oh I'm going to be a tattoo artist. Yeah. I was just working that job at Lids and I worked with this girl and her cousin was a tattoo artist and she would see me like drawing all the time while I work. I was just like always sketching always.

And uh she's like, "Mom, my cousin's a tattoo artist. " And I was like, "Yeah, I don't know. Like I guess so. " I had no idea what Who was that again? That was Riz. Oh, okay. So, Riz, he was at uh Where did you start your apprentichip at? Right by UNLV at uh Oh, uh Why can't I think of it now?

Cuz it's gone now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they the shops change hands and like names like a hundred times in two years. Yeah. Maybe not that much, but but Stanky Dankies was across the street. Okay. Well, we had Diversity over there.

Diversity. That's where I got you. You started at Diversity. I started at Diversity. I was like, which was a head shop. which is a head shop. And then upstairs they had tattooing. Yeah.

And a piercer upstairs. But um I just mopped the floor and I learned how to make needles. Yeah. And uh so I had to make needles every day for him and things like that. Did you have to pay for your apprentichip or what is it kind of I paid for my apprentichip? Oh, you did? I didn't have a lot of money so I was just like giving him money every week or every month or whatever. And he had a max on it or what was it?

Uh yeah. Yeah. He he told me like I can't remember at the time what it was, but it was definitely like probably a lot of money for you. It was probably like two or three grand, four grand or something. " But I don't think he was even suited to teach, you know what I mean? At the time, I just kind of sat there and watched him did the usual stuff. Set up, tear down, make needles when he's tattooing and watch him ask questions and [ __ ] Yeah. Did you have fun by I don't know just that that newness to the world right there where you starting to like introduce yourself to clients and stuff.

Did that help you kind of come out of your shell as an artist in tattooing like No, I mean I always got yelled at and like I think it was I don't know that was like probably 2007. I don't know how old I was but yeah probably 27. No I was younger than that. I was born in 79. Oh, I'm not good at math. I'm not any good at math either. That's why I'm an artist. [ __ ] So, you started there and then I don't know.

How was that experience like in that you're right across from the college there? Yeah. Sketchy kind of neighborhood. It was sketchy. I think it's still sketchy down there, but Yeah. But, you know, it was definitely college students and you know, people coming in to get pierced and it wasn't a whole lot of tattooing going on for some reason. It was a head shot. It was a head shot cuz you walk in and there's no You don't know that there's tattooing there.

I remember going in there when I was like 17 and like sneaking up there to watch a friend get a tattoo with a fake ID and [ __ ] And that place sold like meth pipes like terrible [ __ ] So you get these terrible ass people coming in to buy cheap ass like to smoke. They had a factory supposedly where they just that's all they did was just blow crack pipes and [ __ ] So that's the environment I I learned in. Hi. Yes. You have to meet some some golden humans there. So kind to people. Oh, I I love your artwork. I want to learn how to do this.

It wasn't like that at all. I just was like, um, maybe I'll try this out and see if I like it. Yeah. And I I didn't at first. Really? Yeah. Like I think after a while he he kind of fired me because I've I think I [ __ ] up one of his things to make the uh the needles, you know? I was sitting there like the jigs.

I I probably messed something up and he's like he's like, "Oh, you I'm not going to teach you anymore. " kind of thing. I don't know. Is a wild dude. I don't know. Really? I think now he's like a transvestite call girl or something. I don't know.

I've heard some weird stories about him. That's great. I wish him the best. Yeah, totally. I don't know where he is. Tattooing. Yeah, I've heard stories about him though. So, there's a handful of great local tattooers that went down a definitely not healthy path.

I've seen her like wandering the streets and [ __ ] which is too bad. Stabbed and all kinds of weird stories. So, how did you like reinstate your apprentichip or did you go somewhere else? So, I stopped doing that and I went back to like just uh graphic design on the side and I opened a gallery downtown uh for First Fridays. Yeah. Cuz you you throughout all this you've constantly been creating art, right? Digital and Oh, my entire life. Painting and oil painting.

I've seen you do everything. I feel like I'm just getting jobs and when I have a job I'm just like thinking about how to get out of that job and do my own thing like everything for through my whole life. So yeah, that's pretty much how it's been. And then um I think in like 2008 I was doing First Friday. I was like heavily involved with First Friday and I opened that gallery and I met Nick Bones. Oh, okay. I was actually I was actually for a very short time I I restarted my apprenticeship at this other tattoo shop. It was like a street shop off of like Flamingo in the 95.

The dude's name was Mike. Yeah. I can't remember the name of Mike. No. No. Anyway, he was really nice and he's like, "Oh, you started an apprentichip but you didn't finish it. " because I didn't want to restart my whole apprentichip cuz I could take 8 months. That was like a break.

You took like a year break or something? Maybe like maybe a year break or less than a year break until I found somebody that was like willing to let me go through the apprenticeship again. Yeah. Without being shitty like you know wash my car and do that kind of stuff. He saw me as an artist and he was like I feel bad that you didn't finish your apprenticeship. Like let's just do the paperwork again. So, I did that and then, you know, I wasn't getting any work out of there. It was like a really shitty location and it was a street shop and I was supposed to take walk-ins and I didn't have a lot of clients or anything like that.

So, I couldn't It was like I wasn't getting anywhere. It was an impossible transition. Yeah. And so, I was unhappy again. " So, I was doing First Friday and I was having somewhat of a success, you know, making money and doing good. And then I met Nick Bones at I I was doing a group show. Yeah. And I invited him to the group show and he did a piece for the group show and he came over my house.

He had like a curly mustache and dreadlocks. Like totally w Yeah. Totally wild dude. Super nice. And that was when I first met Nick Bones. And he's like he's like so what do you what do you do like and I'm like well you know I'm I'm trying to get into tattooing and he's like well I'm a tattoo artist. Like I I work at Three Lions, which is was in the Sahara at the time or Riviera. Riviera, that's right.

They had one at Sahara and the Riviera, but yeah, he was at the Riviera. " And I'm like, "Nah, really kind of sucks. " He's like, "Well, come I'll I'll put in a good word for you. " And I mean, from the get-go, Nick Bones was like super He's awesome, super cool dude. And I liked him from the beginning. And um and that's how I feel like that was really when I I got started. Yeah. Were and did you take a full-time gig there?

I did take a full-time gig there at uh the Riviera. Yeah. Which was a I mean a wild place to tattoo is in a casino. A shitty hotel casino from the ' 70s or something. So it's leveled now, but they had the brass sculptures of all the naked girls that you could like everybody touch their butts. Their butts all the butts are all polished. The rest of the brass sculptures. So disgusting.

Like people bums peeing on it and [ __ ] So gross. So you got to meet some great people through that shot though, right? Cuz like I did. Didn't Tyson come through there? Worked there. Like um I love Tyson to death. He worked there when I was about to leave. Yeah.

So I got to I got to meet him. And there's there's a two shitty people that worked there that would like steal people's supplies or like do dumb [ __ ] Yeah, snake tattoos or whatever, that kind of thing. But um but that was a really good experience for me despite the weird shop being inside a casino. You know, there's constant traffic and getting to exercise. Yeah. You had to cuz I mean it was there was only two booths and like if you're tattooing there's nobody up front. Yeah. So if you're tattooing and the phone rings, you have to like take your gloves off, answer the phone, make an appointment, that kind of thing.

Yes. Multiple [ __ ] But, you know, no locals went in there, so I couldn't get any like big sleeve con, you know, like big jobs to where you're constantly doing like work on somebody. But I learned a lot and I learned really fast and I I got to work with artists that I liked. Yeah. Well, were talented, too. But you got to basically like sharpen your tools and get in there and like exercise the hell out of your illustration skills and do it right on the fly which I not too many people can do with these kind of well that was before like iPads and internet like people just like Yeah. You had to draw and they weren't even bringing [ __ ] off their phones too much. Yeah.

No, no, not at all. That was like Yeah. I had to draw and I I was used to that anyway cuz I was always drawing. But yeah, it was nice. " You guys had some good stories though. Like do you remember any [ __ ] up clients cuz that I don't know. I didn't have any bad experiences there other than just dealing with some of the people that worked there that wanted to like the managers there were terrible and one like would call me up and like uh because I would come into work and like my inks would be somewhere else or like half open like somebody was using it and I'm like what the [ __ ] So, I locked my box when I left and the manager called me up and bitched me out over the phone because I locked my toolbox. Toolbox.

" So, uh, that was the only bad experience. I know Nick Bones had tons of stories. He always had like terrible like people throwing up in his booth and like falling out of the chair, like passing out and that kind of thing. But yeah, I think overall I had a pretty good experience there. They had like a hackers convention that came through there. So you guys got Yeah, hackers. Like that was the good thing about that place is the it had a small like convention center or banquet hall or something. So, tons of these like really cool like billiards convention or like dards convention or like these weird like they had like these old west guns quick draw but they would shoot like wax bullets or something inside like targets.

So, those people were super cool cuz they wanted like gun tattoos and [ __ ] like that. So, it was fun doing stuff like That's one great thing about growing up tattooing in Vegas is due to the constant flow of people and these weird weird [ __ ] groups and cultures that come through for all their, you know, gatherings and trade shows or whatever you want to call them. Um, you just meet all different kinds of people and it's fun. And like in your environment, you got to do a lot of small tattoos which taught you a lot. It keeps you on your toes and then you're always doing stuff that you didn't do the day before. Like I don't know. It just keeps it fresh. Like you're and the conversations are fresh cuz you're like, "Oh [ __ ] Okay, you you're a professional gunslinger.

" It's pretty weird. So I enjoyed that big time about tattooing growing up here. But you were there for a couple years or what? I was there for a couple years and I would go to like tattoo conventions and I would see like you and um I even went to I would like hang out at your guys' first shop by the Orleans. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I just wanted to like, you know, I heard your uh Studio 21 was like a really good shop, a really good local shop and it's familyowned. " And I try to like I more buddy buddy with like your mom cuz she was a graphic designer and she was always upfront talking to everybody and stuff too. Yeah.

So, I I was just trying to get in with that and I saw your dad and you at a convention and I didn't mention anything or whatever, but I remember your sister called me out of the blue and was like, "Hey, summer's coming up. We're looking for artists. " And I actually said no at first. Really? I don't know why I said no. Panicked or something. I think I was like, "Well, I'm the where I'm at. " And I started at Three Lions and I'm like, I got a good thing going here.

Like I don't want to like just leave all of a sudden cuz I was just there for I just started there. Yeah. And and I liked the dudes that were I was working with. So Yeah. But she called me again and insisted I come in and I I was like, "Okay, I'll come in and just show my portfolio and check out the shop and Yeah. things like that. " Yep. Okay.

No [ __ ] And then Yeah. So that you were with us for 10 years. I was with you guys for 10 years and I was super comfortable and I hadn't I just I loved it. Yeah, that was that was the best experience in my life. I can tell you right now. A that's awesome. 10 years. It didn't even seem like 10 years.

Oh, it was prime time too. Like later on a lot of the guys like like Nick Bones ended up coming over and Tyson ended up coming over. So all the people that you liked ended up coming and working at the shop and we had like a such a great run there for like 10 years of just like close. We were all super [ __ ] busy. Like the busiest I've ever been busy as hell tattooing and some like no joke some of my best friends that still to this day like crazy. And I grew so fast because I was around a bunch of artists that were way better than me. Yeah. And I didn't I didn't really have that at some of the other shops.

I was kind of like on par or like I was still kind of like learning but but Studio 21 pushed me like super hard, super fast. Dude, we had such a good crew and everybody there was like their work ethics were strong which obviously showed like in their illustrations. So we were constantly like there was no moment that was like pre Tik Tok and [ __ ] too. So we're never like sitting around watching TV. Remember I had no TVs in the shop. No no TV. So we weren't tattooing. We were drawing or painting.

Yeah. It was like it was such a great golden time, you know. It was really cool. Yeah. And the energy was there. And then the pandmic hit. Yeah. And then bum bum bum.

Yeah. Shop. Yeah. Shop gets shut down and we all kind of [ __ ] our pants and then um Yeah. So then we we got everybody everything shifted like the team just had to leave or panicked, you know. And then I was in a good position. I was already doing side hustle [ __ ] I was already selling my artwork and started doing ceramics. Yeah, ceramics.

You had your own website for a really long time with all of your art available. I was doing conventions. Constantly doing trade shows outside of tattoo conventions, too. Obviously, you're doing designer. Yeah, I was doing all kinds of comic cons and whatever I can really just whatever art things I can do to sell my stuff. Yeah. You were always so good at that. And I still to this day are I mean you're currently here right now cuz you're here for Designer Con.

Um but that's kind of one thing I like to talk about is like I feel like there's just something awesome about having a little bit of a side hustle even if that's you're a tattooer and then you paint at night and sell your prints. And I just feel like it's incredibly important to diversify in case not not in case, but like when things like the pandemic hit, you were all of a sudden it was there was no like panic. You were like, "Okay, well, if I can't tattoo, then I'm just going to do this full time. I'm going to go hard like on my personal [ __ ] We were forced to, but it was a great time. " But you had already been doing um ceramics um which is why all these mugs are here. These are all rad amazing tiki mugs now that you you like you and I always like dabbled and interested in the tiki culture and stuff.

But yeah, just go to Frankie and like Yeah. collecting small trinkets, but you know, maybe not like full on into it, but then you just went full on into it. Learn how to I don't know. I just had the opportunity. I had the time. I was lucky enough to where I had money saved. Yeah. And during the pandemic, it was it was kind of lucky.

That's that's you making good decisions. It was I had money saved and I wasn't like one of those tattoo artists that like blew all their money all the time. Um but I think I just I was excited to just do my own thing and I mean it was scary at first. Yeah. But I You're forced to but I was forced to and I'm like okay I'm just going to go really hard on this and build my company up and do the big sticky thing and uh so it was it was really exciting time. It was scary and also exciting at the same time. Yeah, cuz I didn't know what I didn't know what it was. Everything was just like Yeah.

All of us were just thrown into our homes and like you know fed a bunch of negativity and stuff and and kids in the house. Yeah. Challenging. Yeah. I love what you've done with this stuff. So like tell us a little more about this. Like so what I see from an outsers's perspective is you're doing kind of disruptive but you're doing things different than what like the tiki culture has kind of been has seen in the past, right? You're using technology.

You're using all the threedimensional program. What do you call those programs? Yeah, just like 3D sculpting instead of I mean I did sculpt by hand at first. Yeah. Um cuz I wasn't super confident in my 3D sculpting skills. I was like learning at the time. I love learning like new tools and like I'm always learning new [ __ ] It's I don't know what it is. I just I like that.

I like starting all over as a noob and just I think that's how my whole life has been. Yeah. And well, just being in love with whatever you're doing is always like a a positive. And if you force yourself to constantly be working, then you'll see progression. And you've obviously seen that. So you like I don't know, go back to this like you you obviously an illustrator first and then you do you go in, you sketch these rough ideas out on paper and then bring them into the 3D programs. Yeah. Like I'll I'll sketch on the iPad or whatever and then Yeah.

Yeah. I don't do like a front, side, and back view or anything. I just do a cool sketch like a tattoo design. Yeah. And then I in my head already know it's going to be so fun to sculpt in 3D. Yeah. So, I just start doing it, you know. What are the programs you're using again?

Uh ZBrush. And you can use that on your iPad too or No, no, they do now, I think, have um stuff on the iPad. I have my workflow is on the regular computer, so I just keep doing that same thing. Yeah. your I always call your house like the mad scientist lab cuz you go over there and like the whole your monitors and everything are all set up. Super dope. 3D printer. I'm I always like like I said new tools and stuff to make my I always reinvest into my company like um I'm always looking at like 3D printers or like nice tablets and computers and things like that.

Yeah. So after you 3D sculpt them, are you 3D printing these out? Yeah. Like I'll 3D print the original like a prototype. Yeah. And then I just have to make molds from there. And I think I remember you saying like the 3D printers weren't that great back in the day. So now you can you come in, you clean them up and like fill or sand and stuff.

Yeah. I don't have to really do that now. Like now they come out pretty good. Like I don't have to really sand them down or anything much. Okay. That's it. Yeah. It's I mean it's come a long way in the past like 5 years even.

And you've literally taught yourself everything just via YouTube or whatever. Yeah, mostly YouTube. Asking friends and Yeah. Nobody really in the tiki mug making community. There's not too many people doing the 3D stuff. Yeah. No, I know. I've never seen I think you're the only one I've ever seen do it.

Even like the subject matter. I don't I don't do like traditional tiki stuff. I I respect it and I love that whole culture and stuff. It's really fun and kitschy and stuff, but um I don't want to pretend like I know about that whole culture and I don't want to try to I just do my own thing. I love like you bring a lot horror pop kind of horror pop weird oddity type of stuff. You bring in all sorts of stuff like titties. Skull titties. Skull titties.

And uh but this guy's fun. I think it's cool, man. Like it's the first time in my life where I'm not I'm trying not to like think too much about like what other people want. I just want to do my own thing and I've never been able to do that as a graphic designer or a tattoo artist or whatever else. I'm constantly thinking about what other people what can I do to sell it because I want to make people happy and this is where I'm making myself happy. So it's good wild. you're doing and you're also doing like bubblers and [ __ ] bongs, right? Bongs and stuff and that's not something that any I have never seen any tiki guy like go into that.

It's I kind of I'm like scared about the whole bong thing so I have to call it a bubble maker but it's it's the same thing. Yeah. When you say scared, like it just um Well, the first time I I got into like importing stuff from like China or like overseas, I I I just started doing that maybe like a couple years ago. Um I was getting mugs made because I was selling out of all my personal stuff. I would make like a batch of 50 and then they would sell out like really quick. All handmade, hand painted. Yeah. So my website would be like kind of empty or like it would just have one or two items and it say sold out.

So I I was talking to people trying to get stuff made overseas and I started making a I did a couple mugs like this is an import one. I didn't make that one. Oh, okay. I designed it and made them myself at first but then I remade them to be imported from China. Yeah. Like your logo on the bottom and everything. But I after I did this one, I did a I did a bong and the company that the middleman that helped me get the order through to the factories, like on the paperwork, they listed it as bong and it came to Vegas and they just destroyed all of them because on the boxes and everything, it said like bong on it and that's illegal. " It was a shitty thing.

So hard lesson learned. So now I call them vases or bubble makers. Yeah. Yeah. So, I got to kind of go around it a little. Wonder if I Yeah, probably not good to say that, but No, it's all right. It's all right. Uh, so other than that, like how how's the tiki kind of community or they seem to embrace you?

Great. Right. Yeah, I think I think because I am so different than the I think that's how it's been with my art. Anytime I do like a Comic Con or like a convention even, I go I like kind of get into these little niche markets, but I'm like to my artwork's different. It's a different twist on things. And I think people like that cuz it's refreshing. They're not seeing the same [ __ ] all the time. Yeah.

The same tiki character carving, which I still I mean that's fine if that's what you want to do and you're into that whole classic traditional thing. But I'm coming in and I'm trying to like do my own thing. Everybody seems to be cool though. Good. I feel weird like calling it a tiki mug, but that's just the style of the mug and I'm not trying to I don't know culturally appropriate the whole thing. Like I'm not trying to take that whole culture and twist it in in a way. But I'm really happy that the the people do like my stuff and they buy it. And I see all like the biggest tiki guys in the industry that I'm aware of like on your Instagram and you know I've seen your following grow.

Great. People are super nice. So there's nobody that's shitty in that whole culture thing. I'm sure they are. But so far I I I've been accepted and everybody's super stoked on my stuff. Awesome. It's cool, man. I'm stoked about it for you.

This is a really fun project and I I don't know. Do you do you does this any of this help you sell tattoos or do you get back into like I think so. You've been doing guest spots and stuff, right? Every once in a while, but I think Yeah. I don't know. I want a tattoo, but I want to tattoo like my own stuff. So, I I feel like people kind of like they'll hit once they know you tattoo artist, it all comes out like, "Oh, I got this shitty tattoo. " That kind of thing.

Like, are you doing any flash sheets, right? you're kind of I did a while ago, but I I mean I have a lot of designs just on paper on my iPad designed, but I I haven't really I haven't really like gotten back into tattooing in a little bit. So, I want to I do miss it. I miss it if if it's at the right place and the right design. Yeah. So, that kind of thing. It's like I would treat it as a commission. " Like I would like it as a tattoo.

Then I'd be stoked. " Yeah. But it have to be like a little banger or something. I'm not going to sit here and do a full sleeve on anybody or like It's a lot of commitment these days. Yeah. With how much you've got going on. You got a lot of projects. So, you got like a soft good line now kind of, right?

Like some shirts and like umbrellas or all different kinds of tiki drinks. I've been trying all these different products now that I'm doing like import stuff. The mugs are where it's at. I feel like I'm going to focus more on that. But at first I was trying all these different products and some stuff I have like a whole bunch of boxes in my garage that are just sitting there cuz nobody's buying it like the parasols and things like that. But it was fun designing them, dude. Just doing like box designs now is so [ __ ] fun, I'm like way into it now. So, all my products are going to have all my newer products, my import mugs and things have a box that I design and it has like a, you know, a tiki drink recipe on it.

And um so I'm learning a lot. Yeah, I'm learning what works and what doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I'm learning those same lessons and sometimes they can be expensive, but Yeah. I mean, it's money. This is all my own money that I'm putting into this.

And then it, you know, if it doesn't sell, it definitely bums me out. " Like people want the mugs more than this parasol or this we give that stuff away for free at shows or use it for like promo items and stuff. You just got to learn how to be creative with the dead [ __ ] you know? Yeah. Cuz if they buy like a bunch of stuff like a couple mugs and like I have like cool cocktail glasses with my art on it. Yeah. And then I'll just throw in like one of those products that's not selling cuz I'm just like here you go here's a free and people get stoked on that stuff you know. So No, it's awesome.

Yeah. So, you've been doing commissions too for other tiki bars like and now sculpting for tiki bars across the country or Yeah, in New York. I've probably done maybe five or six so far. That's cool. But I'm still doing I just did one for a company called Dynasty and they're more of a import. They just have a website. Um, but it was it's fun doing those commissions. I love sculpting.

So, just to be able to sculpt and not have to deal with the manufacturing of it. Yeah. Yeah. You're just getting to producing it. That's it. I'm like I'm just getting paid to sculpt it and I can sculpt stuff pretty fast. So, it's it's fun for me. Yeah.

Yeah, that's fun. You got any advice for like tattooers that maybe are hesitant on on side hustles? You know, like I don't Man, you know, I don't feel Oh, I wouldn't be hesitant on side side hustling is like you got your job like your day job as a tattoo artist. Like why not spend a a little extra time and just put a website together and and have like what's your passion? You want to make [ __ ] blankets or like sewing or whatever you want to do. Incorporate more of your tattoo styles into it, you know? Uh, I'm a huge advocate for promoting yourself as an artist and yeah, and not just depending on Instagram as the only platform, you know, you got to like diversify and I mean, you're a local artist and yet you're you're getting clients and stuff like that, but there's like a whole other world out there on the internet of people just like getting high at night buying dumb [ __ ] on the internet.

Like, you could totally break into that market, no problem, man. You know what I mean? Everything's so niche now, too. So, you just figure it out, like find your little space. And I feel like there's always someone willing to buy your [ __ ] It's like ingrained into me. I don't know how to give people advice because it just comes second nature to me. I'm like always doing extra stuff, you know? I don't know.

It's just Yeah. It's fun to me. I love I'm obsessed with just doing I work seven days a week. I know you do. I've watched you. Yeah. That's That's what I do. Yeah.

I would I would definitely like to see you do a little tattooing if you ever want to come back and do a little guest spot or something or and I you know lately I've been wanting to do is some little collabs too. So like if you could find like an you know we work on an illustration together or something like that that way I'll give me tattooing again too cuz I'm not tattooing as much right now and I'm missing it. But I'm the same way. I I really just I don't have enough time to like get in there and take on these full sleeves and stuff anymore. I used to or other, you know, fix other people's work or Yeah, that if I could do like a softball size tattoo and it's done in, you know, two hours and I'm good. That would be awesome. So, we'll have to line something up like that.

I would love that. But, and if anybody wants to see um Maverick Supply Co. have a tiki mug, let us know in the comments below because we we really want to make one. And if you guys have any ideas, we got some ideas for some penguins. Some party and penguin party penguins tiki mug. That'd be amazing. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there.

So, what do you got going on this weekend? You're going to be working the designer convention, which will be long gone by the time this episode comes out. But yeah, I'm here. First year in Vegas, right? First year in Vegas. I've been doing the show since maybe like six years or maybe more than that. But, uh, it was in California. Yeah.

Yeah. And then like right when I move, it comes to Vegas. It's [ __ ] hilarious. But I I was like all excited that it was coming here and then I just decided to get out of Vegas. There's there's a lot of tattooers, a lot of other tattooers out right in this that come do this. I know like Tom Hobbs. Yeah, Hobbs and um Honky Kong. Adam, they're not coming out this year, but Honky Kong's a great side hustle dude, man.

Yeah, I I love that guy. If I can sit down and talk with him one day, too. Like he's somebody that has got such a unique style stuck to his guns and talk about side hustles. Like the dude just produces and produces and produces. He's making now all the jumpsuits and jackets shirts. Dude, he's he's like hands down one of my favorite illustrators. Like Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

But yeah, it's nice seeing people that I know there or that even that I just follow on Instagram or something. And I can go like I I I really feel like Designer Con is like an artist's uh convention, like an art nerd show. Like I love to go there and nerd out on every little artist and their products that they're making. Yeah. So cool. How they represent themselves in the booths and all that [ __ ] It's not easy, dude. And it takes a lot of work. They've got to first of all, you know, take off of their whatever their gig they're doing and load all their [ __ ] up, drive across the country, set all that stuff up, set up your merch services, and and then stand there and talk to people.

You can't be lazy. You can't just sit there and [ __ ] be on your phone. Like, no. I don't have Yeah. I like I like the whole experience of like people coming and you know either a people are lining up because they follow you and they're like stoked to get this product from you and meet you and then people that don't know you and you're getting your your [ __ ] out there and and people like walk by your booth and like stop all of a sudden you're like oh [ __ ] what's this? Have you seen tattooing like live tattooing come into any of those other type of shows? I mean, I feel like I've met a few people that are say they're trying to not just do a tattoo convention. They're kind of trying to go do these other types of conventions and then tattoo there.

Yeah. There's like expose themselves to like their niche or their, you know, the people that they want to talk to. And I haven't seen too much of it. Like the Oddities and Curiosity show, I think, has a little tattoo thing that they do. Viva Las Vegas. Yeah. They've always had like a tattoo room. Yep.

Yeah. So those kinds of conventions I I can see it happening and being accepted. I don't know kind of I like to see that stuff. I I I think it should be involved part of the experience. If anything, it shakes it up for their trade shows, too. Oh, for sure. And people would line up for that [ __ ] if they I don't know what kind of health crap you got to go through to get the licensing to do at a show, but it's a good idea. Yeah.

Well, [ __ ] What else you got going on? You've been just working your butt off and Yeah. I don't I don't really have any I'm just taking in one day at a time and uh I'm just going to keep doing mugs until I get sick of that and then do like something else. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to build my brand. Yeah. Um I'm trying to think of myself like as a brand instead of like I'm an artist Mike Bigs.

So um I'm not really sure if the Bigs Tiki thing if it's going to stay Bigs Tiki, but that will be one branch of my brand. But I might open up a whole another brand and just do I don't know. I don't even know what's like endless. All my ideas are like Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's a lot more to go that you can do in the tiki world. That's damn sure.

Yeah. I like the whole ceramic. I like the ceramic mugs and I like the doing the bongs. I'm hoping the bongs really take off and I can kind of do more um stuff like that cuz I think drinking and smoking is go hand in hand. You know what I mean? Like some some tiki people like to smoke. Yeah, that's true. I mean, and and maybe they just don't have the products out there for them to get into that.

So, that's where I'm coming in. I'm like, have you hit any of those trade shows or like any of like the smoke? I think I watch smoking ones, but the but I show my stuff at the tiki ones and and it's pretty accepted. " Like, I'm into that. They're looking around like this one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So, I'm hoping to branch out u not just the drinking line stuff, like the at home bar line stuff, but I'm going to do like more smoking stuff, too. You're a big smoker. Always been. Yeah. I like it. You don't You don't drink too much though, right? You just have occasional tinky drink every once in a while. Yeah.

I'll have like a mocktail every once in a while. Yeah. I'm not really into the drinking. I hate the way it makes you feel. Especially the next day. Yeah. Yeah. The next day.

I'm just not I have like a terrible stomach too for that kind of stuff. I think we've made fun of your your guts for your whole life. It's true. And it only gets worse, man, as you get older. Like the whole drinking thing cuz I used to, you know, college and stuff. You I think I went way too hard in college and high school and like partying and then I think just now I'm cool with just not drinking at all. Yeah. Smoke and and build your brand.

You just got to have the you got to at least create the mocktails so you're you're you're feeling it and you're living it. Totally. It is weird that I make mugs and I don't drink alcohol much, but that's okay. And you put some seltzer water in there and some fresh fruit and all sorts of Nobody will know. Yeah. Well, [ __ ] man. I think that's about it. We want to keep it short and sweet, man.

I really appreciate you taking the time to come out and I'm looking forward to seeing some more tattooing out of you. Hopefully, we can do some stuff together. Um, and then we'll work on um hopefully getting a mug made by you one day. That's my goal. Save your money. Yeah, exactly. So, where do we find you guys? You Well, I say you guys, but you and your wife are your wife is an phenomenal artist, too.

She's an awesome artist. Um, we just right now I just do everything on the website. com. Um, that's my main company is Big Studio because I kind of want to branch out and do other Yeah. keep it open. But, uh, you know, Instagram is always nice. Same thing. Big Studio.

I think that's where you would see the most updated stuff cuz I'm constantly posting things on there. So, if you want to see like what's going on in the studio, that's that's where you would go. But the website is where I'm trying to draw people to in case Instagram Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you messing with Tik Tok at all or any of the other platforms or And that's the thing is I just I hate having to be I'm a allin-one. I don't It's just me, man. Yeah, you need to get your stuff on.

It sounds weird. Tattooers hate Pinterest, but like for you, I think putting these just the pictures up like just uploading them constantly like we upload pictures of our shop and what's going on around our shop and then all those directly link back to your website and everything. So, these are things that that I'm learning right now cuz I just not I'm not good at marketing. Uh the whole business side of thing kind of sucks, but I have to do it. And I and I'm doing all this by myself. So, one day I I might have, you know, I put my kids to work when it's time to pack a bunch of orders. So, that's kind of nice to have some minions going on. But, yeah, I love helping you, too, though.

So, I always I'm, you know, I love our lunches and yeah, brainstorming ideas and stuff and working on things together. So, cool. We'll find you at Big Tiki Big Studio. Mhm. Anything else? What do you What shows are you doing this year coming up? Um do Tiki Oasis? I'm going to do Tiki Oasis in Arizona for the first time cuz I moved to Arizona.

Okay. I moved like right as they were I always did the one in San Diego. Yeah. And it bummed me out cuz I love San Diego. I love going to San Diego. And um I I was like in the middle of a move. So I was like, "Hey, uh I was wondering if I can transfer my booth prize thing over to Arizona cuz I'm moving there and they were totally cool with it. So I'm going to do Arizona and um keep doing Designer Con and the Oddities shows are all over the place.

I'm just trying to find little shows that I maybe even that I don't even belong in, but I can just break into Well, and can you stand out at stand out into it? So, uh, so yeah, that's what I have planned so far. So, you plan on doing a lot more shows, like ramping up this next year? Yeah, I'm hoping to get a new van. Yeah, I I love the van that I have, my Creeper van. But, uh, if I can get a new van, I'm going to I'm going to travel more for sure. Put a little bunk in the back of that [ __ ] Yeah, man. Do some traveling, do some shows, and promote all my stuff.

Yeah. Well, dude, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do. Thank you so much, babe. I love you with all my heart. Much respect. Yeah, man. You my best bet. So, all right guys.

Well, thank you so much for listening. I am really really in in love with what Mike does. So, if you get a moment, check him out, support him, pick up a mug for your your little mini bar at home or whatever you got. So, thank you guys. Have a great one. Peace. Bye.

I always was of the mind that like, man, I wish I could be an artist for a living. I wish I could like be paid to do my art. And I had been tattooing for 5 years and I was still having that thought. I've seen people who they color it like they would any other tattoo. They outline it, they fill it, then they throw highlight lines in on top of it and, you know, for a photograph it looks great, but for long-term healing, it it doesn't hold up. They're teaching a a drawing class and they use an AI image of a drawing class and they a bunch of kids sitting around easels. Oh. With their [ __ ] up fingers.

Yeah. All AI generated. Like if you're going to advertise a drawing class, maybe put up a sample of your artwork. Something [Music] What's happening? This is Austin Spencer here with Support Your Local Tattoer. We're here in fabulous [ __ ] Las Vegas as usual. A gorgeous day today. Uh we are with Dos Frank, the one and only me.

Does me. He is an incredibly talented illustrator, tattooer. I've known this man for a very long time. So, I'm excited to sit down and [ __ ] talk. We talk a lot, but we don't really get to do this. I just did the math real quick. That's 22 years I've known you. I met you the day Studio 21 opened at the original location.

Damn. Because I moved 2003. Yeah. I moved to town in May of 2003. Come out here for graduate school. When you guys opened, I had come out to search out an apartment and uh start getting all that prepared before I actually moved out here. Yeah. " cuz this is I was going moving into an apartment on Tro and Decater and you guys were really trop.

" You guys had a piercer at the time. He pierced my other ear. Like I met everybody there. It was it was the day you guys opened and it was just it was like the most random thing. Oh [ __ ] Damn. " You were a strong like an heavy illustrator back in the day. I mean, you went to school for lighting design. I I moved out here for graduate school.

Well, I was a lighting designer for musical theater for the better part of a decade and I was doing a graduate school program at UNLB. I won a competition back on the East Coast for lighting design when I was in my undergrad and it got the attention of the entertainment engineering track at UNLB, which was brand new at the time. And so, they offered me uh a graduate degree if I came out here and designed lights for Nevada Conservatory Theater. And so, I was doing it was a three-year graduate school program. So, I designed lights, took classes, taught classes, and by the time I was in my the end of my first semester, I met a guy named Dan Stevens. Everybody called him Dano. Oh. And we were we were bar friends, you know, like we weren't hanging out every day.

We didn't weren't going over to each other's houses, but we drank at the same place, which was a bar called the House of Bruise in the same parking lot as Pussycats Tattoo. Oh, okay. Yeah. And that was back in the day when they had the Jimmy was there and uh Ryan Downey was there. Yeah. Stellar lineup. Yeah. Yeah.

So I hung out at the bar with him and one night we got to talking and I said, "Man, I wish I'd learned how to tattoo. " And that was it. That's the easiest. Like I' i've listened to I've listened to this podcast and I've heard everybody's horror story about finding somebody to teach them and having to go through a bunch of different people and like man it's it I hate saying it but it was super I I literally fell face first into tattooing. You guys just clicked and I showed up on on that Saturday and I I apprenticed for like the next year year and a half. Yeah. What was your apprentichip like with him? I mean he was he was kind of a wild dude, right?

Like some wild stories about him. Oh yeah. Yeah. He's in the wind. I am the foggiest. I haven't heard from him in years. I tried reaching out to him a couple times. He drank the Kool-Aid, moved to Texas and like I haven't heard from him.

I don't even know if he's still tattooing. Oh well. He was, you know, single, Foot Loose, fancy free when I was doing my apprenticeship, and we had a lot of fun running around doing stupid [ __ ] But yeah, by the time I had been tattooing for eight or nine years before he he bounced. But by that time, he married, had a family, and he was and he was all about his family. Yeah. He's in the breeze. I haven't heard from him in a long time. Where was that at?

Was that on the That was on the strip. Yeah. So, yeah. The the family that owns Diversity, all the diversities also, which is like a chain of smoke shop, tattoo shops back in the day, they were real famous, but they were really clever about it because they owned all the diversities. And then they owned what looked like a small independent shop nearby. So, if you go in there and you're like, "Oh, I'm not going to the chain store. I'm going to this little mom and pop place around the corner which they also owned which were pretty wild locations. Like I remember going in there like in high school and being like what the the one that I did my apprenticeship at mostly was place called Tattoo Heaven which was directly next door to the diversity that was on the strip Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard.

Yeah. And this is at the peak of like runchiest areas in our whole entire city. Nice. That was the base of the stratosphere tower was where like Bum Fights was filmed and that was the era of Bum Fights. Yeah. Yeah. So, the characters were just insane. Like crackheads and all sorts of wild ass humans of all walks of life living in the streets and walking in and out of those tattoo shops.

Yeah, it was it was still wild west out there. Still cops didn't care. Street justice. Don't [ __ ] with the wrong guy. Look at somebody sideways. You're going to get cut. I remember sitting in front of that tattoo shop and watching a guy just walking through traffic just hitting cars with baseball bats. Just mess like [ __ ] everything up like Oh yeah.

And those are the type of people that were coming in. Like I remember buddies that had worked at those shops and they were like there would be homeless people that would like lock themselves in the bathrooms and smear [ __ ] all over the walls and just make the like the weirdest [ __ ] up. That happened during my apprentip at at Tattoo Heaven. I had to clean that up. Oh my god. It was Yeah, it was it was the wild west. Yeah. All walks of life.

Like everybody's walking in hammered and you know, you're on the Las Vegas Boulevard, too. And like if you're in that neighborhood, you got a real cheap hotel room. So you Yeah. Well, I mean that's it was right out the back door. Like there there was diversity. There was Tattoo Heaven. And on the back side of it was, you know, a rent by the hour motel. The Circle K was in the parking lot right next door.

And that place, the sun goes down, you don't make eye contact. Zombie land. Oh. Goes out of control. But the tattooers were making crazy amounts of money back then at those locations. Like stupid amounts of money, like thousands of dollars a day and not giving a [ __ ] not treating anybody with any respect. Absolutely not. Like there was some pretty wild tattoo like they still they you know the kind of tattooers have a code of like we're going to do the best job that we can but we were going to get paid along the way and that was definitely how it was.

But they were still doing solid work. There was No, you're right. There was like some seriously talented people down there like well Joey Hamilton was was working in Tattoo Heaven when I started my apprentichip. He was there just for a little while. He had a solid portfolio even way back then. I loved his stuff. Like his his some stuff I saw in the magazine. " Yeah.

Downey was in and out of those like shops in that area too around Downey. And they had uh Twig Twig came through. Super good. Actually, uh, Blanco was there. He worked at Tattoo Heaven when I was doing my apprentichip. No way. I didn't That's That's when I first met him. Really?

Okay. Yeah. So, [ __ ] Yeah. You were down there. You were learning how to tattoo. Well, I mean, you were still you were you got out of your apprentichip pretty quick. You're like a Did it last like a year or year, year and a half? Yeah.

And you kind of jumped right in. And I had to. It was well my apprentichip was going for about uh a year and then we were sitting in the front room of Tattoo Heaven and this lady comes in and like do y'all have any apprentices? Yeah. Uh I raise my hands I want you to do my tattoo cuz it'll be cheap. Okay. And it was and Dan turns to me. He's like you're So my first tattoo in tattoo heaven ever touching needle to skin was uh a cover up.

She had a teddy bear she wanted to cover with a rose and it was awful. Oh, it was so bad. So, that was that was the thing though is like Dan taught me how to be a tattooer. He didn't teach me [ __ ] about tattooing. Oh, no. No. It was like it was a lot of like uh figuring it out on my own and he would stand over me and you know, you know, yeah, you're doing that right, you're doing that wrong. But no active like here's how you fix it.

Here's how you adjust things. Here's how we grow together. Yes, it was it was definitely. But man, he taught me the right attitude, how to approach people like from from a business standpoint, he taught me how to handle myself in that environment. And that was a very dangerous environment to be in, especially where we were. Yeah. So, like I'm very grateful for the lessons that he gave me on how to carry myself in a street shop. Yeah.

Confidence and get through things that are when you're peeing in your pants, not to show it. Oh, yeah. No, that's the the first the first paid tattoo that I got when I got cut loose from my apprenticeship. Uh they sent me over to a shop on Maryland Parkway called Stanky Danky and I would spend my days there, but I would come back to tattoo heaven on the weekends because I was around really good tattooers and my learning curve just dropped right off because they stuck me in Stinky Danky 7 days a week, 9 hours a day with nobody else except for myself. So I wasn't I stopped learning. m. m. on the strip.

So, I just be around other tattooers. But the first time I got paid for a tattoo was uh in tattoo heaven. This lady comes in, she wants a the butterfly with the cat eyes in it. Oh, yeah. And she I'm all set up and I'm all fumble fingers and oh, I'm going to get money for this. " I'm like, "What? What? " Turned around and jumped right into it.

And it was like a terrifying exchange. But if I hadn't learned those lessons from Dan on how to like handle people, you know, being ridiculous in that situation and being just as equally ridiculous back, that place would have eaten me alive. So [ __ ] you go, let's go back. Did you finish school and or did you just drop out and jump right into tattooing? I did my second year of graduate school and my first year of my apprenticeship over overlapped. Yeah. So I was graduate school, part-time job. I was working the counter at the shop.

I was working. I was there. Whenever Dan was there doing that and graduate school all together at the same time, I was burnt out and I was I had to I had to make a choice. Yeah. As crazy as that environment was, like what was it that like drew you to it and made you want to stick through it? Were you from like or had you been exposed to tattooing or like any other wild environments like that before you got into the culture? grew up in uh uh Richmond, Virginia, and there's a tattooer there named So I did art school in Richmond, Virginia, which is, you know, a wild town in and of itself. I mean, it was an art school, art college.

Okay. Home of Gu. I mean, like there was great music scene, excellent place to hang out. There was a tattooer there named uh Reverend Bob. Uh he works at a shop called Lucky 13 in Richmond, Virginia. Uh I try to visit him as often as I can. He was my tattooer. He did all this over here.

All this right here. He did my first like below the t-shirt tattoo. Okay. So, you'd already been getting tattooed. I've been getting like ever since I was 18. I got my first tattoo the day I turned 18. I was like, "All right, I got that done. " Yeah.

3 months later. Um, getting my second tattoo and then I'll never do it again. Okay. Two weeks later, I got my third tattoo and I Yeah. I was Yeah. Uh, I didn't do uh neck or anything until I had been tattooing for a while. Nothing's like something that couldn't been covered with a dress shirt. Yeah.

And then after I've been tattooing for a while, then I went neck. You actually did both sides. Yeah, I did both your sides of your neck like 20 [ __ ] years ago or something. I don't know. 15. 15 years. 15. Yeah.

Okay. All right. I like it. Yeah. Dang. So then, yeah, you were jumping around shops and stuff like uh No. You were with that same company, so you would actually move? Yeah.

I'm shop to shop, but it was the same owners and I'm very I don't move around a lot. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. When I find a shop that I like, I stick with it. I mean, I was did my apprentichip and then I did a year with working for Diversity Tattoo Heaven Family. And then I went right across the street to uh Starboard. Okay.

That was Cornfed Shop right there. Right across the street on Sahara Boulevard. Still the same wild neighborhood, but yeah, just just different perspective. Yeah. And there was some good tattooers that worked in there. Oh, there awesome tattoo there. There were some guys there that couldn't tattoo their way out of a wet paper bag, but there was also some guys that just absolute talent. And then the owner of Cornfed, uh, he was just absolutely the nicest guy I've ever met.

I wasn't supposed to be hired by him. I was very tired of working for the people that I was working for. And I was taking an opportunity to just, you know, go someplace else. Not that I was going that far, but I got a chance to interview with him. " Uh he's how long you've been tattooing a year. He's like I don't hire anybody who's been working for less than five. Like oh gez. And then I let me see your portfolio.

I showed it to him and he tore it to shreds. Just absolutely everything in there. This is awful. This is bad. This is bad. And then I was like well you know any opportunity to learn I might not be getting a job but at least you know I can talk to somebody who's got decades of experience. Yeah. I was like can you show me what my portfolio should look like?

actually pulls out his big giant portfolio and he starts flipping through it and I start asking questions like, "How do you do that? " And then it turned into an impromptu sketch session and like, "Oh, this is how you do that jeweled effect for that. " This stuff is like very very ethereal. It had a lot of fantasy elements to it. So, the jewels and gold and Viking women and stuff like it was great stuff. Like very bikerish. Yeah. So, we talked for like a good two hours and then he's like, "Oh, bring your stuff down.

bring a friend. No, let's see if you can do something. Yeah. And so he gave me opportunity to audition. Write a friend down. And I sure [ __ ] added in everything that we talked about in that conversation and sketched out and stuff like that. And I did a drawing and I added in those elements that we talked I wanted to show that I was willing to learn if I was just given an opportunity. And he's like, "All right, what are you doing tomorrow night?

" Yeah. Like bring come back. I want to see if you could do some black and gray. come back the next night, same friend. Okay. Did a second tattoo on him. That's cool. And he's like, "All right, hang out.

Meet the people. " Excellent. And I was with them for 5 years. Okay. I uh until uh I got an opportunity my uh it was like 2010 and I got a had a kid on the way and I was trying to like maximize the amount of money and I got an opportunity to work at the Vince Neil tattoo shop that had opened up up the street. Yeah. So TV was you like pumping out tattoo shows. Vince Neil had a shop on the strip directly across from Caesar's Palace right there front window.

Was that actually owned by him too or did they like have like a licensing agreement or something? They he didn't own it but they licensed his name and he was there. Yeah. The casino the casino it was casino run they licensed his name. So the breakdown was 48% to the artist, 48% to the shop or to the business and then uh the the extra 4%. No, it was 46. 46 46 and then 8% to to Vince for use of his name. And he'd come in there all the time.

I tattoo that guy a bunch of times. Really? Oh, yeah. He was so incredibly nice. For people don't know, Vince Neil is the lead singer of Molly Crew. Exactly. If you watch Rock of Love and watch somebody get kicked off of that show, they were in in there with him like a couple nights later. So Brett Michaels would kick him off the show and then they'd come strolling in with Vince Neil a couple nights later.

And you're right in the midst of the strip. I mean that that shop didn't open up to the strip, but it was like right there. It was on the front. There's the front door of the casino and the front door is like right there, which is a big deal. Like a few never been to the Las Vegas strip and you're sitting there like there's a lot to learn. I mean a lot of the places that are still you got to go through a mall or you got to go all the way back to the parking deck or something like that to find where they've hidden these tattoo shops. That one was just had a fishbowl right there on the Las Vegas strip. And it was it was such a good location.

Like on nights like New Year's Eve or Halloween or something, they tell us, "Oh yeah, go ahead and get on out of here. " We just close up the shop and sit there and watch the show from from the front window. We'd pull up the chairs to the front window and just watch the the parade go by. I feel like so many younger tattooers haven't been put in that position to where they had to I don't want to say turn and burn, but like really move through tattoos and with different people, different illustrations, you know, like that's a that's a challenge, dude. And that like thickened my skin a lot by working in a really really busy walk-in shop. It just kind of bums me out when I hear that. It's almost like everybody just like tries to go to these like private little studios now, but I feel like you really do learn so much just about yourself and how to carry yourself and protect yourself and all those things, you know?

It's definitely a learning curve and having street shop experience. It really can't be beat. I don't do a uh a lot like when it comes to working now. It's it's appointments. Yeah. Uh, I'll do the occasional walk-in when they they come in, but you know, the shop that we're at now, it's it's mostly appointment and and we'll get the occasional walk in, but you know, my day is filled with, you know, appointments. But every year I tattoo out of a shop in Stures, owned by my friend Barnaby, and me and him managing it for Jesus, I this will be when I go this summer, it'll be my 13th year going, and we've been managing it. Sturgis is the largest well-known American bike gathering in in the country.

I mean, it gets it gets out of control there. m. m. lying out the door tattooing. You enjoy, right? I mean, it's not something you can you daily live with, but it's just it refreshes it and makes it challenging in, you know, unique ways. a passion for for for doing the interaction like we used to like meeting characters. I mean, you're up there meeting Oh, yeah.

I've sent you a few pictures. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is it's just cool and I like that. It's fun that you get to go up there and you have that experience and then kind of calm back down and go back to your regular nice grind. But, and I feel like there's a lot of value that comes from that.

And it's cool that you do that every year. And I really enjoy that. And you make a full-on road trip out of it. You're camping up there. Yeah. Like I don't know. Tell tell us a little bit more about that. Like Oh, it's uh I have uh a couple really good friends that they live in Florida, but they own a house in Sturgis.

And the shop that I work at is the longest running continuously operating shop in Sturgis. It's uh called the American Tattoo Society, which of course the acronym works out to try to avoid saying that as much as possible. It's so cheesy. It's awesome. It really is. It's it's it's coming back around to being awesome, but every now and then I look at that sign that we have out front there like tats. Jesus Christ. You're going to embrace it.

I have I have I have fully embraced. Yeah. It's been It opened in 79. It was run by a guy named Buzz. And Buzz passed away the year before I started. So, I never got to meet the guy, but that guy's legend hangs over top of that shop. He is constantly mentioned. You get old-timers rolling through the shops.

Is Buzz here? Oh, man. He hasn't been here 13 years. It's like, oh, all right. Hobble on back out the door. Is the shop open all year? No. Okay.

Yeah. Like most of that time badass popup. Yeah. It was Well, it's been in the same location. When they started it, it was literally like in a parking lot. It was like a tent, a pop-up tent and a parking lot. And then they made a deal with a guy named Glenn who owned a like a like a flea market space there. And so they moved it inside and it was still like out and then we're we're talking like in the in the mid 80s here.

It was still like a flea market kind of thing. It was just kind of roped off and like like a convention. Yeah. Any unairconditioned convention and then uh they made another deal in Glenn and then they were able to put walls in and then they put air conditioning. So it was like a big draw when they got oh you come on in here in this ice cold air conditioning and get tattooed. Yeah. And then what do they use it for all year long? That building does not exist.

Like most of that town, it's shuttered. Really? It's a town of 5,000 people. Yeah. Yeah. Little tiny that turns into a town of half a million people. Good lord. And then it goes back to And as soon as it's done, the same guys that you see cosplaying as bikers for those two weeks, come back like the next week are cosplaying as rodeo guys.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the Viva Las Vegas kind of crowd times, you know? So, yeah. Like I I love that. This is kind of what I want to talk about too with you is just the the not you're not shy about getting out there. I shouldn't say exposing yourself to the public. Just getting out there sharing your art.

I love that you know like you so you go up to Sturgis once a year for like two weeks at a time. You also do like two comic cons. I do uh an art convention and a comic con. Yeah. Uh so I have a booth at New York Comic- Con uh in the fall for selling uh my artwork. Yeah. And then there's a art and design convention. It was started off as a vinyl toy show, but it's exploded into everything else called Designer Con, which uh when I started it was in Pasadena, and then they moved to Anaheim for a few years, and now they're here in Las Vegas, which is so cool.

It is my favorite show of the year. Not my big money show. It's It's not where I'm, you know, like, oh man, just I'm sold out of everything. It never has been my big money show, but it is the high school reunion of of of shows. All my friends that I've made as artists uh in graphic design and illustration and poster art, stuff that I love doing uh outside of tattooing are always there. And it's just a constant stream of your friends coming by your booth or you going by your friend's booth. Yeah. Catching up for the year and then you know go out for drinks afterwards.

Yeah. And like to kind of to clarify like you're you're here at these shows on the side not necessarily pushing tattoo art style or your tattoo style artwork at all. you're out there. You have your own whole entire catalog of collection of beautiful artwork and illustrations that are all stuff. They're all like u I don't know. Can you explain like what your style is that of illustration? A lot of it is I don't want to butcher it. Oh, no.

No. It's it's very easy to butcher. It's it's all very tongue and cheek. I love doing stuff that's ods to the things that I love. So, I mean pop movies and old movies, pop culture references. I love any opportunity to take a style like that and turn it on its ear a little bit. So, one of my most popular pieces was I wanted to do something that sounded like a 70s exploitation film, action thing. And that's the title sounds like it's an exploitation film, but it definitely isn't.

So, I did a an action movie poster for Golden Girls. Okay. Yeah, it sounded like it should be it should it sounds like it should be a 70s exploitation film. And then you know you have so you have uh Golden Girls you know explode the house is exploding and they're all there with guns and the plane landing in the background and do it as a movie poster. This actually uh I did that for a movie poster art show that we had at Studio 21 years ago and that's easily one of my most popular pieces that I've done. I like a good mashup and not necessarily in like taking two things that you won't see normally together, but taking something and doing it in a in a particular style. Uh I did a piece I call American Horrors and it's Audrey and Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors.

Yeah. But I did it in such a way that it was reminiscent of uh the Grantwood painting American Gothic. Yeah. So, which was only called American Gothic because it had a Gothic style window on the on the farmhouse behind the characters. Instead of having that there, I did uh the the eclipse of the sun and it's all symmetrical. Uh the dress that she's wearing is the same calico as the the farmer's wife in the uh thing. And instead of wearing that flowered brooch, she's wearing the same cameo that it's just like taking as many elements from from Grant Woods painting and then throwing it into this with the Little Shop of Horror characters. I love doing stuff like that.

Yeah, that's awesome. Do you have you seen like a good crossover for, you know, from people you meet at your art shows versus merging of clients, you know, like And that's what I think is so awesome and and important about us getting as tattooers and getting out there and pursuing other things and all these other that's the thing living in a transient city such as Las Vegas is everybody that you meet out there and they come through town, man. They always eventually there's always a convention, there's always uh a vacation, there's always a bachelorette party like, "Oh, I'm going to be in town. I remember you from this. " Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I like that, man. That's awesome. You keep real busy with that stuff. And that's like another thing, too, is like you're not not shy about promoting yourself like online. You you're building a website. You're real good with your social media. You're not shy with it. Like I feel like that's incredibly important.

Keep on top of it. Tattooers need to like I don't like it's crazy to me if people don't have their own like websites and stuff. And bowing to the algorithm is awful, but it's, you know, completely necessary. If you're not present, then you're not present. It is what it is. We are all [ __ ] to the algorithm, but at the same time, it pushes me to make new things and produce. And it's like having two jobs. I Yeah.

I tattoo during the day, and then I come home, make dinner for the family, put people to bed, and then, you know, I'm out in my studio until, you know, 3:00 in the morning. It's just working on whatever project I happen to be working on. or if I have uh a client that's commissioned me for something that'll be working on that or Yeah. I've got a workbench that's got at least half a dozen projects on it. Uh I do mild sculpting. Yeah, tell me about that. I've seen some real fun like three-dimensional objects. It's cool to see.

I have personally never taken any illustration and brought it to life with the, you know, 3D sculpted and printed and molded and you do some really cool stuff. The first time I did that was there's a art museum slashpop store. It's called the Mystic Museum in LA and it is one of the radest places. If you ever get a chance to get out to LA and go to the Mystic Museum, it is so cool. But they did a uh years ago they did a Twilight Zone art show and I wanted to be in it. I called him up like, "Well, I'd love to be a part. " Oh, well, we don't have any more room for paintings, but if you sculpt, uh, we'd love to have something. I was like, "Absolutely.

" I hadn't sculpted anything since high school, and even then it was, you know, awful. I had one month to figure out how to sculpt something, cast it, mold it, and then get it shipped off to them. And I ended up doing a bust of bust of Venus as if it came from the Twilight Zone episode, Eye of the Beholder. So, it was like the most beautiful woman in the world, but to us, you know, pig face, big head. Okay. Yeah, I remember that one. And uh I figured out how to sculpt it, mold it, and cast it within a month to get it there. And it turns out the one that I finished and got there on time for the show, it was bought by Kevin Pollock.

That's cool. It was the first time I ever heard of like a celebrity having one of my art pieces. Yeah, that's right. And who else you got in there? Well, in the lineup, people that own my stuff. Yeah, you know, I know you got a lot. I can't remember them off the top of my head, but I say Kevin Pollock's probably the uh the big the highest one that I am aware of. Uh, I know my stuff gets bought for gifts for Yeah, exactly.

The guy who was the creator of most of the cartoons for Disney afternoon cartoon, gummy bears and tail spin and stuff like that. uh he bought uh a painting that I did for Creature of the Black Lagoon and I had done it in like a gilded frame and I did LA Comic-Con one time and he he came by the booth a couple times and I would see him like looking at it and and he he come you can you sign this to uh to such and such. I'm like oh sure who who any in particular he was like oh he's the voice of Goofy. I'm going to his birthday party now. It's like That's cool. That's fun. Dang. Yeah.

So, what I mean, what else you got going on? You've been you're as far as your tattooing going, you you recently kind of just seem to be locked into these patch themed tattoos. Patches. I love It's wild. Like, and everybody's hitting you up for them big time. Well, like any other thing, like just like the the sculpture. Have you ever done a sculpture? Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. the guy came in and it's still easily the most popular one that I've done is the one that gets the most traction is the I did a patch of Rick from Rick and Morty. I did a patch of his head. Yeah, I remember that. That was that was the first patch I did. " Yes, I do. Yeah. [ __ ] yeah.

Not going to say no to that. I've always wanted to do one. No, you nail them and they're great. Like as far as like what we do, it's uh you can bang them out in three to five hours and sit down. you you could do two a day and charge great for them and Oh yeah, are super happy. I love doing them. Um I like doing ones that are more geared towards like cartoon characters and stuff like that. " I'm like, I sure as [ __ ] hope so.

Yeah. Yeah. And if anybody doesn't know what the patch tattoos themes are, it it literally looks like a three-dimensional sewn patch. So the textures of the threads are in there and the highlights and the low lightss and you can see that you know the wovenness of it. It's pretty rad. Yeah, it's really wild. I I get a lot of people asking me like how do you do that? I was like one stitch at a time, man.

And like there's there's there's way this I've seen people who they color it like they would any other tattoo. They outline it, they fill it, then they throw highlight lines in on top of it. And you know, for a photograph, it looks great. But for long-term healing, it it doesn't hold up because the the the highlight lines disappear. The the shadowing looks it looks like uh try to threedimension each part of the design and it doesn't hold. But if you approach it the same way that you would approach them doing regular hand embroidery, it's one stitch at a time. Yeah. And that's that's the time consuming aspect of it.

I think that's where a lot of people like I don't want to do that because that takes forever. Yeah. And there's no shorter way to do it then but if you're tenacious enough you'll get through it. Yeah. I I watched you go through some interesting like you're such a well-rounded artist. You can approach different styles. " I watch you go kind of go through like a stipple stage too where you're doing these beautiful just I I still love doing this. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, some swarl cactuses and all sorts of fun stuff. I remember the textures are crazy. That was one of the things I learned working on the strip. m. " Oh, no.

No. I do not work in Japanese. like that I'm not eating that night. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredibly important. I I mean I guess maybe I just think it's important. Maybe it's not today's standards important.

I don't know. It absolutely is. I think so. " Yeah. Well, we we were I mean, we were just taught you weren't allowed to have that attitude and approach, you know? So I just found myself really really just trying to spend a lot more time obviously in your evenings trying to learn everything that you can. When you stop learning, you stop evolving. If you stop trying things and getting outside of your comfort zone, I mean, you might as well just hanging up.

What's what's the point of doing anything if you're not getting better at it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's always room for improvement in anything that you do. even like the biggest names in tattooing, they're the biggest names in tattooing because they keep trying new things and they keep going back and doing like look looking at what they do while everybody else is singing their praises. They're looking at like I could have done that better.

Yeah. And just standing still on like, oh, I got I got American Traditional figured out. I don't need to do a damn thing else. And it it works for a while, but after a while it starts to well me personally I I know some amazing artists who that's all they do and they are excellent at it and they probably want for nothing more. Yeah. Me personally I if I see something that is really cool. I want to be able to figure out how to do it. I like the idea of also being able to just evolve with what the clients want too, you know, like because I was absolutely I mean you saw me go through a career where all of a sudden I was just doing my specific style all the time and then I just watched the clientele just switch from like illustrative color new school stuff to all of a sudden everybody wanted black and gray and I was like [ __ ] I suck at black and gray.

I hadn't been practicing my black and gray allow me to just see what I could do here. It was an intimidating moment. But I think, you know, for a lot of younger tattooers, I'm like, I keep watching them and I'm like, I don't know. Don't get so stuck in this one way. I I don't know. Like, you know, a little wellrounded. Like, speaking of the benefits of a street shop upbringing, you know, I might not be, you know, a master of one particular style, and there's always more I can learn about anything, but, you know, I can I can knock out just about just about anything that you need. super clean version of whatever the client wants.

Like the handyman version of uh of tattooing. Can you put this sink in? Yeah, I absolutely can. I can get it done. Can Can you install a shower head? Oh, yeah. I got that. Don't worry about it.

And luckily these days you can just YouTube anything. So you you can take a quick lesson. Right. One of my favorite things about you too is a constant moving and constant like you said, you're constantly learning, constantly trying new things, which keeps you in this mental positive this positive mental state to where I don't ever hear you complain. Got nothing to complain about. I know. And I love that. And like I I feel like if we surround ourselves by with people like this and then we're constantly growing together and evolving and moving forward and never thinking that [ __ ] sucks or it's somebody else's fault.

Like we're sitting around. We should just be like if your appointment no-shows, you're right on your iPad working on your next project. If you're, you know, not you specific, yeah, you specifically, but like that's like our mentality. It's like there's always something to do. It took me a little while to figure out. I always was of the mind that like, man, I wish I could be an artist for a living. I wish I could like be paid to do my art. And I had been tattooing for five years and I was still having that thought.

Yeah. Yeah. But I was looking at it like, you know, grasses. Oh, look at those guys doing those paintings. I want to be able to do those paintings. I I didn't start painting until 2012. I was two years into Vince Neil. And as as great as that shop was, it sucks your will to live.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh it I showed up to work. I sat down on the couch until the counter kid came back and handed me what piece of Cherry Creek I was going to be doing. I would do it and then I'd go back to the couch. Yeah. There was no playing around on my It was before a lot of social media stuff. So you like you were literally just a robot.

you you go out there, you do the tattoo, you come back, you sit down, and you're in stasis until that you get handed your next tattoo, which I was incredibly busy there, but towards the end of it, I was I was dying. Like, yeah, like inside the lifespan of that is is short. We do see the value in it, but the money was great. I 5 to 10 years is a lot to do. I had been there for two years. I had just had a kid. Yeah, the money that I was making there was insanely great for being able to, you know, get a house and get uh everything I needed for having a a toddler running around, but my soul was dying. And when I finally figured out why I was so I was I can't I can't say I was depressed, but I was definitely just You think that was the people that you were around or you just didn't have that mindset yet of like No, I was around pursuing whatever.

I was around some great people, but I never thought I had been so focused on being a tattooer for so long that I didn't think that there was anything outside of tattooing. Yeah. Like this is who I am. This is when uh and then I think I saw a commercial for uh Community College of Southern Nevada. And I was like, I wonder if they have any art classes. Oh yeah. Cuz I wanted to start painting, but I've always been the kind of guy that I can't start something new without just an iota of of training in it. I feel like I'm wasting like I buy all these art supplies, but I buy all the wrong stuff and I waste all these uh time and energy and money buying the stuff that I don't need.

And I just felt stupid. So, uh I was like, I'll I'll take a class. I took one semester of an oil painting class from a lady named Loretta Degrandis. Oh, cool. She taught the class for community college up in Boulder City at their like learning annex up there. Oh, no way. And it was just enough for me to be able to like Okay. Okay.

And then I set up an easel in my studio and I started painting and my paintings were terrible. Yeah. And but you had a rough idea of where to go. Yeah. I I knew what I wanted to do. And then uh my friend Juan uh he's a local artist, Juan Munz, if you see it was bunnies around town. That's that's his stuff. He said, "Your stuff's uh your stuff's all right.

" And that was the first time I did uh designer cut in Pasadena. I took my really bad paintings and my really bad illustrations and I went there and you know some people bought a couple things and I was like well that felt good. Yeah. Yeah. And it just pushed me to do a little bit more and a little bit more and I realized that I can be more than a tattooer but I I still love tattooing and I still love the the the design aspect of them. I love the social interaction even though I do less social interacting uh with my clients now than I used to. I'm a huge fan of not [ __ ] complaining and you don't complain and I like that you're always busy. You keep yourself busy and motivated.

I was just kind of wondering if you felt like that that was who you were surrounding yourself with these these days or at some point in time, you know, when you were at Vince Neil, you're around this other certain type of people. Maybe that's just all you thought you were allowed to do is just sit there, do the tattoo and not instead of filling those afternoons or those gaps with teaching yourself something or moving forward and bettering your craft because the Vince Neil they're building the link and so the Vince Neil shop had a expiration date. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when I learned and we learned about it like six months out and I think that's when I took the art class. I was like I need I need more. Okay.

So after I left Vince Neil, I went to work for the guy who taught me how to tattoo. Yeah. He had opened up a shop uh way down by the South Point. Okay. And uh I went back to work for him and I was there for another five four or five years. I wasn't as busy as I was at Vince Nale, but I had, you know, time to I my time at Vince Neil was great for tourist money, but I lost all the clientele that I had built up before because nobody wanted to come to the strip. Yeah. Nobody wanted to go there and pay the Vince Neil prices.

So, I mean, I lost all my So, I spent my time at Dan Shop, not just rebuilding my clientele and reconnecting with the the ones that I had lost over the years, but also I went there and painted like I I had I had time now. I I worked on painting, but like most other things, I got really close to quitting painting. I learned as an oil painter and I switched to acrylics because I liked being able to finish something. I would do like a lot of live events with ISI and uh by the time the event was over the painting wasn't dry and people were like well I can't take this now. So yeah. So I switched to acrylics and I wasn't liking the results I was getting out of acrylics. I was getting really discouraged and I discovered an artist named Jason Emiston who his Instagram at the time he put out uh step by steps of how he did this painting of Bella Losce is Dracula and like a whole new world opened up to me as far as like the process of painting.

Like I was always of the mind cuz the lady that taught me to to paint at the community college, she was like straight from the tube color, not a lot of mixing, love bold slashes, and I wanted to do more portrait style stuff. Yeah. And I learned a better way and it totally re-energized my my love for the painting. And as time went on, uh, I spent more and more time painting and it and yeah, it was it was just finding, uh, a way to, uh, get out in a different direction. You've switched over primarily digital nowadays, right? I did. Uh, that that actually happened. And you're all through Procreate.

Yeah. Which is awesome. Yeah. But the thing is my approach to digital painting is the same as uh my physical painting. Yeah. St. Build up on layer after layer. I bring it up.

So, the amount of time that I put in to a digital painting is just about the same as uh what I put into a physical painting. The only difference is I really like doing digital because I can work from my recliner in my studio as opposed to cashewing myself over top of a desk. Yeah. Well, what do you what else you got planned for I mean, how's your tattooing going? Where do you want to go with? Are you happy right now with what you're doing? And do you want to I'm really enjoying doing the patches. I always love doing good.

And you do other stuff obviously that's just kind of like a fun thing that seems to be getting real popular with you right now. Well, I'm I still have the same attitude about it as I did when I worked at Street Shops is anything that comes in I'll do. Yeah. There there isn't anything that I won't tackle. I've always been of the mind like when a project comes in my initial reaction to like ah I don't want to do that. But by the time I've I've set up and I've done the drawing and I've wrapped my head around it and I broke down the process in my head before I start, I'm I'm excited again. Like there's, you know, eb and flow to your attitude towards just about anything. But, you know, by the time I've I'm to the point where I'm putting needle to skin, I'm excited about what I'm about to do, which is easily the best part of the business, being excited about about what I'm doing.

It doesn't matter if it's Kelsey's infinity symbol on her riblets or if it's, you know, a big patch tattoo or if it's, you know, a name on a wrist. It's just I love the fact that I get to do this for a living. And I still amazes me that, you know, I forget that this June will be 20 years that I've been tattooing. And it still amazes me that I get to make my living as an artist. Yeah, it's fun. any like fun new tools or anything you're using like for your illustration or do you mess around with any of these like AI type programs or I don't know what do you think about any of that type of stuff and how it applies to tattooing and I hate seeing people that are advertising their art business using AI to advertise their art business. That's really wild.

Somebody was in town. I saw it being advertised on Instagram and I I can't think of their name to to call them out but cuz [ __ ] I would call them out but they're they're teaching a a drawing class and they use an AI image of a drawing class and they're a bunch of kids sitting around easels with their [ __ ] up fingers trying to trying to Yeah. all AI generated like if you're going to advertise a drawing class maybe put up a a sample of your artwork something if you have something that you want to teach be able to present it I [ __ ] it's frustrating as a tool AI is as a finished product no absolutely not I mean for some reason I thought you taught some like seminar like illustration seminars or something I have taught uh I did an acrylic painting class uh one time that was a couple weeks long.

And that was that was a lot of fun. I really love teaching. I didn't I didn't realize I loved teaching so much as uh until I get thrust in front of a bunch of people and they're like, "Oh, yeah. Well, let me let me show you uh what I've picked up enough stuff along the way that it always uh amazes me that I'm I'm nervous as as I'll get out when I get when I get in front of uh the possibility of being in front of people. But as soon as I'm in front of people, it turns out that, you know, I retain a lot of stuff that, you know, I could just back at them. And uh there's a uh a middle school here in town that has a tattoo drawing club and they're they're not doing they're not doing tattoos, but there's just kids that are in love with different styles of and it's basically just an art club.

They love drawing and styles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anything could be geared towards tattooing and I'm that's one of the things. " Our last guy moved away. Can you can you That's fine. So, I I started doing that last week. Uh and it was great.

And they're talking about different styles of uh tattooing that they like and I'm getting to know uh the kids that were there. Well, we forget that these kids grew up watching t tattooing on TV. Exactly. You know, I that's wild to me. " And there's one kid in there who uh likes uh drawing fine line cho style tattooing. " Yeah. " And another one's drawing graffiti style stuff. Oh, here's some stuff.

Actually, here's a couple local guys that you might want to look into. So, you could probably meet these guys. That's cool. Yeah, we should we should really work on putting together some fun little things like that. Even if they're free and it's just like a little afternoon of a couple hours of get people together. I don't know. I just like the idea and it gets us more comfortable and where we can confidently work through it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, doing podcasts or or doing uh seminars like that or teaching any of like I'm scared shitless going into any scenario where I have to address people, but once I ease into it and like uh I've got a bunch of really really inane things to say that I didn't realize they were just on deck. Do you have any advice for young tattooers? anybody that's like newer to this world, this this entering this social mediadriven tattoo career. I feel like tattooing is every it doesn't necessarily have like a what we knew tattooing was these days. Tattooing is essentially an open Yeah, it's it's it's a different world, man. Drawing on the iPads and I have an apprentice now and I want her to know about all of these things, but I'm not actively teaching her.

like I I wanted to know uh where the industry came from and why certain things are done the way that they are, but there's other stuff that's like technology-wise it's just fallen by the wayside and I think the time can be better spent focusing on her as an artist. Yeah, I did my time soldering needles. Yeah, but I don't think she's ever gonna have to. It might be nice just to sit down and like learn that the basics and understanding of like how the tool that we're using adapted to what it is today. Yes. Yes. I will have her solder the needles. I'm going to have to go find my jig and put it all back together.

But but as you know, showing up the day of and having her solder all the needles that I was going to use for that day and then inspecting them with a loop. Different world now. Yeah. on top of the fact that they can go to straight YouTube and learn anything and everything from a million different artists. That's pretty wild, too. And in her first couple days, I was showing her setup and breakdown and it never even occurred to me. But she's sitting there with her phone videotaping me so she can study it later and then she and instead of uh watching the video, she wrote it all out in a transcript so she could have notes. I was like, "Oh, that's really smart.

" Yeah, man. Well, dude, what else you got going on? I mean, you you're we're going to get you out of here soon, but um you've got Designer Con this year, you've got ComicCon, Sturgis. People are going to be able to catch you. You started a new Instagram that's based on just your artwork, right? Well, no, actually I had I had Doss Frank, Inc. as Dos Frank Incorporated, which is the name of my business. And then I separated my tattoos out from that cuz it was starting to look very cluttered and like my artwork and the tattoos and it didn't it didn't have like a curated feel to it.

Just felt like a jumbled mess. Do Frank Inc. Ikank. So one art and illustration driven. Yeah. Cuz you know I'm clever like that. Yeah. And you do well with your online store too.

you tell me a little bit about your process like you know you you said you wake up you get the kids to school you come to work you you're tattooing all afternoon or if you have downtime you're using your time appropriately drawing then you're going home doing a little family time jumping back in the studio and that's where you'll like pack your orders and things like that and if I've got a project coming up then I'll start working on that I handle my own prints now for the longest time I did uh print on demand or print through uh a local printer And so invested in some good equipment you have in your house, which is not real crazy expensive these days, right? To get like a really nice printer. The one that I got is about the size of a bathtub and Oh.

Oh, yeah. It's it's it's good size. You're doing big big stuff, too. Big stuff. I think the biggest poster I'm comfortable printing is like a 24 by 36. Wow. Okay. So, and I can also do my own canvases, which occasionally I do.

I still outsource to the same printer for like really big canvases. Yeah. But I'll get home. I'll It's like going to a second job except, you know, really I really love both my desk. You can hang out in your underwear. Yeah. And I do. Yeah.

I'll go I'll go home in the evening. I'll I'll if I got any orders off the website. I'll pack them up. Uh I'll get them shipped out. What's your website again? com. Dossfrank. And then [ __ ] tell us a little bit of where where Doss Frank came from.

Like I feel like you went by Frankenberry for like in your early day. I don't know what that Okay. So, how are these given to you? Gifted? When I started at Tattoo Heaven during my apprenticeship, there was a guy there who he was a jackass. Was the nicest way that I could call him a [ __ ] He was a jackass who was convinced that I look like Frankenberry from the cereal box. Oh, okay. So, he was calling me Frank and Barry all the time.

And just everybody assumed that, you know, my name was Frank because uh if he's calling me Frank and Barry, it must be my name Frank. And then uh uh there's a tattooer there, guy named uh Uncle Johnny. Everybody calling him Uncle Johnny. It's Danny Knight's brother. He just started calling me Frank. Hey Frankie. He's a old old Brooklyn guy. Hey Frankie.

Yeah. So that just reinforced everybody calling me Frank. know for the longest time it was just you know Frank or Frankenberry or just cuz I was I was apprentice so I was like no no no guys that's not that's not my name it's like [ __ ] it my name's Frank years go by and I have a there was a DJ in Las Vegas named uh the goo muk this DJ goomuk and he was this German guy and he's he's back in Germany runs a a steak house he's super rad guy but uh for a couple weeks before he was uh uh before he went back to Germany, he was coming in and getting tattooed like all the time. Just wanted to get as many projects done as he could before he skipped town. " And then and then [ __ ] everybody started calling. So instead of telling this story, every time somebody asked like, "Uh, my first name's Doss, my last name's Frank.

My parents had a great sense of humor. " It's so much easier to say that than it is to tell the whole story. But now we have this so everybody knows. Yeah, exactly. So sh we got we uh you did a little collab with us. These stickers turned out badass. This chrome eagle. These will be going out real soon here.

I want to say this month. I got to double check our sketch, but thanks again for doing that. I think that's super rad. We should definitely do a shirt out of those. Absolutely. When our skill sets get there. Yeah. But um dude, I just Yeah.

I really thank you for taking the time to come down and hang today. Like, absolutely. It's super fun to do this. Um, [ __ ] What time is it? Am I supposed to be at the shop? Yeah, you got to be work here in a minute. Uh, I don't know. Anything else you want to say to the the world of tattooing?

Oh, Jesus. Put me on the spot. Put you on the spot there. Hey. Uh, no. Just Hey, hey, you stay gold, Cody boy. Done. Cheers, my dude.

We want to find your artwork and buy your artwork. com. We want to find you on Instagram. Dashfrank Inc. or dofrank inc. Take your pick. There you go. All right, dude.

Thanks so much for coming by. I appreciate you. Bye. Love you, man. Right back at you. All right, guys. Thank you so much for listening, hanging in there, hanging out with us. Appreciate everybody's support.

Thank you so much. Peace.

I started calling it illustrative style because it wasn't quite new school. Like I didn't really do a lot of like exaggeration. I didn't do a lot of forcehortening or anything cartoony. Like I was always more like let me take this real thing and put an outline on it and color it in an interesting way. I almost quit tattooing because of how bad my back hurt. That was one of the main motivations for I got to make this tattoo studio thing or this side hustle tattoo smart thing really make it possible for me to not tattoo if I don't have to because I'm only getting older and this hurts. [Music] What's happening? This is Austin Spencer with uh support your local tattooer.

We are super excited to be a part of the Metaninoia Tattoo Gathering in 2025. We're here with Russ Abbott. Who's going to be doing a presentation seminar? You got some good experience in that. I do. Yeah. I honestly have no idea how many times I've done this. So, doing a long time.

So, I'm I'm going to lean on you this weekend because I'm doing one too with my wife, which will be fun cuz ours Yeah, ours is going to be like tag team little basic business structure and stuff. And then yours is going to be on Okay, so I forgot what yours is on. I do these workshops where it's it's not so much that I have like a slideshow and I have a plan. Okay, cool. It's I mean I have a plan, but everyone hopefully brought their iPad along. Hopefully they were all warned that iPad is Yeah. needed for this. So, there are a few steps in Procreate that I've noticed a lot of tattoo artists are missing.

So, even though they're using Procreate, they're using it like just one step beyond paper. That's where I'm at. I'm like elementary level, like I definitely lean on the guys in the shop like how how do I do this? How'd you do the tippity tap thing? You know, I'm I'm here with all the tippity tap things, but my goal is to make sure that they actually retain them, you know? So, So, I I want to demonstrate basically a process for how to think about your layers and how to think about a few of those little hidden secret gems in Procreate that are essential. And um I'll give them a custom brush set that I made that has like locked in sizes for liners. So, I'll give them something that will be really useful for creating line drawings.

A few different tools for that. I want to make sure that they understand how to think about where the line drawing, the value study, and the color study fit in the process, right? Because I like to take it all the way. Like I I want to start the tattoo with a completely rendered drawing, but I can't take a long time to do it. So, this is all about an efficient process to be ready to tattoo. That's a process, dude. Like, especially when you get busier, it's hard to find time to get all the way fully rendered, but dude, you can tell when people do it, the obviously you get a better return on your tattoo. It's like for me I died right like I I still want to leave a little room for you know creative discovery in the tattoo.

Yeah. But I also learned early on like when I first started doing digital and I was aiming for that completely rendered design because that was the reason I wanted to switch to digital. Like I felt like in the past I was doing that the best I could with like colored pencils and tracing paper and like lots of Yeah. you know horribly inefficient things. Yeah. And I couldn't always do it right. So I'd have to start the tattoo with just a line drawing and I would make mistakes, make bad choices about value relationships mostly, you know. So then I realized that figuring out just a value study, even if it was a quick scribbly value study, like figuring out where the blacks are, figuring out what's going to be empty and how you're going to arrange those in the composition was like more important to me than color.

Yeah. And so my process in Procreate is, you know, to start with a sketch, then to make a really clean outline of it. So I have my stencil and then I quickly value study using a few tricks and then I really quickly color study. Like the color study comes from the value study. So like for example, if there was like a red rose that I colored in and only gray values. Yeah. I can apply the red but keep those values intact. So I don't have to think about dark red, medium red, light red, pink, you know, all the way to white.

I just think about it in gray and then I pop that color in and I can infinitely adjust the colors of different colored components when the client's not happy with the red I chose or something like that. For the listeners that aren't like super um savvy on the terms like just say values for instance, you know, you're talking like what are the values to you and how do you express those through like the Yeah. So in in art theory we talk about hue, value, saturation. These are the three components of really color theory. The hue is which color it is, yellow, red, blue, purple. Yep. Value is how dark or light is it? So it's usually represented as a scale from black on one side all the way through all the tones of gray to white on the other side.

And then saturation or chroma is how intense or dull is the color. So any color can be described in these three ways. But when we talk about a monochromatic approach, black and gray or opaque gray um or even only blue and all the shades and tints and tones of blue, that would be a monochromatic, right? So value is the most important consideration because you don't have hue in that situation, right? So I believe and I think a lot of other people who have studied this and thought about it believe that value is more important than color. And so if we have a good value study and we we know where the darks and lights and grays are and we've thought about how key moments in the composition are going to benefit from a certain decision about dark and light from there we are very likely to have a successful tattoo even if we make [ __ ] choices about color.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. Yeah. That's wild, dude. We kind of talked about I for some reason thought I want to go all back into the history and everything that you were you were like an art school graduate. like you really nerd out about this [ __ ] dude. And I've been watching you do it for so long.

It's really fun. It's a total opposite of like kind of just how I have always just like played with things and had fun and never really got super in-depth. So when I definitely ask those things, it's because like I sometimes genuinely don't know the difference. Like you get really deep into color theory and all this stuff. It's super fun. I love it. And you found all these unique ways to express that through like your brushes and everything like that. That's it's really fun.

So that's more of what you're going to be covering, but like you said, you want them to comprehend it. For me, somebody that's like a artist that just kind of gets lost in the sauce. Like sometimes I'm just get like zone out when it starts getting super technical. How do you uh approach them or like what are the exercises or anything that you're going to kind of be going over with them to get them to retain that stuff? Well, we have a lot of time here. I think um when I've done this in the past, I did it in like an hour and a half, but I think I have two and a half hours this time. So, I'm thinking of kind of creating a little project that we can all do together. Some simple tattoo design, you know, so that it has the sketch, it has the outline, it has the value study, and it has the coloring process.

So, sometime between now and 2 days from now, I will have a better answer. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to sit down and just do it myself. Thinking about like I cuz I can demonstrate it. Um, and and I try to not demonstrate it with anything that's too overwhelming and fancy. Although I do like to pull those those designs up and let people see how far this madness can go when you when you really know how to think about layer structure and layer blending modes. You know, things like overlay and uh multiply layer blending mode, which usually when I say that to tattoo artists, they're like, "No, I don't. " But those are important, right?

Those are like a critical component of of and and they are in my opinion like basic digital art knowledge. They're just not things that our peers are using. Yeah. So for me like stuff we make for Tattoo Smart is is aiming you know people like accelerating their you know abilities digitally. Yeah. And the frustration or the difficulty in doing that is that we still have to get people to remember to like somehow know the basics. So Yeah. And dude, when you say they go you go deep, like you get I was going into your all of your threedimensional models and everything that you're building.

Like I still haven't played with that. Like I'm still old school and I'm I'm looking forward to like sitting down and hopefully obviously learning something this weekend. I'll demo that process too because people even the people typically people who have purchased model humans and they're working with those 3D models have also missed some of those little things that make all the difference in how easy it is and how useful it is. So, there's a lot of work for me to do to like educate people on how to use the things that I've made. And a lot of times I feel bad because I haven't done that work, you know, like I've been more like, "Oh, what's the next product? " So, now I'm working a lot slower. Like I just released a new a new set called the washi set and it's Yeah, I'm excited to check that out.

I was watching all your promo videos. Super fun, too. Yeah. So, that one it has a uh tutorial 30-minute tutorial video, which is not something I've ever included with any of the previous sets. So, that's cool. So, I'm really um slowing down and I'm making sure that like Yeah, that's great. That I think that is personally an awesome idea. I was digging through your Instagram last night and I like going back to the body models, those silly ass videos you made.

I don't know how you did it where the where you open the door and the body models there. I don't know. I just I'll tell you. Yeah. I was like, how did you do that? Yeah, I'm glad you such a technology not savvy human. It's um it's view and AR. So, you've got any 3D model that you pull into Procreate.

Okay. You can click a button that says view in AR. What? I didn't know that. Yeah. And so, after a few seconds of thinking, it will project that little tiny per It actually comes out really small. Yeah. It's like a full person, but it's like an inch tall on your screen.

And so, you have to get really close to it and you have to pinch zoom it bigger and get closer and pinch zoom it bigger. And eventually I got him to be like 6 feet tall. Yeah. And I'd put him on my front porch. Okay. Yeah. Right. And then so you're filming through your camera.

Um you screen record on my iPad. Okay. Okay. All right. So like I'm screen recording the view of my iPad's camera while it's seeing him in real life. Yeah. And that's how I did it. Whoa.

Okay. And then I have open the door and I pretend to talk to him, but he's not really there. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I I don't know.

It's it was just creative and like fun little thing. And thank you. One thing that I find real fascinating about you is that you seem to you kind of drive me crazy sometimes because you execute everything so well. It looks like from an outsider. So, you know, like your shop is beautiful and when it comes to like your education, it's you take a lot of time and energy and put in that and it shows and it's and you've been doing it for a very long time, too. It's like it's fun to see and watch from an outsider. Thank you. I do it mostly for me cuz Yeah.

No, you just just I just call it nerding out, right? just having fun and applying it to like tattooing and um you seem to always be like at the forefront of like technology applying to tattooing, right? I'm assuming that's like that's your thing, right? Yeah. So, if we could go all the way back and get to know Russ a little better like how did you get into tattooing or do you have any fun like interesting references in time where you were exposed to tattooing and and it lit something up inside of you or Sure. Yeah, I have two. Um, one I had a next door neighbor with a Donald Duck tattoo on his upper arm. Okay.

You know, he used to like mow his grass with his shirt off and you know that I remember that tattoo specifically cuz I would have been like seven or eight years old. Okay. But I also have my grandfather Matt Abbott had a eagle and flag that he got like right before he shipped off to be at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by the Japanese. Yeah. So like his tattoo and his story are a big part of like my connection to it. That's cool. You were obviously a little guy there like always around like high school or something where you started like really kind of Did you ever venture out and like sneak into tattoo shops and [ __ ] underage? Yeah, we would go, you know, I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, you know, so you know, kind of like shielded from whatever culture really kind of was happening.

Okay. you know, so but I was into skateboarding, you know, and I was I was attracted to that type of music and things like that. So, like when I was like 16 or 17, we thought we can go to Little Five Points and try to get an eyebrow piercing. Okay. Right. And so, like I wasn't old enough, right? And you needed your mom. So, like then I went back and brought my mother, you know, and uh she signed for me to get this eyebrow piercing.

And then I went back to my, you know, conservative town and was the first kid with a body piercing at that like moment when body piercing was like all of a sudden a thing. Like every, you know, people were getting their tongues pierced all the time and like Yeah, dude. I watch my friends do that [ __ ] in my bedroom when with like a [ __ ] safety pen. And we were doing the earrings like like we would we would like pierce each other's ears with a hold ice to it and like stick a needle through and get, you know, only a left ear, you know, you got to be safe in the '8s. Yeah. But um you know go to the skating rink for the for Friday night and then come back home and take it out before our parents saw it. You know that was like the kind of [ __ ] we did when I was like 13.

Yeah. So piercing was first, right? And then you know tattooing. I had a friend met this guy who moved up to my town from like South Florida and he had a bunch of tattoos and he had a tattoo machine. He got like a kit. Oh [ __ ] Yeah. And he was a tattoo artist. He did my first two tattoos.

Okay. And I remember um looking through the catalog. I was 18 but didn't have any money. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Or maybe maybe just about to be 18, but I didn't have any sense either. Like how do you pick a tattoo artist when you're still living at the time?

Okay. So, you're hiding that [ __ ] from your mom and dad? I didn't have to hide it. I don't think I don't remember hiding it. I don't think they really like were that kind of parent. Yeah. So, he did my first couple of tattoos and I remember seeing the I think it was Superior brand. Okay.

Um, but he also had a Spot and Rogers catalog, the one with the Flash in it. Yeah. And I remember looking through all those little thumbnails of Tiny Flash that they sold. And um, I was just like blown away by the artwork, you know, I loved the tribal stuff. I loved like Japanese looking stuff like dragons and these types of things. And so that's when I realized and I think I asked and he said that you could just send off and they would mail you one of these cataloges for free, you know? So I guess I like like write the letter, send I think I did. Yeah.

There was no internet, right? So I this would have been like 1997ish. And so I got the catalog and then when I started going to college right after that at Georgia State, I was staying in the dorms and I would just look at that catalog and draw, you know. Yeah. And it wasn't even like at first an idea of look at the other catalog that has all the starter kits in it. That just came with the book with all the pictures, you know. So, I remember kind of just like finally just getting the idea because at first I would have thought, man, I can't do this. Like my my buddy does this already, but I had like left there, you know, I had like started a new life.

I wasn't seeing him anymore and I was like, I guess I could do this, you know? So, I I had a credit card and I just bought, you know, I got Huck Spalding's tattooing a toz and I read it cover to cover and um No [ __ ] Yeah, man. Were you illustrating ever since you were a kid? I mean, I was always drawing or like where was your creative outlets like? Yeah, I was always into drawing. Um, you know, I my high school voted me like most artistic or something like that, you know? All right. Like people knew me as the like art nerd, but I wasn't really all that great at it.

You know, I feel like I learned most of what I know about art through, you know, wanting to be a better tattooer. Yeah, that's fascinating. I I always find it fascinating. Like I I interviewed a dude the other day that had never even illustrated until he saw a tattoo and was like, "Well, [ __ ] I can't play the guitar very well. " And so he got into tattooing. But that's fun, man. I see. I've been drawing ever since I was a little kid, but which doesn't make me any better than anybody, but that's for damn sure.

But so you didn't have like a lot of creative creative like influence in your home. Are you like the one art artist that kind of came out? I didn't really have I mean I guess my mom's sort of into crafting, you know, like she would do stuff like like make fake stained glass with like gels and stuff when I was a kid and stuff like she makes like she likes to make greeting cards and Yeah. like stuff like that. And then um my grandfather was a a draftsman. I have I have incredible illustrations that he did that architectural. Yeah. So yeah, I guess there's a little bit of that in my jeans, but yeah, it was more like me just kind of like I was into several things.

Like I would define myself as like an artistish, you know? I don't think I was that good back then, but like it was important to me. A musician. Like I play guitar since I was a kid. Yeah. And banjo too, right? Or something. Yeah.

So many different stringed instruments over over the years. Banjo is was a phase for a while, but these days it's mostly just ambient guitar, you know? Like I love to do like strumming, you know, playing like songs and singing. This is all stuff I do by myself. Sometimes I'll put it on Instagram. Yeah, it's cool. I like it cuz I don't know. I just always like it's always fascinating to me when artists have like all of these outlets that they can grasp.

I cannot play the guitar. I cannot do anything other than just maybe draw and do some graffiti type [ __ ] But that's cool. That's fun. So, okay. So you got into tattooing and you started tattooing in your college dorm. Yeah. Like your buddies and [ __ ] like you just [ __ ] around? Yeah.

My roommates, you know, guy from across the hall. I probably did like 10 or so and it was just another set of circumstances occurred and I ended up stopping college for um probably what would have been one semester. It's a long story. It's not that interesting. But I I moved back to live in my parents' basement at this point. I skipped my old bedroom and went to the basement. Okay. And um I remember I slept on a couch that my friend's parents had had decided to discard.

So it was like a 1970s like velour like striped orange and put green stripes. All right. Couch. That was my bed. It was also my tattoo table apparently. Yeah. Another funny thing is um like I didn't want to be dirty but like the the book itself was written like 15 or 20 years earlier than that. Yeah.

Yeah. And that was the guidance that I had, right? Like I was aware that there was a thing called an autoclave, but they also sold you a bottle of sterilizing liquid with the kit. So it was like the and the implication is that you can use this safely. And so I would like my needles were new, the tubes were stainless steel, and I would I would do my best to scrub them out. And I remember thinking like, how do I change colors? Oh, yeah. Cuz the book didn't cover it.

Oh, no. And so I thought that what I needed to do was completely disassemble the machine and rinse it out in the sink between colors. Oh wow. And at one point I was like, man, maybe I need to use some dental floss and I'll feed some dental floss through there and then I can like run the tube up and down the dental floss. And I tried that for a while. But it wasn't until I got my first tattoo from a pro in Panama City Beach on spring break. Oh, okay. Not my first tattoo, but the first time that went into a shop of age.

went into Black Hat in Panama City and um I met a guy named Vampire Brian and he did an outline of a koi on my upper arm that I have since had covered and then lasered. Yeah, it's not his fault. It's just um it was it was just the wrong tattoo. But I remember he him being like strangely helpful, you know? He wasn't he didn't like adopt the persona of like [ __ ] you kid, I'm not telling you anything. Um, and and one of the things he told me or I quickly noticed was that there was a rinse cup that you could like run your machine in the rinse cup and then you were good. Um, but like so yeah, that was a funny story, but I went back home after spring break and I ended up going to the local CD shop in in the town where I lived. Yeah.

They had started doing body piercing. Okay. So, so like the conservative suburbs now had a guy doing body piercing. And I was thinking, I wonder if that guy will let me bring my dirty tubes up here and use his autoclave. So, I went in to see if I could broker a deal to have a sterilizer. And um as soon as I told him that I tattooed, that was enough for him. He was like, "Why don't you come in here and run one on me? We'll see how you do.

" What? So, I I did. I came up there and I ran one on him. Ran one on him. Yeah, that's that's how he said it. I still remember it, you know. Yeah. So, I I ran one on him and um I'm imagining him wearing a top hat for some reason.

Weird like neck tattoo. He had he was he was cool, man. He had he was probably a like 10 or 15 years older than me. And he had like a like kind of a blondhaired mullet. Yeah. Yeah. And he was a white guy, like blonde mullet, kind of like southern accent. And he wore like a Native American like choker Oh.

thing, you know, dude layers tall. Just piercing out of the back of a CD shop like a badass. I like it. Yeah. So I I built a little I went to like Home Depot and I I bought some countertop and some 2x4s and like made a little station in the closet in the back of the CD store and started tattooing. And so I used that same little catalog of get the [ __ ] out tattooing him or customers too. No customers. We I made a sign.

I made a sign and I said now available tattoos and we hung it outside and like people just started filing in. No [ __ ] And you were like 1920 or something like that. It was like Yeah, it was 19 early 98. Okay. It was a few weeks, right? And I actually ended up calling Vampire Brian and I said like, "Hey, man. How does like the tattoo business work? cuz I got a job tattooing and I need to know how the business works cuz they were asking me and I don't know.

" So, I went to them. I said, "I'm going to buy all my supplies. " So, dude, who were the owners? Were they just like just super Let the story go long enough they eventually wisen up. But like Yeah. At first they they they were making some really really shady decisions honestly. Like I didn't really know any better but Yeah. Yeah.

No. Everybody was they should have going for it. Yeah. Yeah. Which is pretty fun especially when you look back at it. Yeah. I mean it's legally and this is the same town I still live in now who still won't allow me to open a tattoo shop. But at this point in time I don't believe we ever asked anybody's permission.

They already had a business license and so thug life. We just started doing it. But and nobody else was doing it. So they're really just like [ __ ] it. Let's just Yeah. We haven't We haven't even thought to outlaw it yet. Yeah. Yeah.

Dang. So, you became Did you come become like a legend in the neighborhood with all the youngsters? No. I tattooed a few people. Um I probably did about 15 or 20 tattoos. Okay. At that place. Yeah.

And at that point in time, I met this guy who was visiting his brother and he and his brother came in. Actually knew his brother. We worked at the uh food delivery early version of Uber Eatats. We worked there together. Yeah. We used uh CB radios and um and maps. Okay. And delivered food.

Yeah. But I worked with his brother and they came in and that guy's name is Eric Campion. Eric told me he was from New York City and he was a body piercer and he had the best tattoos I'd ever seen cuz he was from New York. Yeah. And so during that week, we hung out. We became buds. And Eric needed a ride back home. And I was like, I have a car.

He said, "Well, let's go. We'll hang out in the town I live in. It's like an hour from New York. I'll take you to the city. Yeah. You know, you'll tattoo my buds. Damn, you went straight to the Yeah. All right.

So, I went to the owners of the CD shop and I said, "Hey, I got this really cool opportunity to like learn more about tattooing and go to New York City. " Yep. [ __ ] So, I left. A week later, I came back and I remember and all those things happened like we hung out. We had incredible time. It was like one of some of my best memories in life were from that trip. And um I came back and the now available tattooing sign had been taken down and I kind of knew what was up. You know, I started to put the pieces together and then I went in and the piercer had moved into my station.

Okay. Okay. And my stuff was in a box and um they were like, "Yeah, okay. So, this is maybe not so awkward. " And that was roughly one week before I decided I needed an apprenticeship. and and I got one, you know. So, yeah. So, all of the scratcher stuff like ended.

Yeah. Yeah. And it switched over to um you know, a much more like professional kind of tattooing. Yeah. And was that was that overall pretty good experience? Was that in New York or No, no, you said you just went there to I just went to New York to get some culture. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. And then you came back. So then you got somebody to teach you how to tattoo in your hometown. Exactly. Yeah. But it's still connected to Eric, right? because I was looking in the local um creative loafing. It's like the magazine that talks about culture in Atlanta.

And there was an ad in the back that said in the flesh tattoo seeks body piercer. And I knew that Eric wanted to potentially I don't know why anyone would want to do that but he wanted to move there cuz he had family there. Yeah. So that was like my reason to go meet the people at this tattoo shop. They weren't looking for an apprentice but like I was like I know a piercer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I got the I went there. When I got there, there was one person um Billy Brown, still tattooing out in um Hawaii, but she was there that day and she wasn't tattooing. She was the only one working. She had just started the job like a month earlier. Yeah. And she was telling me about the owner. His name was Troll. Okay, cool.

Everyone had a nickname that I never got Brian Troll. Um, but she told me that, you know, Troll was cool and that he would probably maybe talk to me about an apprenticeship and I hung out and talked to her for a while and and she said he really likes Jack Daniels. Okay. I'm not yet old enough to like purchase Jack Daniels legally, but I went got a friend and we we I didn't know anything about Jack Daniels, but I bought the most expensive bottle available. Okay. you know, it was like a special label and um so when I'm went to meet Troll, I was like armed with the um the secret magic ticket in cuz he had been like at a convention when I went in the first time. So he came back and I remember him standing there wearing all purple, you know, he really loved purple and uh it was be like a purple vest to hide his two pistols.

He had he had like under under each armpit he had a gun. Okay. Yeah. And um like full harness thing. Yeah. And so like that was his vibe. So it'd be like um his vibe. Imagine like a feel like he sells cocaine too on the side.

Maybe. I didn't see that. But no, there was like a beard with like probably braided maybe with like some beads on it. I'm thinking I don't know. Yeah. Rest in peace. Troll. Troll is no longer alive.

RP died a few years back and I don't have any anything awful to say. It was it was an incredible lucky experience to have someone take me in. But he was he was cutting up flash cuz we had like a system of like the line drawings had to go into the file cabinet, right? Cuz people actually came in and picked Flash. And so like he had just come back from a convention. He bought a set of Flash and he needed someone to cut the line drawings and number them and file them. Yeah. And then he had other flash that didn't come with line drawings.

So he needed someone to trace them. Yep. Yeah. And so like that became my job. Like I had to trace all this flash cataloging and organizing artwork. Yeah. That's great. Dang.

And I had to paint things purple cuz like all over the shop there was like Well, I remember there was one unfinished booth. There were four total booths, but the shop had been open for like a year in this location. And the one that I would eventually get to tattoo in was not painted. So I had to paint all these things purple. And um That's badass. Yeah. One of the first shops I worked in, there was everything was blue neon and diamond plate floors. So when you're sitting there trying to like work on talk about color theory, but being thrown into a challenge, it's just blue neon lights on you and then blue neon reflection from the bottom.

It was like all the old school tattoo shops were like they have chain link fence in there with it. It wasn't that cool. But that Yeah. Slayer playing 24 hours a day though. Yeah. Yeah. That was the vibe. So Troll, he guided you to the light.

He was your tat lord. Yeah, he was like he he we started with what I just told you. That was like my first thing. And it felt like every job that I got to do like got taught to do was like an achievement. Oh, cool. You know, so like the next job and it seemed like he would even hold back on things that he I knew were horrible for him to do. But I think he made me work there for 2 weeks before I learned to scrub tubes, for example. Right.

Once I learned to scrub tubes, I was scrubbing a lot of tubes. Yeah. And then later I learned to make needles. So that was scrubbing tubes, making needles, tracing things, painting things purple, working third shift at a gas station, you know, and trying to do my weekly drawings because I had like 10 drawings a week that were due. Oh, cool. Not having any reference, right? Like this is crazy, you know, cuz like now I'm in the reference business big time. But like at this point in time, dude, I was looking through the [ __ ] yellow pages for little like from logos from businesses to give me ideas.

I didn't have any access to anything to give me inspiration and give me something to draw when I was sitting at the gas station all night. So, you didn't have like a great collection of books or anything like that. I guess I didn't think through it deeply, you know. I I could have just brought that flash book that I had, but [ __ ] it. I like the the sourcing images through the yellow pages right now. Yeah, it's a pretty weak way to learn tattoo design, but was there some characters in there? Was that shop like you said overall was a pretty positive experience? like did you get to work with some other unique just fun Yeah, I still keep up with um Timothy Kid.

Mhm. He was Troll's first apprentice and he ended up moving to Colorado like Boulder, Colorado just a little bit after I started. So I was with him for like 3 months and then you know we always kind of kept in touch and eventually I started doing guest spots in Boulder at the shop he worked at. We did some conventions together. He started building tattoo machines and I used to use his machines. Oh, okay. Cool. Um but yeah, he's still he's a a shop called um Live Easy.

Really really cool shop in the uh Denver area now. Okay. And um we still keep in touch. Nice. That's cool. Did you ever have to dive into like machine building or anything like that? Was Troll having you like things? I definitely had to learn the parts of a coil machine.

Wanted to learn the parts, you know. I think Machine Gun Magazine was really helpful with that back then. I don't know if you ever saw those, but yeah. I don't know. I feel like there was definitely one laying around, you know, and I looked through it. I defin I for some reason never really just gravitated towards the machine. I always thought the mach I thought they were beautiful. Um and I collected them, but like not to the level of like really nerding out on them, you know?

My machines never worked that great. Yeah, that's why I was always irritated with it. Like I was just like I just want to [ __ ] draw, you know, and like paint and and tattoo. And the machine always was pulling it out, filing my contact points or like you know the [ __ ] it was just always something and I never my mentor didn't really like give me a whole lot of information on that but we like you said we took things apart and whatever. So, well, Troll was self-taught and I think when I met him, he'd been tattooing for 6 years. So, okay. Like, I don't have a strong like tattoo lineage where there was someone who delivered that knowledge, but even still like he had managed to figure out a lot of great information that he shared with me, but I still felt like there was more I had to go out and get, you know.

So yeah, you know, I I remember um sitting with Tommy Steaggle. He used to be a a popular machine builder around our our part of uh the world and he was really nice about bringing me in and giving me lessons. Oh, cool. You know, I definitely found other like mentors with that. But you Yeah, you're not a shy dude. It sounds like you always like put yourself in the position to be around good people and and that thirst for knowledge was always a good drive, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

So, you were tattooing there for a while or like did you tattoo there and like work with Troll for years? I think it was like about a year in I became the shop manager cuz Troll Troll was um traveling and I would say he was mostly traveling down to the Benigans down the street spending a lot of time at the bar. Okay. Um he was kind of like getting to a place where he was thinking about leaving and he wanted to go travel Europe. He wanted to like backpack across Europe. And so he ended up selling the studio to another guy that I work with there that quite frankly didn't love the fact that a 19-year-old kid was his manager. Oh, no. Yeah.

You know, and so we didn't have a really good relationship. And so like so my mentor was leaving, the guy who was buying the shop openly hated me. Yeah. And so I began to think about moving and getting out. There were like three options that I knew of in Atlanta. There was Psycho Tattoo with Dino Cook. Oh wow. Oh, I didn't get Timeless Tattoo with Capsumsky and there was Sacred Heart with Tony Levas.

But those were the three, you know, big shops that, you know, would would be a level up, right? So, but I was strangely a little nervous at that point to even go ask. So, I ended up making a little bit of like a lateral move and going to a shop down the street that were we were friends with. did that for like two years and really like kind of like developed up to a point where eventually I ended up at Psycho Tattoo and um that was like my first kind maybe maybe three or four years in where I was like okay now I'm around Dino Cook and I'm around guy coming to do a guest spot you know Tom Renshaw coming to hang out you know dude you're in a great environment dude and like at that time I mean Dino Cook he was [ __ ] the magazines were where you were at if you were anybody and he was crushing it.

That's crazy. Is that shop still around? I don't even know. Yeah, he changed the name to Sinker Swim a couple years back and he's still there and he's That's awesome. He's still doing amazing color realism tattoos, mostly like underwater photography t like he does the photography and then he he tatto. Oh, that's red. Okay. So, dang.

So, the environment there was awesome and that was like just gassed you up even more and got you really Yeah. It gave me access to, you know, a higher higher I guess echelon of big and great the world of tattooing is, you know, and can be. That's fun. So, you got to meet all different kinds of people through there. And then you worked there for years or worked there about 2 years. Got restless again. I think I'm like a two years in place until I opened my own. That's pretty much the pattern.

So, I worked there for two years and then at this point I'm in Marietta, Georgia, which is like still the kind of the suburbs, you know, still thinking like Atlanta's where I need to be. And I got an opportunity to go work at a new shop that was opening up in East Atlanta and super cool building, awesome location. And we ended up, you know, just like shifting over there. Oh, cool. And I was a part of that crew. You know, that was the last place I worked before I decided to open up Ink and Dagger. Yeah, you know, that was just I think 2007, right? So from 1998ish when around the time I did my first tattoos to 2007, I worked in those shops.

Nice. When did you have like a certain style that you were kind of clinging to at the time? I mean, it was starting to be like I I did everything, right? Like I I I did lettering, I did tribal, I did so many lower back tribal Yeah. tattoos. I never got to do a Taz. like I just missed it. Just just [ __ ] missed it.

I did Japanese. I tried to do it traditional. Um I did um black and gray. I tried to do realistic portraits. I just wanted to be capable of everything. And I I felt like at that time that made a lot of sense because I was sitting at the shop hoping someone would walk in a lot of the time, you know, and so it was like I need these skills. I need to be able to say yes to almost everything. Yeah.

That's how we were all we were raised. you know, my our kind of age group that where we were learning how to tattoo was there was no such thing as niche. " Oh, yeah. Famine. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, the the style came along through I think early influences. Joe Capabeno, Jimmy Litwalk, Gunner.

Yeah. heavy illustrative like gray bold texture at some point would have been an influence. Um, you know, pretty much just watching like religiously looking at Dark Side Tattoos website when Joe was there. Yeah. Um, Eric Merrill was there, you know, just really getting inspired by that. Also, Guyen, you know, his his book Reinventing the Tattoo and the earlier books that he made before that, those earlier books were all in in Troll Shop, you know, big ass binders like Yeah, there were like I think there was like three different seminar booklets that he had. So, I was I was learning a lot of like tattoo theory through that and being inspired by those those artists that I mentioned illustrators like unique all unique illustrators, which I've always been a sucker for, like any tattooer that has their own real good touch.

I remember I was sitting at a convention one time and I was standing over Jimmy while he was working and he's talking. " And I was like, "Uh, I don't know. I think I was I was kind of being shy about doing conventions and I had only been tattooing for a little bit and I don't even know how I knew him but uh he was like well that's a shame you should be out there sharing your talent and I was like and I I don't know you know he speaks like him and Joe like speak so direct to and I was just like oh [ __ ] and then I just started doing conventions after that it was fun but he just was always one of those people that just said one little thing to me and it was a little pivotable or pivotal mo moment you know my tattoo career was cool those are good dudes like I wonder if he gets to hear this someday.

And yeah, maybe maybe it doesn't. But yeah. Yeah. I try to be that for other people, you know, like I really do. I enjoy that. I've had the the cool experience of having people come back 10 years later. Yeah. " Yeah.

That's great. That's fulfilling. you're and I I mean I guess that kind of transitions us into like when did you start feeling like you had a wanted to have a voice and teach people, you know, like you kind of you've been teaching for a long time and doing a providing a lot of cool components for tattooers to use and back to like your you I mean I remember you making a color wheel and I was like what the [ __ ] that you made your own color wheel? How does that work? That's so cool. Yeah. I feel like in the the overall story I'm skipping a few years cuz like when I was at Psycho Tattoo got this really cool clientele of these like 18 to 21 year old like hardcore kids you know okay and like they were getting the coolest [ __ ] you know like this guy got a full sleeve of like army ants fighting each other like sort of like a bug's life but my own interpretation you know so I was like getting to do stuff where like Lego blocks I'm thinking like Honey, I shrunk the kids kind of stuff, you know?

Like so Lego blocks are huge and the ants are fighting and like super creative stuff. That's right. And like each of those kids was like trying to out interesting the next one with their tattoos and like I was their guy. So like Oh, that's cool. I started getting to do some incredible stuff and um you know, not really making a lot of um money doing it, but perfectly happy to be doing it for what they would pay, you know. Yeah. Building up your portfolio and presence. Were you uh at the time were you submitting your stuff to uh magazines and [ __ ] or like No, I was too scared.

Really? Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't. But I was, you know, definitely like building the portfolio that would attract, you know, the future clients and doing doing more and more creative work and, you know, starting to find my voice, which, you know, eventually I started calling it illustrative style because it wasn't quite new school. Like I didn't really like um do a lot of like exaggeration. I didn't do a lot of forcehortening or anything cartoony like I was always more like let me take this real thing and put an outline on it and color it in an interesting way. Yeah. I feel like my process has always been kind of like that.

I need an image or a picture of what the thing looks like in real life. Yeah. And then I'm going to arrange. And that's why probably I got into digital then because I can take like pictures of things, you know, that I either take myself or found on Google or whatever and start arranging the composition. And then once I can start to see what it is, then I'll start drawing and and changing it like Photoshop like you were doing renderings and like kind of collage aspect type things. A lot of my processes for that type of work has always been about collage. So I never really like developed a great ability to draw like anatomy for example. never get whatever it like the skill that I was building was more about an efficiency and a process like getting to a point where I could start tattooing.

Were people asking you about that type of stuff or like we're seeing or like you know what was kind of the moment where you're like [ __ ] why did I start teaching? Like I remember um so they just had Cigar City Tattoo Expo in uh Eore City, Tampa, Florida a few weeks ago. They brought it back, but the very first Cigar City was happening and um I'm in Atlanta. They're in Tampa. And somehow I knew someone that was connected to them. So I just reached out and asked, "Hey, I want to do a seminar. " And they said yes. And I was like, "Fuck, I got to do a seminar now.

I got to figure out how to like what I'm going to talk about and like how is anyone even going to show up? And I've heard that you can charge like 100 bucks for these. So like how am I going to do that? So I I pulled that first seminar together and I just thought I would talk about illustrative tattooing which meant you know how I think about the process, how I think about outlines, what's black there for, you know, what colors do I use? And back then you could just do a seminar where you literally were like this is the machine I use for outlines. would you like to feel how it's running? " But those those things were a little bit like more more secret. I forgot the seminars were happening back then.

Like I remember before I even started tattooing going to the Austin, Texas I think it was the not the round up at the whatever but anyway I got into the elevator and Bob Terrell came in like super hammered and it was like 2:00 in the morning and we were like oh we were going to we my dad and I were we were thinking about taking your seminar tomorrow and he's all I wouldn't he's like such a correct character I love that dude. So uh anyway, but yeah, so I guess they were going on for a long time. And so yeah, I did a seminar that one of Dino's seminars when I was working with him. Shane O'Neal black and gray realism seminar. Um and I remember Shane's seminar like a lot of like well here's what one of my stencils looks like. It looks like a topographical map.

You know, I take the picture of the person and I put it on top of the purple jelly part of the transfer paper and I draw through it with a ballpoint pen. Okay, cool. That was some interesting knowledge, right? it was worth something at that point. And then I you could feel how his machines ran. He talked about how he makes his drop system and just you know that was the seminar and DOS was was like that. It's just a process, right? Like how do I do it?

And you know, I I'm actually planning to teach a seminar like that again very soon. But it'll be less about the equipment and less about, you know, the needles I choose and more about the overall process, right? how I think about tattoo from, you know, consultation all the way through, you know, being done with it and having, for example, like really nice video and photos that I've captured throughout the process so I can make a case study and hopefully market to the next client. So, I guess the the best answer that I could give you to your question is once I started thinking about teaching, I started thinking about what what do I know? Yeah. and what's interesting about what I know or how I do things. And then I started designing my existence around documenting those things, right?

So because I started to learn like when I want to teach something like I need examples. Yeah. And so I start collecting the examples while I'm doing my work and I start, you know, like sort of chronicling my my my process a little bit just so I would have it for that future thing that I would want to teach. And like I guess I got I felt like I got better at tattooing because I was being so thoughtful about things. So like in a way that teaching or the the stress of knowing that I would be teaching was helping me develop. That's cool. Yeah. I'm doing my first co- seminar this weekend.

So I was telling telling you how I'm honestly kind of like nervous and like oh [ __ ] Like yeah I I definitely don't want it to not make sense, you know? And we're trying, ours is like really simple and just kind of more about the basic business structure and stuff of tattooing. But it's still nerve-wracking. You know, you're getting up there and but like anything, the more you do it, the better you get and the more interest and time and energy you put into it. I'm hoping to get some advice from you this weekend, too. But yeah, I'm excited to see all your stuff. And so, you've been like kind of back to like tattooing and your presence in Atlanta and area, right? So, you're like suburbs of Atlanta.

Yeah, that's where about 30 minutes north of Atlanta. Okay. And so you've tattooed full-time there ever since you started tattooing. I obviously you've traveled the world in tattooing, but that's cool. That's that's always been home. Yeah, that's great. So yeah, as far as traveling too, I mean, have you done seminars like overseas and stuff too or? Yeah, the biggest one was the worldwide tattoo conference in Venice, Italy to about 300 people who were all wearing headphones and I was being translated into three different languages.

Wa. Okay. Yeah, that's wild. That was incredible. That was put on by Alex Depasi and uh Gabe Ripley back in uh I don't know, maybe it's been like a decade now, but yeah, you know, they you don't have that anymore, but it was it was really really cool. A couple years ago, I spoke at the Colombia National Tattoo Conference. Also being translated into Spanish. That's rad.

I still continue to get these these really cool opportunities because of, you know, and maybe you will, too, cuz people there's a really small group of people who have have, you know, kind of gotten over their imposttor syndrome and gotten on a stage. Yeah. And attempted to do this. And so, um, you know, it's it's not like the people that are putting together these educational conferences aren't asking more people that we'd all be interested to hear from. It's just they're getting really used to people saying, "I don't know, man. Like, who am I to, you know, to tell anybody what to do, you know, cuz I think that that sort of mindset is stopping a lot of people. It's a weird place to get to, you know, like it's nerve-wracking. I kind of just by doing this podcast project have learned so much.

you can't help but learn about yourself by because you're having to like edit and watch videos of yourself and the way you talk and express yourself and but then listening to tattooers or younger tattooers uh tell you like you said like a few like few nice things about you and you're like oh [ __ ] I don't know I I guess I guess I do have that knowledge you know whether you think of it or not. So, it's weird and and an interesting process to um package it and try to figure out if anybody will give a [ __ ] But yeah, but I I want to double click on that because like you said, you're doing your first seminar and in my story, I went to teach that first seminar at Cigar City. Yeah. And I think about 10 people bought a ticket and I was thrilled, you know, cuz that was as good as a great day of tattooing financially, but you know, it was a different thing that I could do.

And so I started wanting to be able to like do that at tattoo events, maybe tattoo two days and maybe also have a seminar. So yeah, you know, I did that a number of times. But the very next day after my first seminar, got two different messages. One from Gabe Ripley, who was about to have the very first Paradise Tattoo Gathering. Oh wow. Okay. With an invitation to be there. Oh [ __ ] The second one was from Derb Morrison, who had been running the Hell City Tattoo Fest for years.

I I was nervous to even reach out to Derb to see if I could maybe one day work his convention. Yeah. But now he's reaching out to me and giving me a spot to do the seminar. So like I took your one in uh in Columbus. You were at Matchm Hill. I was just looking Gunner, right? Yeah. Yeah.

That was 10 years ago. I just saw a photo of you there in the audience. Yeah, I thought that was hilarious. I think you posted it and I screen captured it and sent it to Big Mis and him and I were just sitting right next to each other cuz I was there for the tattoo fight club. We had like tried to set up and do this whole like interactive tattoo fight club thing with Derp. It was cool. Yeah. So then I just I I wasn't I don't think I was tattooing.

So I was like [ __ ] it. I'll take a seminar. You know I was I was thrilled to see you in the room. You know I don't know if I like I don't know if I knew you at the time but like when I saw you in the photo I was like holy [ __ ] Austin was there. Big niece was there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That was cool. Yeah. That was a real fun time man. It was like a really big mis and I I think he had come out from Ohio and was working at my shop at the time and then we both decided like we were going to start going to do conventions together shortly after Jimmy called me out, you know, and I was like, "All right, [ __ ] it. " And then next thing you know, I'm like in Canada working the Calgary show right next to Jimmy and Joe. And I was like, "This is so cool. It's like such a beautiful place. Like tattooing can just be so fun and in like it's cool that you've incorporated it all in traveling and everything.

Like it's it's really rad. Have you always done a lot of guest spots or anything too? Like I never not a lot. No, I did those guest spots at Boulder that I mentioned. Um a few here and there, but you know, if I if I wanted to travel now, that would be my preference, right? Like I I'm really really over tattooing at conventions. I I'm over the lighting. I'm over the, you know, not having the comfy table for for my client or the comfy chair for me.

I've become extremely sensitive about the environment that I tattoo in I need all my things. I'm not like I remember taking the lamp from a hotel room and like duct taping it to the garbage can upside down just so I could get some light cuz nobody even thought about that. I did all that. Yeah. at this point like I I still want to go to shows but I much I value conversations and you know building relationships that can maybe I can discover people that I can work with at Tattoo Smart or I can you know have a greater impact than I would just like sweating bullets trying to finish a tattoo in time you know. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you're going there to compete like some and plus what the guys are doing at the conventions nowadays is insane.

It's like three full days. Like why are how are clients like able to get tattooed for three full days? I've seen like an evolution in the tattoo conventions. Yeah. Right. And a rise in the gatherings and the you know more of these type of things, these intimate tattoo gatherings where we aren't working the whole entire time. We're actually learning and working on building relationships and educating ourselves. Yeah.

Which I think is awesome. like it is because look, I mean tattoo conventions at this point I think are for the general public and tattoo conferences, educational events or other other similar things are popping up and um like I'm going to a wellness retreat that's being organized by Dan Cuban, the machine builder. Oh, in Costa Rica. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. In I believe it's in August. Is this like the second one?

I thought, yeah, I believe he's he did one that was more like machine building class and blah blah blah. Yeah, blah blah blah. I'm sure it was great. I I But I I started to pay attention to this because a few of my um friends are are on the the roster. So Mike Chambers, uh Ryan Roy, and Ben Shaw are all joining with Dan. I apparently am joining as well. So cool. That's the that's the news.

Um, but the is it just like an invite only type thing or is it um they're going to start trying to offer it? There's only 20 spots available and um it's a pretty pretty big price tag comparable to what it would cost to go to Costa Rica and stay in a nice place and eat good food for 9 days. It's not like Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I think it's a really fair price if if that's the type of thing that you um are used to spending a few thousand dollars on. But I think the the the point is the various things will happen. But it's at a wellness retreat which al always you know is available for people to go there and spend some time um having various uh experiences. I think we're going to be doing some yoga together.

I think we're going to be eating healthy. We're going to be um fasting from some from alcohol and nicotine and coffee. This is mature tattooing. We're tattooing mature. Yeah. Yeah. This is a very very specific thing like this is like okay you know like I think the reason that it's men only is you know to in a way is almost like a fast you know I don't it wasn't explained to me that way but I kind of think it's that way like you know like there's a different like we're at a convent or very small event right now that's for not only women only but women who are moms. Yeah.

So, I think that's that this sort of like, you know, niching down of communities is um like I'm not even sure why we're here, but I I'm I love a mom. Like, she's she's here with me. But, you know, the idea with that I think is let's have a tighter bond between the people that are there. Let's have deeper conversations. Let's build relationships. Let's really like get past the surface level and you know with this group of people and you know hope to have an incredible experience into it dude you can come. I'm constantly preaching to every young tattooer like you need to be your ass needs to be in yoga. Like it's like I'm actually missing my class right now but yeah and hot yoga specifically.

It's like the best thing I've ever done. All I'm doing is trying to just straighten out my back and it's like helped me so much, dude. Like I mean that's every every tattooer, right? Yeah, you know, at this point I'm 26 years in. I almost quit tattooing because of how bad my back hurt, you know, like that was one of the main motivations for I got to make this ink this tattoo studio thing or this side hustle tattoo smart thing, you know, really make it possible for me to not tattoo if I don't have to because I'm only getting older and this hurts. I feel like we need to do some sort of like like sounds like what they're doing is kind of longevity driven, but definitely like longevity education on um for younger tattooers that get in this and things that help their eyes and the lighting and all, you know, just there's a lot of different information there that can be thrown in, you know.

So, that'd be kind of cool. Ergonomics is a whole topic. Maybe you and I will put together something. Yeah. A small dude's yoga retreat. Do you do yoga much or no? a couple times. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard for me. I I do strength training mostly. Um I don't really particularly enjoy cardio, so I just like pushing heavy things. Okay. Um I like, you know, I started taking TRT like Okay. A year and a half ago, so like I I have a uh healthy 18-year-old lucky man's level of testosterone now.

Okay. Wow. All right. Which is good. Um I can I can recommend that. I was working out before, but like once I started doing that, started actually like building muscle more reliably and like and you know, strength training was a big part of correcting the back pain, you know. Another thing that helped was I got a table that actually like lifts up to a height where I can stand. Yeah.

My whole career I was working on the hunch, you know, the I'm just like up literally just bent over. And then, ironically, I was in Denver like for um Wolf and Goat has this winter art show and I go over there and Van his table just lifts all the way up to where it's like 5 and 1/2 ft off the ground. He He's not the tallest dude, too. And I'm like, damn, dude, you're so [ __ ] lucky. Your whole entire career you're just like working right out like this. What was I thinking? I don't know. I never You weren't thinking an option that I knew of for that.

Adrian Lee's got a new um product where, you know, I I forget exactly what it is, but it I think it's designed to extend your normal massage table to make it higher. Oh, okay. I don't have that. I got it. My physical therapist actually sold me one of her extra physical therapy tables. Yeah. Then and so there's a rail that goes all the way around it and you just touch it with your foot and it goes up and down. Oh.

So, it's really smooth motor and it can hold like 400 lb or something like that. And um ever since I got that, I've been standing 90% of the time. Oh, that's awesome. And now I have a new kind of pain, which is like my knees hurt. I know, man. I don't know. I always joked around about getting some sort of like adapting one of those weird sex swings to where you just from the ceiling elevate. Yeah.

Yeah. You have the same idea. I always say sex wings. I don't know of anything else like that. Yeah, that's what everyone would be thinking. But, you know, it would just be like a system of um pulleys and like various things. Like I would actually if you think about like um Tom Cruz and like Mission Impossible where he comes down from the ceiling like why why would be in that situation hovering above the client. Yeah.

Right. That would be really awesome actually. Yeah. You just Yeah. All like all the weight and everything is just distributed evenly and dang. Yeah. Or if we could tattoo floating in water somehow. I would love that.

In space, right? Like Yeah. Weightless in space would be nice. Dang. There's a lot of new problems to solve once we start tattooing in space. Just catching your ink caps like flying around the room. For you, for someone that's always so forward thinking and the technology application to tattooing, like where are you seeing tattooing going? Are you I mean, we've been throwing around the ideas of the, you know, seeing the people with robots or lasers like I don't know.

Do you see anything weird that's coming in? And not coming for us, but like Yeah. Look, I mean, I think that machines that do the work, you know, autonomously are probably going to continue to be developed. They apparently already exist. Yeah. Like Austin, Texas, there's a guy that has these machines that he's making that's doing these like small square portraits and and they're actually using cartridge type setups, too, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

saw saw some of the press releases and all the panic going around, but I have always wanted to experience what would happen in the future, right? Like I've enjoyed the fact that I was born when I was born. Yeah. And I've gotten to experience so many of the major shifts, you know, from not having the internet. Yeah. From a beeper to what our phones do now. Like I had a beeper. Like I'm I'm loving this [ __ ] you know?

you know, of course I want to be able to keep making a living as a tattooer and a tattoo studio owner. And so I I don't love, you know, thinking about the I guess the doomsday scenario where it's like the Starship Troopers Yeah. version of tattooing where they, you know, all the cadets like went into the booth and they came out with new tattoos. Like that's happened in a few movies. Um that seems bad for for us. But I but then I also know like there's always a place for or an appreciation for the people who do things the old way a human experience. Before that there can be a huge like disruption where a bunch of people who do things the old way that are refusing to adapt end up having no choice but to die in this not die literally but like to maybe like not be able to make a living doing the thing they're doing.

So, one example that I can think of is um sign painting. Yeah. Right. Like I enjoy supporting sign painters and and bring people from other places to come into Incander and do this because I think it's [ __ ] awesome that there's this like skill, you know, that that people develop to the level that it was. But in a lot of ways, you know, there was this giant workforce of sign painters and they were making show cards and they were making billboards, billboards and real estate for sale signs and all kinds of boring [ __ ] that none of them particularly enjoyed doing. " I was kind of sick of painting these stupid signs anyway. I'm just going to buy this machine and let it do it. " And they complained about it and they didn't stick with like adapt and ultimately they are not in that business anymore.

Right. So a disruption will absolutely occur and is occurring. Yeah. In so many ways in tattooing. And then there's like always going to be people who are like, "Fuck this. " And then there's going to be other people who are like going to educate myself about this. I'm going to see what it is. I'm going to explore.

I'm going to understand it at least and decide if it's useful for me or not. And I'm going to make an informed decision. And then there's going to be the younger crowd who are just out automatically comfortable with it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Those cycles continue. So I mean what is my answer?

Uh it will continue changing. People like me will continue wondering what its usefulness is and you know exploring it. People will also complain about it and we'll try to stop people from exploring it. We'll try to shake them away from doing it. We watch the same things happen with so many different cultures and yeah it's interesting. I don't know why I'm like convinced that there's going to be some sort of machine that like the laser can change the pigment of your skin. Like I feel like we'll have like some sort of weird like digital like we'll see what we think tattooing is now it it won't be what we we know it is now. I'm sorry I'm stumbling over my words but like in my head I feel like I see like there'll be like especially like melanated skin like being able to like laser in cool patterns or some [ __ ] I don't know.

Or what if you can laser in a portrait and it bleaches your skin? That'd be wild. Well, yeah. It seems like you could Yeah, I think I think it's already possible to bleach your skin. Yeah. Right. And make it lighter. I think that's popular in some countries like Korea for example.

I think they are into that. So like I've often wondered like well can you selectively bleach a specific area and then like once it's lighter can you make colors look brighter in that skin? Is that a thing? I haven't wondered about it enough to try it. the um but yeah like technology that I've seen seems to revolve around the idea of medical tattooing. So when there's something that pops up where you're like you know you see it press release goes out you know someone's trying to raise money you know some scientist somewhere is trying to apply some technology to tattoo but they already recognize that tattoo in the normal sense isn't a big enough market and isn't interesting necessarily to investors. So if they need to raise money to try to fund their their big thing, they tend to go like towards the medical use I've noticed.

And so it'll be like we are developing a tattoo that will change colors when your blood sugar is too high. You know, I don't remember the exact use case, but they have already, you know, there's patents for this [ __ ] and they already put out press releases. So if you if you Google like medical tattoo you know you'll you'll enter into a whole wormhole of stuff but like so that will happen or people are trying to bring that into existence and then these like encapsulated particles that of like there's been a few attempts and patents around that right like so that's wild we can instead of a normal tattoo pigment if we can encapsulate a particle of some dye in something that will dissipate as soon as we hit it with a certain type of laser. We can laser tattoos out in one session.

Okay. Right. And so, of course, the the tattoo community says, um, not interested in that. You shouldn't get tattoos if you don't want to keep them for life. Yeah. Yeah. But then clients or potential clients hear it and they go, maybe that would solve the problem of why I haven't gotten a tattoo. Yeah.

Because of the permanence. And so there's like this possible market and then there's these people who are like I don't want to deliver that service right over here there's like a bunch of press and publicity and money and investment over here there's a bunch of people saying [ __ ] you I'm not doing it and those companies they have like a hard time like crossing that that bridge. Yeah. I guess the scary thing is that like if there's really a demand like you know someone will pop up to you know deliver it. It'll just be like Another thing it'll be like um microbladers learning to do tiny tattoos, right? Yep. Right. And why are they doing that?

Because there were a whole bunch of people in tattoo shops who were saying, "No, I don't want to do that work. " But there was a bunch of people who were not nice to them when they walked in or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of did it to ourselves. Not us, you know, but like Yeah. Like it's simple economics, right? If there's like if there's a market that desires a product or service, someone's going to jump on it.

You know, someone or some entity is going to be thinking about how can I, you know, rise to meet that demand. [ __ ] Well, I think we're good, dude. I don't know. What do you think? I don't want to get too doomsday, but yeah. Like, I think uh I think tattooing is is at an exciting place. I think um technology is at an exciting place. Uh, we haven't said the the, you know, we haven't talked about AI yet.

I'm happy to. I use AI in my business quite a bit. You know, like I get a lot out of AI tools. I have experimented with generative AI image stuff. I think it's so fascinating. I think it's fascinating and it's it's it's really interesting. And I also understand the um the ethical, you know, problem that artists have with it. And so I've kind of like stayed on the side of like I'm interested and I'm going to explore it cuz I don't like to, you know, not know what's going on with something, but I haven't like started, you know, like bring it into my tattoo process really, you know, and I I haven't started using it to make tattoo smart stuff.

Like we still go out and like hire artists. And I think that's like that's me sort of like saying, "Okay, this is like I think where I'm going to stay stuck now, you know? I'm gonna stay because I I believe in compensating artist. Yeah. And I believe in what artists can produce and you know quite frankly like if there is anything huge that's disrupting the business of tattoo smart it's AI you know like it's like here I am like in this like mindset of of like okay we should adapt or die and then I'm like I don't know about this one. So that's where I kind of sit right now but I'm you know I'm not strongly against but I'm also not like you know, running to switch over to the world where I think it's just nice to be curious and and at least like roundaboutly knowledgeable about what's going on.

But damn, that [ __ ] is changing so fast. Like it is. I follow a lot of like just educator AI educators and those guys like it's like every every month like it's it's insane. I do too. Yeah. I just I'm in the algorithm and YouTube for AI. So like I I see all these updates and I think about how can I apply this or how would I you have to you know especially with what you're doing like it's cool. I don't really have any thing that I'm aware of right now of what I can apply it to other than just like helping you like write content and stuff like that and help us like build emails and text kind of stuff.

copyrightiting that I mean there's an industry right there that's massively disrupted right now you know because you know humans used to get paid to think about words and yeah companies still will do that but I think what they'll end up doing is hiring copywriters who can sound more human you know cuz it's really easy to spot AI copy now yeah if you're not good at prompting it you know like you can tell I know when when a tattoo brand is using it because I've I know I know like it's Trust me, we can tell. Always like on our in our team, I'm like, "These tools are great. " Like, give it your flaws, give it your character and stuff. So, perfect example of the maybe if there is a more ethical way developing of how to use AI and have and still feel human in that process cuz I think that's like the key thing that that's I always hit on when I think about what's going to happen in the future.

The version I like the best is the one where the AI or the tool, whatever it happens to be, helps to do the work that frees your your human creativity and time up to do some more interesting work. Because I think I naturally like the more digital design tricks that I've learned, the more that I've had energy and effort to put into what I wanted to create. I never stopped wanting to create because I'm a human. Yeah. Right. And so I guess there's a general level up that happens because of whatever the tool is and then there's like what am I going to do with the opportunity created how am I still going to compete against other humans who are also using the same tools. Yeah. And and then it just you know that's the utopian version.

Yeah. You know for anyone who's like stuck in the dystopian version right now try to think of it that way. I randomly keep wanting to play with the character generators type thing. I don't know. I don't know how you describe that, but like basically you can like film yourself doing talking head video and then you can build like I I wanted to build like this character that was a penguin like is our mascot for our company, you know, and then have him talk. I just want to play with it and see what it comes up without. Yeah, I watched a video about that the other day. It looked like you have to do some like basic rigging like you've got to like connect the eyes to, you know, like if you build your own character, right?

Like you have to like go in and tell it, okay, this is a mouth. And then you have to give it all of the different mouths for all of the vowel sounds. Oh wow. So you program all those different shapes of mouths in that they give you like a template for, right? So you just draw those mouths with your penguin. Wa. And then there's the brows and the eyes and you basically just like fill it in. Yeah.

And give it all the parts. And then once you do that, you can act out what you want on camera and the the penguin will follow that. It'll just copy you and use your voice. Weird, dude. I think it doesn't look that hard. No, I just think it'll be fun to play with. It would absolutely be fun to play with. Yeah, I want to do I want to do that.

I'm going to I'm going maybe talk more about that. I'll try to look in my video history and find the video I lost and figure out what the software was cuz a lot of times with AI stuff, you're you're stringing together three different AIs to do it. Like you you might be using one to generate um a voice. It's like you put a script in and it reads in in a in a voice and you take the voice and you feed it to this other one and it hears the voice and makes the AI characters um mouth move to say those words. Oh, weird. And then you can take and then you can change the voice now too to to where like I can make a penguin sound like Snoop Dog and like Yeah, that's that's tricky, dude. And a lot of that stuff I think is coming into like the Cap Cut app for Tik Tok too.

So like I guess the way it works is like there's random software that's hard to use with a bad user experience and like early people will go and explore it and then the user experience gets better and all of a sudden like it hits mainstream and everyone can use it and I think we're in like the sort of the middle right now where user experience is starting to get easy enough but it's definitely not mainstream. I want to play with it more. I'm glad you nerd out about that stuff. It's cool. Awesome. But, uh, yeah. So, I don't know. I think we're I think we're pretty good.

We said we were done 10 minutes ago. Oh, yeah. I know. I keep I always start back up, dude. I always say I'm done. And then I think we're cool, man. Like, I'm I'm super happy to have you here and, uh, get to know you and your wife better. And, um, I'm really pumped about sitting down and listening to your seminar.

So, um, yeah. Today or tomorrow? Friday. Friday. Okay. Okay. Mine's tomorrow. Worse.

the schedule. I got to check my schedule like 10 times a day. But yeah, dude, I hope you enjoy Vegas, man. And uh I would really like to bring you over to the Maverick Warehouse and give you a little tour and we talk about things. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then uh maybe I'll go show me or I'll at least show you where some of the murals are that we painted this in town so you can get out there and check some stuff out. But sweet.

Uh I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me, dude. It's always really good to like get to know you a little better. And uh yeah, I appreciate it, man. and give us a little quick lay down your Ink and Dagger tattoo. Yes, Ink and Dagger Tattoo in Roswell, Georgia. Yeah. Uh Tattoo Smart in Universe. Yes, we are available in most of the world except for where they are blocking um the internet from this country.

Okay. Might be happening in a few places. Oh, that's interesting. Holy [ __ ] And uh social media is we follow you on most everybody I feel like already follows you but if you don't get on there and check out maybe um yeah so thank you so much dude I appreciate it man and look forward to hearing from you this weekend and I think that's a wrap. That's a wrap. All right guys, thank you so much for tuning in.