A Face To The Name

The Lost Art of Album Covers

originally published April 7, 2004

The notes screaming from Al Kooper's Hammond organ on Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" opening Highway 61 Revisited are so perfect and haunting that even when listening to acoustic or stripped-down versions of the song, the phantom notes ring in the air. Likewise, it is equally hard to imagine any other cover to the record besides the one that lingers in our minds of a hyper-candid photograph of Dylan, lounging in what seems like a hotel room, togged up in a motorcycle t-shirt and perfectly contrasting blue silk button-up arguing for attention. His countenance implies exhaustion from his own coolness and in the background stand the legs and torso of a lingering photographer dangling a camera. This image, ingrained as the visual symbol of the record seems like an odd choice of photographs to use for a cover, an outtake, but works wonderfully with the new sound of the record in a time when Dylan was being labeled a traitor to the folk world. Some things become inseparable from the larger entity they compliment. So maybe it's not the best name, but what else could The Beach Boys have been called?
Nowhere is this inseparability truer than in the vast, and often overlooked, art of creating album covers. Imagine an alternate album cover to The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, Nirvana's Nevermind, Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A, or Led Zeppelin IV. What we know now as the cover of The Beatles' epochal Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, perhaps the quintessential album cover, was narrowly chosen over a less grandiose cover created by a different group of artists.
Album covers are probably looked at more closely than your average museum painting, often studied for the entire length of the record or more. And yet the artists behind them get very little credit. Particularly in Athens, where there are nearly more musicians than non-musicians, we are remiss to overlook these important contributions to the music. I dare you to listen to Automatic for the People and resist picturing Weaver D's now infamous sign, or play Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea without seeing a drum-faced woman and a child wave good-bye (or hello, depending on your constitution) in early century beachwear, or the "Flying Victrola" on the record itself. The covers for albums by The Drive-By Truckers, The Packway Handle Band, Elf Power and Ishues are among some of the most impressive from local bands in the past few years.

Trucker Love
Almost as distinctive as their inspired redneck rock are The Drive-By Truckers' album covers. Wes Freed is the artist responsible for their last two releases, Southern Rock Opera and

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Decoration Day. Based out of Richmond, Virginia and having grown up in Shenandoah Valley, Freed is a virtual scholar of southern oddities, drawing heavily on the strange people he met and things he saw as a child. The Truckers' album covers are good representations of his body of work: spooky narrative, comic-like pieces created with either pen, ink and watercolor or acrylic on board. Inspired by some of the underground comics of the '60s and '70s, visionaries such as R. Crumb and Robert Williams, and painters like Phillip Guston, it is the kind of art that would translate well into a tattoo (which has been done and displayed on his website). His art has the same intelligent and well-crafted, but pleasantly simple and accessible feel as The Drive-By Truckers' music.
Freed met The Truckers when his band at the time, Dirt Ball, shared a bill with them at a festival in Richmond. Right away he felt like they had known each other forever and his house became the crash-pad for the band when they would pass through his neck of the woods. The Truckers couldn't help but notice his artwork all over the walls and thought it would work very well for a record cover. Freed felt a huge connection to their music and was more than happy to lend his art to the project. He listened closely to the music and exchanged ideas with the band about what they'd like to see in the album art. The result is the empty highways, naked trees, crashed cars, and spooky owls found on Southern Rock Opera.
Having branded the covers of over ten releases with his art - for various bands including Cracker's Gentleman's Blues - Wes Freed is a veteran of album art. He feels what makes a good album cover is its relationship with the music, which is why he thinks his art lends itself so well to The Truckers' style. "When I first heard their music I was floored," he said. "I was hung over from cheap beer and it almost knocked me over. When I met them we just seemed to get each other. I think it is an accident that my art goes with their music and their music with my art, but a happy accident." Presently, Freed is working on projects including art for The Drive-By Truckers' upcoming record, The Dirty South.

Bluegrass Heaven
The cover of The Packway Handle Band's recently released debut album, Chaff Harvest, depicts the band's instruments laying in agreed focus toward the horizon amidst a sprawling wheat field.

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It is a beautiful scene with a humbling mountain of clouds towering over a flat western landscape. The unmistakably bluegrass album cover is an oil painting by Athens artist Phillip Adams.
Adams got his BFA in painting from UGA several years ago and has worked as an artist in town since. He has known members of The Packway Handle Band for years and was a fans of their work, and they of his. So when they needed an album cover, it just made sense to employ him for the job. When Packway first approached Adams with the idea, they didn't have the title yet, but one of them envisioned a field so he worked off of that theme. Chaff Harvest shows off Packway's original and traditional bluegrass built around strong harmonies and interesting arrangements with a crispness hard to find in a lot of bluegrass music. In this way, Adams' illustration compliments the music wonderfully with its rich colors and textures and wide-open feel.
Although the painting on Chaff Harvest is not very representative of Adams' body of work, it does contain elements of his unique style of abstracted presentation with a realist sensibility. One of his recent paintings, called "Star-Fishing in a Warrior's Box," for example, portrays an arm with just a partial profile reaching out of a staggeringly realistic cardboard box, holding a piece of string hooked to several stars resembling a child's drawing. Adams' paintings have the rare ability to make observers happy to be unsure of themselves and offer as much as they are willing to take.
Phillip Adams has lent a hand to several album covers including Kevin Smith, Peri Mason, and the BusBoat Compilation. Music plays greatly into his painting, songs having the similar ability to tell stories in the abstract and making words or images fit into the composition. He recently met up with The Packway Handle Band on their recent tour out West while doing some freelance work in Oklahoma City and rode along for the Colorado leg of the journey. He is presently back in Athens painting and working on upcoming album cover projects for Stories Below and BusBoat Records.

Creature Comforts
Even if you have never heard their music before, if you live in Athens, you have probably heard of the band Elf Power. Joanna Vass, the artist responsible for the dreamy, surreal cover of their 2002 release Creatures hadn't heard their music until they approached her about the project.
Vass received her MFA in painting from UGA in 2000 and regularly had exhibits up about town.

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The painting, which she now just refers to as "Creatures," was on display at Bottleworks around the time that Elf Power was finishing up the record. Andrew Reiger, the band's frontman, saw it and thought the piece would work well for the album cover. She confessed embarrassedly that she hadn't heard their music before, but she says they were gracious enough to give her an early copy of the album and invited her to see some shows. After hearing their music, she was more than happy to lend them her painting for the cover of Creatures and has been a fan of their music since.
She agrees that the painting and the music work well together, but is not entirely sure why. "I don't know why the painting struck Andrew," she said. "But I think that they share a surreal quality and that's what makes it a good marriage, although, independently of each other they would probably have different meanings." The Creatures painting is similar to what you might find in the rest of her work, often depicting amorphous creatures and a vulnerable figure, usually a child.
In her opinion, the thing that makes an album cover great is how memorable it is. Often, for her, it is simple and bold imagery, like the Warhol image on The Velvet Underground record that is most memorable. She doesn't think that her painting necessarily fits that formula, but is glad to have contributed to Elf Power's long tradition of top-notch album art. Joanna Vass is working on a long-term art project in Los Angeles at the moment but plans to eventually return to Athens.

Samurai Hip Hop
Chances are if you have seen a poster for local, rising hip hop acts like artist Ishues, or the group Herb and Skills, you have seen the artwork of Ron Lewis. It has an unmistakable urban-samurai theme,

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which is consistent with the albums of those artists. Lewis is actually a trained painter, working with both oils and acrylics, but uses pencil and ink to create the images. He began making t-shirts for the local hip hop label, Attica Sound, and by something of an accident became the label's main designer. The samurai images were actually just sketches that the Attica folks found and really liked.
When Lewis began working on Ishues' debut album, Reality Flow, he was very mindful of capturing the feeling that Ishues was striving for. He experimented with three or four different styles of drawings before he and Ishues felt good about the project. Only after working on Ishues' Reality Flow and Herb and Skills' The Gathering, did Lewis notice that other hip hop artists have employed samurai-type art in their work. He attributes this somewhat mysterious phenomenon to the fact that, "hip hop artists, like samurai, are fighting for themselves, just in different ways - and it looks good."
Lewis is one to know the importance of a good album cover, often buying a record based on that fact alone. Some of his favorite album art includes The Cars' Heartbreak City and the new cut-up, foldout Shins record. Right now, Lewis is creating an album cover for metal band, Dire'z Eve, and will continue working on upcoming album projects for Attica Sound.
It is possible that the images on an album are arbitrary and we simply add our own positive or negative associations with the album cover based on our feelings of the music it visually represents. But meshing music and art is an art form in itself. Perhaps the worst part of the vinyl-to-tape-to-CD transition over the years is loss of canvas size from the large LP cover, now replaced by the much smaller CD insert.
I was given this advice recently by a friend: "Always judge a book by its cover, because if the writer or publishers have no taste in art, what do they know about literature?" Although it seems somewhat counterintuitive, or at least contrary to popular advice and a deep-rooted cliché, I believe that to be true - especially as far as albums are concerned. When there are so many independent releases coming out all the time, adding to the endless sea of choices, the lost art of the album cover can lead your eyes where your ears long to go.

A. Jack Tally