I met with Bruce Robison early one morning at Epoch coffee to talk about his new record and what sort of art might make sense for the packaging. We talked about a lot of things… politics, our kids and the continued rapid disintegration the music industry. At some point in the conversation I asked him if he had noticed the large color prints hanging on the wall in the back of the space. There were 4 or 5 oversized prints from Autumn Spadaro, a photographer I’d never heard of, hanging casually in front of some vintage furniture. One of them caught my eye immediately as a candidate for the cover image. They were obviously shot on medium format film, and had a simple graphic quality. The subject matter was very Bruce: small town Texas, decaying structures and 1970′s automobiles. The images had a touch of Eggleston, too. I took an iPhone pic of the print I liked, typeset the title over it, and emailed it to Bruce. He loved it. I called Autumn the next day and she agreed to license the image. We licensed another one of her images for the back cover too. Austin is a town where talent is everywhere, especially at coffee shops. Lindsay Braun was the studio artist on the piece. She helped with typesetting and photo-retouching. The record is currently being sold only at live performances. Go see Bruce and buy one.
