My friend Jesse Elliott called me last winter while I was driving home from work. By the time I had rounded clover-leaf and gotten up to speed, I had agreed to make his CD package for his next album with his band These United States.
I had one week before Christmas to do this, and luckily we both have an affinity for maps. This album is a musical map, I was told. Jesse, is a living map. In the last five years, the band has played 800 shows across the United States and abroad. This collection of songs pulls from experiences from points within his own map, and collaborations from those he has met while charting his course. I wanted the CD package to unfold like the unruly road map your father had stuck in the glove box on family vacations, that never folded up quite the same way twice. That’s the way I hear Jesse’s songs, lush and dense with lyrics (he asked me to put them all on the album art- 4,012 words, give or take.) and it’s impossible not hear new and different ideas or imagery each time these songs unfold.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to sit at a computer, and in the seldom chance I get to draw, I do. I thought I was a pretty good draftsman as a kid, but clicking a mouse is better rewarded; and so my drawing skills have faded, but took this opportunity to give it a shot. The cover illustration was done by Charles Ben Russell, and I did my best to complement his dense style with looser lines and the rambling, sprawling feel These United States give me. I drew several maps directly onto the back of a Hatch Show Print poster and took it straight to the printer with minimal adjustments on the computer. The album was released this summer and chances are, Jesse and his band are coming to a stage near you.
