ONLINETo buy the 3 Sisters 2014 poster and get more information about the festival, go to 3sistersbluegrass.com.IF YOU GO• What: 3 Sisters Festival• When: Friday-Saturday, Oct. 3-4; 6-11 p.m. Friday; noon-10 p.m. Saturday• Where: Ross's Landing• Admission: Free• Information: 3sistersbluegrass.com
Brian Murphy owns a Chattanooga graphic design firm called That Murphy Boy and has created 3 Sisters bluegrass concert posters for the past several years.
The Chattanooga graphic design firm That Murphy Boy has created 3 Sisters bluegrass concert posters for the past several years.Brian Murphy's No. 1 fan starts phoning each year in April about a beautiful concert poster that won't exist until September. The gentleman always worries that there won't be enough posters left for him to buy, beg or barter for one.
Murphy -- who owns That Murphy Boy Graphic Design in Chattanooga -- creates the 3 Sisters Festival of Bluegrass Music poster after spending months playing with fonts, color swatches and iconic images for the outdoor event at Ross's Landing. And that devoted fan is right to be worried about nabbing a poster.
"It's hard to keep Brian's posters on the walls as advertisements because people steal them out of restaurants, bartenders give them to customers who plead for them," says Ann Ball of Chattanooga Presents, which handles 3 Sisters publicity. "But this year, for the first time ever, we'll have screen-printed versions of his poster as well as a digital one."
It's also the first year fans will be able to buy the posters on the 3 Sisters website. But, as she does each year, Ball will make sure there is one set aside for that devoted fan.
Screen printing and letter press (in which images and letters are carved into wooden blocks) are the handcrafted, old-school methods used in the golden era of 1960s and '70s rock and folk concert posters by legendary artists. Both methods elevate a concert poster from a mere collectible to a genuine work of art.
Murphy began designing 3 Sisters posters when Lizzer Graham, one of the three sisters the concert is named after, recruited him.
"I start filling a notebook with images, colors and fonts in the spring and play with them until the design sort of emerges," explained Murphy, who cites such artistic influences as Stanley Donwood, an artist who often does Radiohead gig posters, and the Rev. Howard Finster of Summerville, Ga., who did album covers for R.E.M. and Talking Heads.
This year, the design for 3 Sisters is a large red, orange, black and gray banjo. The names of the bands fit neatly into the design and a ruby-red rooster perches in the upper right corner atop the word "FREE."
"Every letter, every image, was hand drawn by me because the concert organizers and I felt that would be a good look for the artisan look that printmaking gives a poster," Murphy says.
"Even though this is a bluegrass concert, I've never used a banjo as a central poster image. Now that the banjo is being embraced by music-loving hipsters, maybe that will draw more hipsters to 3 Sisters."
Murphy says concert organizers had considered letter press for this year's poster "but that was more limiting for the sort of imagery we wanted to do so we went with the screen printing process."
Garuda Screenprinting screen printed the 3 Sisters posters from Murphy's design. Company owner Mike Lester, 34, was already familiar with the look they wanted; he has a scarlet-red screen-printed Hank Williams poster from the 1950s hanging in his Dodds Avenue office. Lester's dad was a musician and his grandfather had engineering skills so sharp, he built a TV set from abandoned parts because he couldn't afford to buy one.
Lester inherited their musical and technical gifts, which became assets when he began creating posters for rock bands who wanted to sell them as merchandise. Despite how quick and easy digital has made designing, hardcore rockers insist want the handcrafted beauty and depth of color that only screen printing or letter press provide.
"Even someone who's never looked a concert poster can tell the difference between a digitally printed poster and one done by letter press or screen printed," he says. "There's a 3-D quality and, at the same time, it looks handmade, like what you would get if every letter, every image were carved into wood."
POSTER PROCESSTo begin the poster printing process, Garuda Screenprinting owner Mike Lester makes a stencil of each color in the design. Before computers were commonplace, printers had to cut the stencils out with an X-acto knife but now Lester can print a single-color stencil using PhotoShop. Then comes about two dozen steps that require a steady hand and a keen eye. But here is the basic and extremely stripped-down version of the process:The stencil is attached to a fine mesh screen and a color is squeegeed across the stencil. For example, in the 3 Sisters poster, the rooster does not appear at all in the gray stencil because there is no gray on the rooster. Each color must dry before the next color is applied. Details like stars or snowflakes in a night sky or raindrops ruffling a rabbit's fur can be very tricky to cut into a stencil, even with the aid of computer software. The labor-intensive process is intricate and translates into higher prices than a simple digital print. A screen print poster can cost $5 each to make and a promoter could print out dozens of digital posters for the same price.
Garuda Screenprinting created and printed this poster and the one at the top of the page for rock bands.He's right. The digital version of this year's 3 Sisters poster is flat as a magazine ad, while the screen printing version is so vibrant, the colors leap off the page. The orange and red rooster looks almost 3-D. The old school poster even feels different.
"If you run your fingertips across the poster, you can feel the ink raised above the paper," Lester says.
A brush of the fingertips and one can feel the small imperfections, the miniature differences in how much ink was used on one poster rather than another.
"Digitally done posters are identical and meant to be fast and easy to produce, but each letter press poster is different and utterly unique," Lester says. "When you have a letter print poster, you have a unique work that no one else owns."
Artists who create concert posters, aka "gig posters," still garner followings and fans even in the digital era. Daniel Danger is known for his beautiful yet eerie visions of post-apocalyptic small-town America. Two of his posters often land on "best gig posters" lists compiled by music and art bloggers -- his 2007 Modest Mouse poster for a Norman, Okla., gig has snow swirling across a street haunted by three figures staring at a Modest Mouse neon sign topping a crumbling factory.
Another equally famous Danger gig poster is for the Decemberists and depicts a tiny island illuminated by a sliver of campfire. A vast starry sky and bare tree branches soar above the island. Lurking beneath is a monster fish. Danger frequently numbers and signs posters that he sells to fans.
Artist Ken Taylor's letter press gig posters draw fans partly due to their stunning detail, whether it's the crimson feathers of a cardinal on an Avett Brothers poster or blades of grass and tufts of a grizzly bear's fur on a poster touting a Josh Ritter concert. Some bands, like Bon Iver, commission letter-press gig posters so exquisite, they create an explosion of Pinterest buzz whenever they are unveiled.
Lester, whose business is going so well he recently moved it into a warehouse-sized building on Dodds, got his start in poster printing while playing guitar and fiddle in a Cleveland, Ohio, band named Shellbound.
"The bass player owned a screen-printing business so he hired me to tour with the band and keep the silk screen business going," Lester says. "I get the same satisfaction from the craft that I did from music.
"And bands are starting to trust me to come up with designs. One band that needed a poster just told me: Make it quirky. I did. They loved it."
Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com of 423-757-6391.