Music

Kings of Leon for Rolling Stone

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Rolling Stone commissioned me to photograph KOL at the House of Blues last night on tour for their new record, Mechanical Bull. On the plus side, the sound was great. The new tracks felt bigger than the room. But beyond that it was a pretty challenging shoot. 

ISO was maxed out at 5000-8000 for most of the set. Solid red and blue gels 98% of the time. I asked the lighting guy if they planned on any contrast and he said no, "they wanted it as dark as possible" -- yowza. So I moved about the room and did the best I could to grab a variety of angles to compensate for the red, blue & black-out.

Not super enthused with the result, in all honesty, but at the end of the day it was a dream realized and for that I'm pretty grateful. 

Somebody's Darling

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So these guys are a ton of fun. A roots rock band out of Dallas, TX, we jammed in a quick photo shoot on their tour through Chicago last week. If you haven't had a chance to catch them live, I highly recommend it. They leave blood, guts, blazing guitar riffs all over the stage. It's pretty gnarly. And Amber is Janis Joplin reincarnate, so there's that. Check them out: www.somebodysdarling.com

 

Escondido

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I love fest season because you never know who you're going to run into. In this case, desert rock soul merchants, Escondido, a really cool band out of Nashville who played Randolph Fest last weekend. The night after they played Conan, I dragged them up to my roof to chase the light in an impromptu photo shoot. It was all very random and fun and I'm really excited to see these guys break through the glass ceiling because a nicer duo couldn't be more deserving. Check them out at www.thebandescondido.com. Tried to give them a treatment btw to match their brand image and wild west washed out sound.