Caamp. An acronym that not a lot of people know, stands for Consuming abnormal amounts of Makers and PBR. It’s also the name of the Ohioan musician trio Caamp. 

When you go to a Caamp show, you do exactly as their acronym name suggests. Sure, the show is bound to be somewhat blurred, but the band’s banjo plucking, guitar riffs, and raspy yet soothing vocals, poignantly remain and rattle around in your hungover brain. Caamp puts on one hell of a live show, and their new album By and By is no different.

By and By, which just dropped last Friday on Momma and Papa records, is an emotional roller coaster. Experimental guitar and banjo playing quickly thrust you through a frenzy of wild turns, and lush harmonies and lyricism take you through lofty loops and dips until you come to a sudden drop with the adolescent love-themed track “Peach Fuzz”. 

Remember when you were young in school? You had just gotten back from afternoon recess and the trees outside are blowing around in the sunshine, and you’re just waiting for school to end. You secretly reach under your desk, grab that crinkled comic book, and start doodling as your mind drifts away out the window. Brian Blomerth can still remember those moments, of casually losing himself in thought.  As a kid, Blomerth loved to draw and kept at it, but didn’t really get serious about comic illustration until later in the game. Having gone to school for painting, it was only up until a few years ago that Blomerth would make the switch to illustration, which in the world of comic illustration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it’s pretty normal.

Kyle Falzone the artist and Kyle Falzone the skateboarder may exist in two extracurricular worlds, but each’s existence is integral to the other. Growing up skating in rural Gloster, Virginia, meant most skate spots had to be built and backyard ramps were a must. That’s where it all started for Falzone, who took to drawing ramp outlines for his yard as a young skater.

As Falzone transitioned from skate grommet to adult he continued to nurture his relationship with drawing and sculpture, using the funky people, places and things that he witnessed while growing up and skating, for material in his character-based work. “Most recently I’ve been leaving the figure absent and opting to create an environment that those earlier characters might exist within,” says Falzone. “Slowly this has become an even split between 2D, sculpture, and kinetic sculptures that tend to all be self-referencing.”

Erin D. Garcia has a style that’s diverse as a crowded city bus, drawing and pulling inspiration from wherever he can think of. From small-scale canvases to large installations, his process and style change slightly with each, but the origin of his form stays the same. “I’m all about preparation, I try to prepare as much as I can, especially with large commissioned pieces, with scaffoldings and that, but what I really like is just being in the studio working on one canvas.”

Liz is much more than a lead singer/guitarist of a three piece country-folk infused indie psychedelic band from the musically diverse Nashville. She is a commander of mojo, a conductor of the in-between, and the guide to that groove you once knew long ago. 

If it wasn’t for Chicago, jazz would’ve never left New Orleans.

Chad Kouri lives in the vibrant city of Chicago. Under the city lights and amongst the cities’ working people and working artists. He is a print nerd who loves his history, constantly researching what has come before him and using that knowledge to his creative advantage. He started off as a graphic designer for a marketing company making junk mail to send out to those poor souls who buy into that stuff.

You know the saying, “if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life?” Well, Jackson Tupper may have followed that as perfectly as one can. He finds himself juggling his time from being a graphic designer at Burton Snowboards, his personal artwork and helping run a nonprofit printmaking studio, Iskra. From growing up as a Maine snowboard rat who had an itch for pushing creative boundaries, to living out his dream, Tupper is right where he wants to be and doesn’t plan on changing anything anytime soon.

Visual aesthetic meets musical function in the Prisma Guitar workshop. Skateboards and guitars. The two have always been close to one another, but Nick Pourfard has smoothly taken the relationship a little further, handcrafting one of a kind guitars out of skateboard decks.

Through self-expression of societal, cultural and historical repression, Oakland-based artist Jeffrey Cheung brings that vulgarity and rawness that one sees in a skate rough-cut to a canvas. The young artist will open his first European solo exhibition Together at the Andenken Gallery in Amsterdam on September 28th.