Halloween with Southern Culture on the Skids!!

Sunday night was GREAT! SCOTS played @ Zydeco to a fairly small crowd, but for me that made it even better. The band was able to interact with the crowd more and the feel of the show was just cooler to me. They played songs from the new CD and quite a bit of cool older stuff. One really cool cover they slipped in was Link Wray's "Rumble". I mentioned to Rick (the guitarist/singer) after the show that I loved that song and actually got to see Link play live before he passed. Rick told me about how cool it was to actually know Link and how he loved playing shows with him. This band truly understands how much their fans mean and I love that they are one of the few bands who actually LIKE their fans and enjoy talking with them after the show. As usual the band had members of the crowd get up on stage with them during various parts of the show and even had a married couple who dressed as Mexican Wrestlers have a contest on stage. The normal chicken was thrown at the crowd as well as Little Debbie snacks . I was dressed as an "extra from a 60's Biker flick" and was wearing a blonde wig with a real German helmet as part of my costume, apparently it stood out because Mary (the bass player) asked me during the show if it was real and told me after that I was her "focus" during the show (I guess she picks someone from the crowd to "focus" so that she doesn't just end up staring at the lights). After the show was over I stuck around and was able to get all the band members to autograph my CD (I don't usually do this but I REALLY love this band). They were all VERY approachable and happy to sign, the 2nd guitar player Tim was kinda staying in the background since he's not a "famous" part of the band, but he is a REAL member and I wanted him to sign as well. Dave the drummer is really cool (how many kick ass drummers do you know who stand up the whole time?), you can tell that Dave stays busy keeping stuff flowing for the band (plus he runs the Facebook page and I think the webpage too). Rick was great but he had a crowd the whole time and what can I say about Mary besides she's the greatest! She grabbed me from beside the speakers and drug me over to the middle of the floor because she said she "couldn't hear shit" by the speakers. We talked a few minutes and she gave me a hug and posed with me for a picture. All in all this may be the best time I've had on Halloween since I was a little kid. Thanks guys for making it such a great evening. The rest of y'all enjoy the pics and make plans to see the band when they get close to you. www.scots.com



Check out that guitar!


Mary


Dave came straight from his day job at Waffle House


Tim as the Wolfman



Kustom Jeff & Mary



8 Piece box



Peso Payaso


Mucho Dinero


AS you can tell the band was in costume too. DON'T MISS THIS BAND!!

Some T-Shirts that I've had for sale on CafePress for a while...

A few years ago I had an idea for a shirt so I set it up and then found out that I could upload it to cafepress.com and have it made. I found out I could even make the design available for other folks to buy. These days there are quite a few sites doing this, but my stuff is still where it started. Since I haven't been out doing anything lately to post about I thought I'd share these shirts with you. If you like em, there will be a link, if you don't at least I took up some of your valuable time :-)
This is a link to the webpage where you can see them all at the same time...HERE



Here is the first and so far most successful shirt. I've had it sell on shirts, THONGS and even a baby onesie. It's kinda cool to see my design get sold all over the world like this. The design consists of an earlier version of my Triumph and a variation I came up with of the classic HD #1 logo.
You can buy this shirt from here...







The second most popular one is this one...
I created this one after my "unfortunate incident" where I got broadsided by an S-10 delivery truck. I ended up with a broken tib/fib and the inspiration to make this logo. I thought about trying to do something like C.O.B.B. but that site has ended up as nothing more than a money scam instead of what it started as and I don't want to end up the same way. This design has sold pretty well too. I guess there are quite a few of us out there who have dealt with the careless cager. You can buy this one here


There are a couple of other designs you can see on my t-shirt page, but these are the two I like the most. If you want to see the others they are here.

Let me know what you think of these. I'm working on a few other designs, one is even for another blog. If you have any ideas let me know and maybe I'll be able to work them up for you.
Later.....

Look Who Made The Cover!!

Found out recently the the guys at Garage Company Customs made the cover of Cycle Source magazine. They are also nominated for Builder of the Year, Top 10 Bike and Larry's girl Ashley is nominated for 2010's Motorcycling Woman Of The Year. Go HERE to vote for them. In honor of all this I decided to post some pics I took of this bike a while back. So check out the pics and go vote!






Not much to describe in the pics, just some photos I snuck in one day while hanging out at the shop. A couple were out of focus so I used "unsharp mask" in Photoshop to make them look good. See if you can guess which ones.

Photo Shoot during Barber's

A photographer for a very cool overseas magazine wanted to get pictures of a couple of Garage Company's bikes Sunday. Larry rode the Astroglide over to the vendor area for the pictures and I volunteered to ride the Sportster over (yeah, had to twist my arm pretty hard!). It was fun watching the man at work, but it's amazing how blind and rude most people are. We were constantly waiting or asking people to go around. It's not like there wasn't 40 freaking acres they could have used to stay out of the shots. Anyway, here are a couple of pics I took of the deal, the photographer asked me not to use his picture because of legal issues so I cropped him out. That's why the shots are framed a little funny.


Here's a pic I took of the AstroGlide Shovel, you've seen it before here and in a recent issue of the Horse. Yep, this bike won the chopper show at this years Smoke Out and I've gotten to ride it ;-) It's great having such cool friends.


Larry moving the shovel out of the way to make room for the Sporty's turn in front of the lens


Getting the Sporty into position.


A man I am proud to call friend. Larry is a good guy, not just to hang around with, but just an all around good person. I hope he continues to gain fame and is able to translate it into a good life long living. Meeting and getting to know Larry and Spenser as well as the other Haints has definitely made my life much richer and a HELLUVA lot more interesting. They do a good job of keeping me from feeling old most of the time.

More From This Weekend at Barber's

As usual one of the Wall of Death groups was at Barber's for the Festival. This year it was these guys. Great show as always, if you haven't been to a Wall of Death show you are missing out. These walls are vertical, about 14 feet high and the circle is about 30 ft. in diameter. There are NO safety nets, if they screw up, they get hurt. It's that simple. The bikes are a mix of old 2-strokes and VERY old Indians with a go-cart thrown in for good measure. Here are a couple of pics I took Sunday.....

In this one the bike has caught up with the go-cart and they are really riding side by side.


In this one the bike has almost lapped the cart and they will do another few laps side by side. It's amazing to see these folks in action.


I didn't take as many pictures of bikes this year as I usually do. Just didn't seem as inspired by what I saw this year. One really neat little bike was this little Honda trail bike with a modern inverted fork added on. Pretty much overkill for this bike and that's part of why it's cool ;-P


Not a huge trike fan, but it's always good to see a survivor of the old days still on the road. Some of my friends say they will quit riding if they ever have to get a trike, I say screw that! Whatever it takes to keep me in the wind is what I'll do.

First Day at Barber's Vintage Festival

Today was the first day of the Vintage Festival at Barber's Motorsports Park in Leeds, AL. If you are not here this weekend you are missing out. It's a great time every year with good racing, cool bike shows and nice big swap meet full of all kinds of cool parts. Today I helped Larry bring the GarCo bikes out to display in the swap meet booth and then scoured the area for parts I need. Came up empty on my parts but I did find some cool "critter" stuff as Nick would say.

First up is this funky old Honda covered in Tiger skin material. I was kind of afraid it would bite me it was so realistic :P


The next one we found in the building housing the bikes for the auction on Saturday. What we have here is PROOF that Apehangers make ANY bike cooler, even a simple CB350 is now a bad ass chopper!


This bike is actually VERY cool. It was built for one of the earlier Horse magazine Smoke Outs. Very nice Indian with LOTS of cool one off handmade parts. I hope they get a good price for it.


And finally a picture of OneWayStu doing an imitation of my dog trying drink water. I'll try to get some more cool pics over the weekend and share them Sunday when I get back home.

Rode the Triumph This Weekend!

Got to put a few miles on the Triumph this weekend. Not too many, but enough to lose one of the front tank mount studs and rubber as well as the nut from the front seat mount. The bike rode pretty good and the engine ran GREAT! I had a blast, but I will need to redo all the gaskets up top because of leaking from the pushrod tubes and rocker boxes. At least I know I'm getting oil to the top end. :-) Oh well, the bike did sit for a few years waiting for me to get over a broken leg and then to get enthusiastic again. Here's a couple of pics I took after the ride, I managed to NOT capture the oil drips in all their glory. Now to get the paint squared away and do some riding.

Even More Bash Pics!

I still have a bunch of pics from the Bash so I'll keep posting them until I run out or take some more pics to add.


After a day of waiting out the rain in the morning and then riding all over the for fun, it was time to grab a beer and relax while we waited for the others to get back.



Duane reads from the "Dark Custom Handbook". Later that evening this little piece of corporate marketing crap was sacrificed to the Gods of the bonfire. I love the halo that just happened to appear as he was reading.



This is Joe, he was in the middle of a ride around the US and had to make sure he hit the Bash. We were at the parking area near the top of the Dam where they filmed a scene from the fugitive.



Us Birmingham folks stayed in tents (sort of) so we parked our bikes under the tree to help keep our stuff as dry as we could.



Spenser had to be different and skip the tent. This is a cool little nylon hammock with a tarp over it for rain protection. He put the rest of his stuff in my tent and he actually stayed amazingly dry.

The Bash was GREAT Vol II!

Here are some more Bash pics, hope you like em!



The Dragon Slayers coming back in from a run up Hwy 129 through Deals Gap. This is also a pretty good shot of Hollies Ironhead and her husband Big Fink's killer Evo Sporty chop on the right.


Pyro's bike. He had a keg of home brewed beer on the back of his bike, but I didn't get a picture of it. It was a really cool set up and even used an old Ironhead Sporty oil tank to mount the tap. Very cool set up and Pyro is a great guy. He's especially handy when it's time to build up the bonfire ;-)



This is LTB's bike, believe it or not this nice long Sportster chop was the king of the road on the Dragon. He was tearing it up and even giving some of the sport bikes a run for their money.



This bike belongs to Buttas, the newest member of the Quad Cam bastards club which is different from being a member of the Quad Cam Bastards forum. Congrats to Buttas for making the team.

The Bash was GREAT!

We had a great time at the Bash, gotta love an event small enough to supply all the beer for the weekend with the purchase of a $10 raffle ticket AND then have enough raffle prizes that everyone who bought a ticket won a prize. Some prizes were a custom seat pan, a custom exhaust and a beautiful custom painted helmet. Most of us won t-shirts, hats, patches and stickers. The coolest thing was the shirt I won in my size and it was one I had planned to buy soon anyway, so I scored! Here are some of the pics, hope you like them. I'll be posting more in the next day or two so be sure to keep checking back!


IronHollie's bike sporting the new STP sticker I gave her :-)



Alvarez's bike. We spent HOURS Sat. night around the campfire talking about old punk bands from our youth. Check out his blog at Flat Broke Customs



Justin brought this bike came all the way from Canada to play! He was extremely happy to be there and was great to hang out with.



This is Rob's bike, he is the master of the Quad Cam Bastard forum. You can check out the forum's blog here and look at Rob's classic punk blog here.



Check back, I have plenty more to post!