Category: Billy Childish

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6 Records.

I wrote about selling my record collection recently. And in that post, I went over the new parameters I’ve set up for myself moving forward. Maybe parameters isn’t the best word?

Limitations.

Here’s the brief preview if you don’t feel like going back to that entry: “What if I kept 10 records at a time? No more. Just less. And once I get to 10, in order to buy a new record or two, I’d have to bring a record or two in to trade? With the five I have, I got room for five more!

Enter “Blues That Kills” by “Wild” Billy Childish and The Chatham Singers, now standing as the 6th acquisition in my newly-revived record collection. (Check out the hand-printed woodcut cover by Billy (printed on brown Kraft card stock) with hand-stamped titles on the back of the sleeve and on the white label in an edition of 300 numbered copies. I ended up with #149.)

I actually ordered this record from The L-13 crew before I sold my collection, but I had it sent to my place in Arizona. There it sat on a stack of unread mail until just recently. What a nice surprise. Billy’s been a friend of synaethesia since The Strangest One of All which was printed and published back in my San Francisco grad school days. Billy’s association came via Johnny Brewton at X-Ray Book & Novelty Co. Thanks again Johnny!

I got to meet Billy once. His band The Buff Medways played Bimbo’s 365. I’m pretty sure it was 1998. It also could have been 1999, and it could have been when he was playing with his band Thee Headcoats. So to confirm I just texted Johnny to ask and he says it was Thee Headcoats — so there ya go.

And here we are. Six records — with room for four more.

 

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Billy Childish Woodcuts for Barry Gifford’s The Strangest One of All

Johnny Brewton introduced me to Billy Childish.

If you already know Billy’s work, an introduction is unnecessary. If you don’t, Billy Childish is one of the most fiercely independent artists of the last fifty years—a poet, painter, musician, novelist, woodcut artist, and cultural force whose influence far exceeds his mainstream recognition. Working largely outside traditional institutions, Childish has built an international following through a relentless commitment to making art on his own terms.

And it was through Johnny’s introduction that I had the opportunity to work with Billy on one of my favorite publications: Barry Gifford’s The Strangest One of All, a meditation on Barry’s trip to “The Bunker”.

For the project, Billy created a series of original woodcuts depicting Burroughs. The standard edition features a single Childish woodcut visible through the die-cut window on the cover. The lettered edition of 26 copies includes two additional original woodcuts, housed separately in a manila envelope. Together they form a remarkable visual counterpart to Gifford’s text.

What I particularly love about Billy’s contribution is its directness. Every image focuses on the same subject: William S. Burroughs. Childish strips away mythology and celebrity, returning again and again to the face of the writer himself. The result feels both reverential and unsentimental.

Billy affectionately referred to Burroughs as “the old duffer,” a phrase that still makes me smile. It captures something of Childish’s relationship to literary and artistic heroes. Admiration, certainly—but never worship.

Working with Johnny Brewton, Billy Childish, and Barry Gifford on this project remains one of the highlights of my synaesthesia life.

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The Strangest One of All | Barry Gifford & Billy Childish | synaesthesia press

The Strangest One of All by Barry Gifford featuring woodcut illustrations by Billy Childish and design by Johnny Brewton.

The Strangest One of All

Text by Barry Gifford.

No. 8 in the synaesthesia press chapbook series. Published Summer 1998. The piece originally appeared in Speak Magazine, Fall of 1997.

Chapbook. 5 1/2″ × 8 1/2″ (13.9 × 21.6 cm). Cover illustration by Billy Childish. Designed by Johnny Brewton. Published by the synaesthesia press.

Edition of 150 numbered copies, of which the first 50 were signed by Barry Gifford. Twenty-six special lettered copies were additionally signed by both Barry Gifford and Billy Childish and issued with two original woodcut illustrations not included in the standard edition.

The lettered issue was housed in a handmade envelope containing the chapbook and supplementary prints. Design by Johnny Brewton. The supplementary prints are two additional Billy Childish woodcut illustrations not present in the standard edition.

Originally published in Speak magazine and issued here in its first separate publication. The short, non-fiction narrative records novelist Barry Gifford’s visit to William S. Burroughs’s legendary residence known as “The Bunker,” and captures a conversation between Gifford, his son, former baseball player Jimbo Carothers, and Burroughs.

Availability: Out of print.