Foo Fighters poster Gilford 2023

The return of Foo Fighters

Since 2018, Ive been fortunate to get to work with Foo Fighters a number of times.

My first project working with them was a show poster for their 2018 Milwaukee gig after that I worked with them on limited edition concert posters in 2020 and in my hometown of Sacramento in 2021.

Its aways great getting to do art for a band you love, particularly when you become a part (however small) of how other people experience the band.

I was working on my fourth poster for the band in spring of 2022 when longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins passed away on tour. Of course that poster will likely never be finished as it seemed at the time like the band would possibly never tour again and certainly wouldn’t be quite the same if they did.

In early May of this year the band reached out to me to design the poster for their Gilford, New Hampshire appearance a few weeks later. A very tight turnaround but I work quickly.

When working for a touring band whether it be “Weird” Al, Metallica, Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters or whomever, there is always a design brief. In general, design briefs tend to be pretty hands-off. There is usually some boilerplate about no drug, sex, or violent imagery, but sometimes the band will want artists to recognize and employ certain themes. In 2017 I did five posters for Kings of Leon where they wantedcherries worked into the art, for example.

With the Foos suffering the loss of a member, they wanted to change things up a bit with the posters. No more UFOs or aliens, at least this tour. And no depictions of the band members. The focus instead should be more on natural colors and landmarks of the cities being played. I can do that!

“Oh dear”

So I set out in the research phase of this new-era Foo Fighters poster. I didnt have the luxury of a lot of time so I did what I always do when taking on a new kind of project (which in essence this was) and I googled around to see how other artists were approaching this new brief. But nothing came up.

My stomach sank. “Uh oh”, I thought. And so I looked at the tour dates and even cross-referenced them with setlist.fm to be sure.

Yup. “Oh dear”, I remember thinking. “This is the first show back for them”

Oh boy. No pressure at all.

“Rock and Roll”

In researching the idyllic New England town of Gilford, I came across the perfect local landmark: Kimball Castle. Built by a railroad tycoon a hundred years ago to live in, it had since fallen into abandonment and was rumored to be haunted. It was the kind of place that cops had to keep fencing off to keep out teenagers that would break in to hang out and party. “This is perfect.” I thought. “Rock and Roll” I even hid a Foo Fighters “FF” logo tapestry in one of the windows, as if left behind by some partying high school kids.

A little tribute to Taylor

In researching the area I found out which hawks (if any) were indigenous to the area and found that the broad-winged hawk was in fact a type of hawk that lived in the area. As Taylor often identified with Hawk imagery having a hawk gliding off into the sunset felt like a nice subtle tribute to him and was immediately noticed by fans who liked having the first show poster for Foo Fighters in hs absence feature this small homage.

Variants

The poster is a 5-color screen print on Mohawk Natural Paper and features a special even-more limited edition variant printed on rainbow foil paper.

Both versions sold out at the concert and in under two hours  at my bigcartel site on Friday May 26, 2023.  

I even made a fun little motoin graphic to advertise it all to the world on various social channels…