STURGILL SIMPSON POSTER SACRAMENTO 2014

I’m a huge fan of Sturgill Simpson. There are lots of neo-country dudes around, but Simpson has really brought his own personality to the table. Unsatisfied with just replicating past styles, he adds lots of flourish and personal experience to the pot, in what in some ways feels like a psychedelic extension of Gram Parsons’ “Cosmic American Music,” even if his work doesn’t sound the same.

So in approaching this poster, I wanted to take it somewhere unexpected. Pulling from the lyrics of Side One, Track One’s “Turtles All the Way Down,” I came up with a concept that’s both literal and oblique: a poster that’s fully symmetrical top to bottom, so when you turn it 180 degrees, it reads exactly the same way again, a design that’s turtles all the way down, no matter which way is up. A UFO beams light down onto a stack of turtles dead center, framed by mirrored Art Nouveau linework and a bit of late-60s psychedelia.