When you watch the show from the side of the stage, you
don’t get the clearest mix of the audio that’s being piped out into the
audience.

If you’re on the left side of the stage, you’re getting
blasted by Jerry’s guitar amps, and if you’re on the right side of the stage,
you’re getting hit by William’s.

You’re still getting everything else, it’s just that there
isn’t the clarity that everyone out front is getting.

This also makes it difficult sometimes to hear exactly what
they guys are saying when they talk to the crowd.

Sean took the mic after the show in Cincinnati the other
night and talked for a bit.

All I could really make out was some garbled advice about
wearing a condom, but everything else was too muffled to understand.

This led me to an impromptu art project in Warren, Ohio.

Mike’s tech sent me a picture of Sean while he was talking on
stage the previous night, and inspiration struck.

I decided to superimpose a little comic book speech bubble
onto the picture, imagine what it was that Sean was saying to the crowd, fill
in the bubbles, and post them all over the backstage area of the Packard Music
Hall.

Suddenly the dressing rooms, production office, catering
room, stage, and hallways were all filled with imagined Sean quotes.

Quotes like, “My bunk smells like ham”, “I sometimes put a
saddle on Jerry and ride him around the dressing room”, “I ate my conjoined
twin in the womb”, and the always classic, “It burns when I pee”.

This seemed to entertain the crew and confuse the local
employees working the show, so I considered it a success.

Then the band arrived, and Sean wasn’t that thrilled.

Which bummed me out because it was all in good fun.

But it turns out that he wasn’t bothered by being the brunt
of a joke.

He was disappointed that it wasn’t nastier.

Life on the road is one giant travelling ashtray of filth,
profanity, and vile, disgusting dialog.

But I tend to try and operate creatively in a PG-13 world.

I try not to fill the blog with expletives and filthy
stories, and I approached my Sean Kinney photo project with the same methodology.

And he was disappointed in me.

But I stand by my work and submit the following example for
you to judge for yourself.

Years from now, I have faith that this collection of work
will be blown up, framed, and displayed at Sean’s funeral.

Which may come sooner than later if he keeps telling me how
to do my job…