REX2-TM: TOM KATS VIDEO

Twinkie The Kid - Rex2 - Black Friday

The Groove asked some folks to come thru and paint the alley wall again. I was happy to get down and even invited some out-of-towners. This was a scrap can piece and not my favorite ever. But hey ... it's done. I did have fun knocking out a little "Twinkie The Kid" outlaw character. He's looking pretty desperate!

ToM KATS

Did this solo joint on Habitat for Humanity on Division St next to Yazoo Brewery. I took the old Nashville Kats (defunct Arena Football team) logo and flipped it just a bit. Love this Rock-A-Billy Cat!

Street View

Lotus Community Work Shop - Harmony Korine, Val Kilmner, Troy Duff

I graduated from Hillsboro High School the same year as Harmony Korine. He has used a lot of class mates in his films over the years. My friend Troy Duff is the latest example of that. Harmony shot a short film for Vice and Troy had a nice supporting role as Rev. Mickey House alongside the legendary Val Kilmer. When Troy told me he was in the project, I bugged him to get in as an extra. Troy came thru like the friend he is, and I found myself an extra in the Locust Community Work Shop. Shooting took place summer of 2011 at the Brentwood Skate Center which has the same neon lights since it opened in 1981. I grew up in the roller rink heyday and Brentwood is about the only on left in Nashville from the 80s. It was the perfect trippy background for Harmony's crazy script. Good times. check chanting "Get a Job" at 13:41.

Wiz Khalifa Mural 2 - MTSU

This one is in Murfreesboro right next to MTSU campus.

Wiz Khalifa Mural

A wall I did for Wiz Khalifa. (on Kwik Sak - West End Ave., Nashville)

Devin Steel Painting/Mixtape Cover

This is a painting I did of Devin Steel (Memphis DJ Legend) and Rick Ross for his 2010 Mansion Muzik Mixtape.

Straight Letters & Trendies

Did some straight letters at The Wash Yard jam. It was fun.

Nashville Sounds 1987

25 years ago I was in middle school and a die hard baseball fan. The summer of '87 I went to as many Sounds games as I could get my parents to drag me to. I would arrive early whenever possible to hound the players for autographs. That season The Sounds were the Triple-A affiliates for the Cincinnati Reds right when Pete Rose had retired but was still manager. 1987 was one of the seasons he was betting on baseball. The Reds won the World Series in 1990, and the '87 Sounds had many contributors on the roster. I got most of their autographs too!

Signatures on the cover include:
"Nasty Boy" Rob Dibble
Chris Sabo - 1988 Rookie of the Year (very next year)
Max Venable
Tom Browning
Wayne Garland - pitching coach, Nashville native
Carl Willis - (current Seattle Mariners Pitching Coach)
Orsino Hill
Bill Cutshall x2
Buddy Pryor
Mike Konderla
Ron Henika
Jeff Gray

 

The ads in the program are really great too. It was a whole different era. Domino's Pizza still guaranteed pizza delivery under 30 mins. Avoid the Noid!

Mearle Haggard for George Dickel.

 

A tobacco ad?! Well I never ...

 Who remembers the McD.L.T.? George Costanza??

The Sounds have totally switched their colors, uniforms and mascot/logo since then.

If you collected baseball cards then you probably knew about E. Gad's in the Harding Mall (gone). If you played baseball you probably went to Grand Slam U.S.A. to use their batting cages. I did both. In high school I used to go to Grand Slam with friends a lot and play Hi-Ball. It was a trampoline meets basketball meets four square game. So much fun!

I Love Memphis

The homie Codak was in Memphis visiting, so AudRoc and I hopped on the road and went to rock a production with him and Paser. I wanted to incorporate some of the sports teams from Memphis' past.

Defunct sports teams interest me a lot.
The hat on top of the "R" is the logo from Memphis' old Americn Basketball Association team, The Tams. I bought the card below for cheap on ebay while researching cause I liked the look. Turns out George Thompson had a son while playing for Memphis. He named his son George Thompson Jr, but he is also known as Ewok-MSK (2:12).

 The 2 is based on the "S" in the logo for the USFL Memphis Showboats. They played football in the Liberty Bowl and would sell that stadium out! The Showboats also drafted Reggie White out of University of Tennessee. Check out the vintage Showboats hat I scored (1984).

The "Smoking Native American" logo in the "X" is from the old minor league baseball team the Memphis Chicks (short for Chickasaw). I heard at the games the Indian mascot actually ran around with a big cigar! Bo Jackson played for the Chicks before he made it to the Kansas City Royals.

TM Fire Production

We picked the colors first, then things to pull it all together ... flames.

On wall of House of Bass (620 8th Ave S, Nashville, TN) across from Jack Arnold's Restaurant.

Check out the Wrapper's Delight food truck down the street at Jackalope Brewery.

F.U. Crue

 

This is the F.U. Crue out of Nashville. They are a tight group of friends who skate hard, film everything and release a lot of material. They just dropped another video that took two and half years to make called Thriving on High Fives. I've been watching this crüe get better and rip for a while now. Some are going to be pro, no doubt. I appreciate how hard they push to get better and how much fun they have doing it. So I teamed with Folded Skate Shop (where they were doing the premier) and did a stencil for them. They were stoked!

Yelawolf Mural - Antioch, Tennessee

I painted this piece for Yelawolf. I'm a big fan of his music. When I was kid I lived in Antioch. Yelawolf lived in Antioch during his childhood also. Like myself, Yelawolf was bused from that area into Nashville to integrate the school system. I'm a few years older than Yelawolf, but we both attended Carter Lawrence Elementary School. He talks about writing his first rap there and the principle Mr. Kersey. We have those childhood experiences in common, so I feel a bit of kinship with him. And we share a few of the same skater/graffiti friends. Yelawolf has also shown great support to my magazine CONCRETE. I was happy to paint this piece in our old neighborhood (wall of Vic's Barber Shop - 5122 Nolensville Pike  Nashville, TN 37211).

Here is a video of me painting the Yelawolf wall.

DJ Scratch - Boom Bap Print

I made some more stencil prints (12" x 18", spray paint, acrylic on chip board) for my friends at The Boom Bap. This time it was DJ Scratch of EPMD and the touring DJ for Jay-Z. He signed on for me which was nice. He took 2 for himself and a few lucky party-goers got one.

Hanging with Lootpack

In 1999 I traveled to Los Angeles with AudRoc to attend the B-Boy Summit (Where we helped start a riot! But that's another story for another time.) The event was thrown by Easy-Roc and Asia 1 then-members of The Rock Steady Crew. While in LA we stayed with the homie Troy Duff and his cousin Erica. They lived in Studio City, but Erica was from Oxnard and Troy had also lived there a couple of years. Some friends of theirs from Oxnard, Lootpack were performing at the B-Boy Summit and asked Troy and Erica if they could also stay at their house. So that put me in the same house as Madlib and Wildchild. It was obviously real early in their career. I snapped a few candid photos while hanging out and a few at the Summit. They were super nice guys. A few months later they came to Nashville to perform at WRVU Benefit Show and we hung out some in Nashville.

 Madlib getting his iron on.

 Peanut Butter Wolf with a Show & Prove Magazine at B-Boy Summit 199

Wild Child of Lootpack

Bonnaroo 2012 - Water Stations

The good folks at Bonnaroo asked to come out again and help spice up the festival grounds. This year they wanted our take on the water stations inside Centeroo (the things people stand in line to fill up their empty water bottles). We did some animal prints in blues with water droplet icons on top. We did about 10 stations plus another 10 hand washing stations spread out in the camping areas.

Wrapper's Delight Food Truck

My friend Sean Brashears opened his food truck Wrapper's Delight for business earlier this year. He told me last year at Bonnaroo he was going to do it and wanted me to paint it. I think his name and concept are classic! It's food wraps named after some of hip-hop's most iconic music artists. The visual idea is based on the album art for A Tribe Called Quest's "Midnight Marauders". I also did some large Nashville skylines to represent our fine city. Make sure you check them out on facebook and twitter and get some great food.

Wrapper's Delight will be profiled on the Food Network show Eat St. this summer! Here they are filming at Elmington Park (West End Middle School).

Johnny Cash

New Johnny Cash painting based on an early 1950s Sun Records publicity photo

Tennessee MadBalls Crew - May 20, 2012

Located on 8th Ave S, across from Jack Arnold's Restaurant.

The 2012 TM Line Up: Jeka, Zoom, N-Sac, Rex2, AudRoc, Pako, Codak, Task, Paser, Ragoe, Riet