Put the Sweet in Sweet Ass Posters

An Interview with James Rheem Davis
November 11, 2004

James Rheem Davis currently resides in Arizona.  You may not know his name, but I am willing to bet that you have seen his work.  He designed the Hot Topic exclusive Brand New monkey t-shirt.  Don't have any idea yet?  How about the artwork on the new Senses Fail album Let It Enfold You.  Now we're talking.  From the Fillmore to fame, James Rheem Davis is hugely talented and a really nice guy.  I gave James a call and asked him a few questions.  He had a really cute voice and now that I know his number, I fully intend to call and breathe heavily into the phone.

*ring ring ring*

XROXX:  I hope I am not keeping you from anything.
James Rheem Davis:  Oh, man, you totally threw my day off schedule.  No, I was just out picking up some new music.  I got the new Used, Popa Roach, and Shadows Fail, who I just did some work for.

XROXX:  Where are you originally from?  How old are you? D o you have any formal training?
James Rheem Davis:  I was born in San Francisco and I was raised throughout the Bay Area.  I just moved out to Arizona in January.  How old am I?  Well, I was born in the 70's.  I'm 33.

XROXX:  And the whole schooling thing...
James Rheem Davis:  I found this bottle on the beach and rubbed it and this genie came out.  Just kidding.  My older brother was always artistic, he always drew.  I kind of looked up to him and started drawing and painting.  I was doing paintings for a while.  This was before I learned the computer.  I was the artist that didn't know what he wanted to do, and didn't have a lot of "direction" you could say.  Then, my mom passed away, and that made me realize that I had to do something.  I sat down and said "OK, art is my passion and I'm pretty good at it, so I'm gonna pursue that."  I went to design school and learned how to use the different computer programs.  When I finished, I was very lucky because my older brother's friend worked for a music merch company called Winterland.  I applied and got on as a freelancer.  I was at the right place at the right time.  They were so busy and doing so well that they needed to hire on an in-house artist.  I worked there for a few years as an artist and then the company got sold to a competitor.  I have been freelancing ever since.

XROXX:  I'm sorry to hear about your mother.
James Rheem Davis:  It's OK.  It's one of those things; it took a tragedy to turn my life around.  I wish it never happened, but at the same time, I don't know if I would be doing this.

XROXX:  How did you get into working with the big dogs like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, and Coheed and Cambria?
James Rheem Davis:  I'm a big music fan, like I love music, that's a big part of my life.  I had picked up the TBS album and loved it.  I contacted their management and told them I was a big fan and asked if they were interested in having a poster done for a show that was coming up.  They said "cool," so we did it.  Then, that lead to a thing where Brand New and TBS were gonna go on tour together in the UK, but that fell apart.  However, I had already done a poster for it.  It was suggested that I contact Brand New to see if they wanted to use it.  They didn't, but were looking for a t-shirt design.  That became the space monkey Hot Topic t-shirt.  They really liked that, so then I started doing posters for them.

*akward silence*

XROXX:  Good story.
James Rheem Davis:  That was a terrible story, but the whole point was how I got involved with poster making.  My first poster was for a Linkin Park (before they were big) show at the Fillmore in San Francisco.  They were one of our clients at Winterland.  I did one, then a couple.  As part of my responsibilities as an in-house, we were supposed to "create" posters and t-shirts.  Sometimes you just had to come up with something.  You have to listen to their music, figure out what they are about, see what they are doing visually and create something.  I was very fortunate to get a lot of stuff approved.  In a sense, I became the artist/art director.  That's what lead me to doing the posters on my own and going through the bands themselves.  I wanted to do edgier stuff, a little darker; so, I started contacting bands that I liked.

XROXX:  Is liking the band and their music an important part of deciding which projects you do?
James Rheem Davis:  It's definitely a lot "funner" if you really like the band and you know what they are about and you can come up with something that they really like.  I've been blown away, because I get e-mails from fans of bands that say like "I love that poster, it totally worked for that band" and such.  The bands let you know most of the time if they like it.  I've been pretty fortunate to get to actually meet and talk to them and they've been pretty cool.  Some bands I work with again.  I don't think they'd work with me again if they didn't like the work I did for them.

XROXX:  What are some of your more rare pieces?
James Rheem Davis:  I am actually really lame at self promotion and selling things.  The ones that I have printed for the bands and such are mostly under 100 copies.  The first runs I did were like 50 pressed, and have grown from there.  The biggest one I've done was 150 for TBS.  So yeah, there's not a lot of copies.  A lot of poster artists do runs of like 200 or 300.  If you think about it though, that's still not a lot of copies in the whole world.  I like doing smaller runs and making them harder to find.  It's for the fans, they have something unique.

XROXX:  Do you have a favorite piece?
James Rheem Davis:  That's like asking a parent who their favorite child is.  You can't pick one...You know, erase everything I just said.  I dunno.  There's something I like in all of them.  There are ones that I don't think are that great.  If I had to pick, the Coheed and Cambria, Brand New, and the Dashboard Confessional.  I could tell you that those are the most popular.

James is too humble for the great work he does.  He's definitely paid his dues, and is gracious for everything he has been able to do.  The interview was fun, he really made me laugh at points.  I never really had to lead the interview in the direction I wanted it to go, he did that for me.  Thanks for making my job easier.  The call was long; these art guys can really talk your pants off, I mean ear off.  Please check out GiantSumo.com or GigPosters.com or ArtofModernRock.com to get your hands on a piece of James Rheem Davis.

Jayne*Star
jayne.star@XROXX.com