Billy Bragg and everything else

Saw Billy Bragg last night here in Halifax and he was fantastic. I used to listen to his stuff a lot back in the day. This morning after my coffee I was walking down Brunswick and I saw him coming the other way. "Great show last night, Billy!" I said, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Oh, I quite enjoyed it," he replied. So now I've shaken Mike Watt's hand and met Billy Bragg. I think I can die happy.

So some people seem to find the title of this blog a little strange. Why do I want to advertise the fact that I print shirts in my garage? Won't that drive away customers? Well, I suppose it might. But the fact is, I do print t-shirts in my garage. I don't want to misrepresent myself and pretend that I'm some big company with 50 employees and a personal assistant.

And besides, I'm proud of the fact. I did this because I could no longer afford to own a commercial space and play that game. It's freakin' tough, man. Between rent, power, insurance and all the other expenses, I was barely breaking even (actually, technically wasn't the last few months). But I wasn't ready to give up on my dream. Hell, I would have gone back to printing in my apartment if that's what it took. Luckily, I have an incredibly cool landlord, and when I first asked him about this idea he was immediately receptive. The funny thing is, I moved into my current place about a year ago and I remember thinking "Wow, that garage would make a cool print shop. But the landlord would probably never go for it." Well, sometimes you never know until you ask.

Currently, the garage is far from finished. I have about half of it insulated, and I'm hoping to finish it soon, but money's still pretty tight. If you want to help me, go buy a t-shirt at ZBQ or a onesy at Buzzy Weez so I can buy some more insulation. Luckily, there haven't been too many cold nights so far, but they're coming. I've been able to print relatively comfortably so far.

I have taken a bunch of pics of the garage, and these I will be posting very soon (maybe even later today), but I can't seem to locate my USB cord. With a tech-savvy 9 year old around (my son), that's a pretty common occurrence. But once that's found, I'll be posting pics of all of the shirts I'm working on at any given time. I might even get some videos up at some point.

The last shirts I did were for a local band called the The Sorrys, who are a bunch of old geezers like me. The shirts were cool, and I went to see them the other night and was quite entertained. They kind of remind me of one of my favorite bands, Guided by Voices.



This week I'll be doing shirts for local weekly paper The Coast and some other bands like The Cuban Assassins, Shelter With Thieves and Montana Band. There will be pictures.

Well, Billy, I hope the rest of your tour goes as well as last night. Looking for another girl......