Sailor Jerry Tattoos At Voodoo
One of the cooler branding promotions that exists on Earth is Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum giving out free tattoos. Not little fake temporary tattoos with their logo on them, but actual real life tattoos given by a bearded man in a small air stream trailer. If you are not away Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins was a bad ass motherfucker who pretty much revolutionized tattooing. He was tattooing sailors in Hawaii for something like 40 years and designed thousands of flash tattoos that have been compiled into three tattoo flash books that pretty much every tattoo shop in the world owns. Sailor Jerry died in 1973 but his legacy lives on and hundreds of people still get his work tattooed on them every week. At special music events around the country Sailor Jerry rum sets up a make shift tattoo shop in their air stream trailer and give out Sailor Jerry tattoos to any of the musicians who want one.
During Voodoo Music Experience New Orleans tattoo artist Terry Brown set up shop in the air stream for three days and did close to twenty tattoos on bands, crew members and me. He tattooed Diplo and Piink from Major Lazer, two of the members of Fishbone, Peelander Green, Jesse Hughes and Tuesday Cross from Boots Electric, my homies Star Eyes from Trouble & Bass and Roofeeo from TV on The Radio and a bunch of other people who I lost track of. Sorry.
Terry Brown is a great tattoo artist who specializes in this traditional tattoo style pioneered by Sailor Jerry. If you are in New Orleans you can set up an appointment with him at his shop Uptown. But if you happen to be a musician at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin this weekend he will be doing them there for free. I’ll be there so get at me and I can make sure you get hooked up.
