Girl Talk shows are always fun. I have seen him three times before he blew up and four or five times since then and they are always epic. I think the early shows after he got big were the best because they were just chaos. Now the Girl Talk team has it down to a science and it’s a little more controlled chaos. It’s still one hell of a party.

A number of the photographers at Voodoo had no idea what was going on when Girl Talk went on. I was sort of explaining to people that when you shoot Girl Talk you aren’t shooting Gregg Gillis behind the computers, you are shooting the whole scene, the crowd and the flying toilet paper. Gregg was wearing a Freddy Kruger mask when he came out and we never really saw him again. Honestly the photos I took of everything kinda sucked but I was having a fucking blast.

I was having so much fun that when I had to leave and get back to the Sailor Jerry Air Stream I decided I wanted to go out with a bang so I climbed up the security barricade and dove into the crowd. People had been crowd surfing but it was a quick up and down, but when they saw I was shooting photos while crowd surfing everyone got really excited and kept me up in the air. Not only was it the longest I have ever crowd surfed, but it was the longest I have ever seen ANYONE crowd surf. I was up in the air for 2 or 3 full minutes and I was more than 50 yards away from the stage when they finally put me down. The shots are pretty awful technically but they are really fun to look at to see the faces of the people in the crowd framed by my legs.

The other thing I should mention Re: Girl Talk is that later that night I hit up Girl Talk’s video art designer Andrew (Bad Brilliance) and I met him and the Girl Talk crew out at a hip hop club on Bourbon Street. After a while we ended up at a steampunk ball that Girl Talk’s booking agent Sam had to convince the manager of the House of Blues that it would be a good idea to let us all in. But we quickly got kicked out when Andrew got on stage and started dancing with steam punk go-go dancers who spanked him until security pulled him off. After that we ended up in the shadiest strip dive bar I have ever seen called Harem. There was a one drink minimum so Gregg bought everyone beers and when he gave them a credit card he had to fill out exhaustive credit card and leave a thumb print for identification. I am not even joking. The one stripper on stage had a dick but she did some amazing tricks for Andrew and Sam’s girlfriend. After her set Andrew got on stage and tried to do his own pole tricks. One of the strippers was yelling at him to get down from there but she was laughing so hard that it was hard to take  her seriously. We finally bounced before they kicked us out and Sam’s girlfriend bought us all hot dogs. The end.

Click here to see all the pictures from the actual Girl Talk set at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience.  The pictures of Andrew dancing with steampunk go go dancers we will have to save for my Tumblr…

I have a shit load of band photos from Voodoo and I am probably going to put most of them up in one giant post but a few of the bands I shot a bunch of photos that weren’t just your average boring concert shots will get their own post.  The first one of these acts was Major Lazer.

I love shooting Major Lazer because Skerrit Bwoy, while insanely hard to spell, is an amazing entertainer. The dude might be the best hype man since Flavor Flav. He and his partner Piink get the kids going nuts while Diplo towers over them in his DJ booth. Skerrit Bwoy is king of the dagger, taking out girls in the crowd, but Piink is not to be fucked with, when she brought up a guy from the audience who wouldn’t dagger her she jumped on him traumatizing him for life.

The show was great and I got awesome pictures, but what was even better was that they had a bottle of Sailor Jerry on stage the whole time and Skerrit Bwoy fed it to the crowd making my client very very happy with these shots. Plus we got Diplo and Piink to get Sailor Jerry tattoos after the concert… So pay attention kids… this is how you do liquor branding right!

Click here to see all the shots of Major Lazer at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience.

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.

Now check out all the shots of musicians getting Sailor Jerry tattoos at the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans.

As you may noticed the people paying for my adventures of late have been Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. They hired me to shoot CMJ, Voodoo Music Experience and Fun Fun Fun in Austin next weekend. I feel like they are a perfect brand for me to represent as they do rad shit for bands, throw awesome parties and are entrenched in the tattoo culture that I love to document.

At the Voodoo fest in New Orleans they had a photo boot set up and provided the rum for the festival but they also had one of their air stream trailers parked in the aritst only area and were serving up rum drinks to all the bands back stage. We had a bunch of cool bands hanging out all weekend and I got to document that stuff while they still let me check out all the bands I wanted to see. It was a pretty ideal situation.

We had Major Lazer stop by one night for tattoos and Fishbone stop by for a random 80’s dance party in the trailer. Peelander Z were there all day Friday and members of Fitz and the Tantrums and Civil Twilight spent a lot of time hanging out. Jesse Hughes from Boots Electric (and Eagles of Death Metal) stopped by and filmed a segment for Fuse and he and his girlfriend (and Boots Electric bassist) Tuesday Cross got Sailor Jerry tattoos. You might recognize Tuesday from somewhere…

Anyway this gallery is a bunch of shots of bands and other people hanging out at the air stream. Tomorrow I’ll get up all the pictures of people getting tattooed including Diplo, two members of Fishbone, Roofeeo from TV On The Radio and Peelander Green. Get excited.

But for now, click here to see the shots of the party that was the Sailor Jerry Air Stream trailer at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience.