Fifteen years ago I met my friend Jamie Peck at a bar in Brooklyn. She was a Suicide Girl way back then and I had shot for them and we had some mutual friends and I feel like we were probably gonna do a shoot but then it didn’t happen and she sort of got away from that NSFW life and our friendship continued as she was a journalist and we worked for some of the same outlets and I ran into her all the time in nightlife. 

Years later I was working on a zine about public nudity and I did a collaboration with my friend Kate’s Tumblr called Boobs of Bushwick which was just photos of her and her friends flashing each other at bars. Jamie happened to be one of those friends and I actually did photoshoot / bar crawl with her and the BoB crew which was really fun. A few years after that when I was working on my Instaxxx book I hit her up again and I did a photo shoot with her and her roomate exclusive to that book. But in all that time, we never did a “proper” photoshoot until now. 

Over the years Jamie has become something of a minor left wing celebrity, working for The Majority Report and doing a bunch of podcasts and shows about hard left topics. Recently she’s parlayed her communist influencer status into an OnlyFans career, posting nudes to pay for her life so she can go on speaking tours like the one she’s on now. If that’s not controlling the means of production I don’t know what is. 

While she was on tour, she needed content to post while she was a way so we did two photo shoots, one that I will be posting on my site Girls of DBB and one that will be exclusive to her OnlyFans. We also shot some BTS videos that will be on my OnlyFans. I put a preview of both shoots on my OF today. Oh, the shoot today also has a few Instax photos and a couple film photos too. All of it is paywalled, but that is just the world we are living in. 

Okay, I am about to end this post, but my new zine Off The Hook comes out tomorrow. I will be doing a whole post about it soon, but you can still pre-order it, and I would love it if you did that. 

Time to click here to see all the photo of Jamie Peck on Girls of Driven By Boredom. 

Ps. These photos look much better than the low res previews I post on the front page of this site because it was designed in 2008 and anything higher res will break the page. 

As promised, I bring you my third DBB update in less than a week! Recently I put up a round up from my two week trip to Louisville, Nashville and back to Louisville for Sailor Jerry which explained everything and gave some highlights. Then on Friday I dropped a ton of photos from Bourbon & Beyond and today I bring you a bunch of photos from the Louder Than Life Festival. 

Louder Than Life is a (mostly) rock festival in Louisville, Kentucky that was thrown one week after Bourbon & Beyond.  They both are thrown by the same company and take place at the Highland Festival Grounds. B&B is more about drinking and eating and the bands are super eclectic, while LTL featured mostly rock bands with a real nostalgia kick. I was photographing for Sailor Jerry during the day, but then I was shooting for Creem Magazine at night so this weekend I shot a ton of bands. I didn’t shoot a few of the headliners because of either restrictions (Either they wanted me to shoot from the soundboard or had contracts I didn’t want to sign) or because they played while I was still shooting for Sailor Jerry. 

I did get to shoot a few bands during the day, like childhood favorite Rancid, L7 and my friends The Bronx. I got to shoot less than a song from Megadeth because I had to run back to the SJ booth, but it was still cool to see one of my favorite bands when I was in the 5th grade. Other daylight acts I got to shoot were the Viagra Boys who I kinda love now and Run The Jewels cause how could I not? I think my favorite headliner was Weezer cause pretty much every girl I dated before the year 2003 was obsessed with them and so I pretty much know every word to their first two albums. I loved Green Day when Dookie came out but a year later I was way too punk rock for those “sell outs”. As an adult that seems super silly, but they were great live. Usually when I see a punk band that is older than I am it’s really disappointing but Green Day felt like a Broadway show or something than an aging punk act. Headliners that I have never listened to but photographed anyway included Godsmack, Avenged Sevenfold, Queens of the Stone Age and Tool. Queens of the Stone Age had us photograph them from a distance and I don’t like shooting with a long lens so those photos aren’t great, and same with the Tool photos because I got kicked out of the photo pit almost immediately because I forgot to pick up specific pass I needed after I was approved to shoot them. Whoops. Oh, and I shot Pantera too which was fun. Okay, I think that’s everyone. 

Aside from bands, there are tons of crowd shots in the gallery. I may have doubled up a few from my SJ Trip recap post, but I tried my best. Whatever the case we have nearly 200 photos for you guys to click through. Fans of my juggalo photos should enjoy these since there’s a pretty good crossover audience. I actually saw a bunch of juggalos while I was there but only photographed a few of em. Two of the girls towards the end of the gallery I actually interviewed for my Daily Beast article on Gen Z juggalos. Wild. Anyway, go check out these photos and come back soon because I have two updates coming soonish.

Click here to see all my photos from the 2023 Louder Than Life Festival in Louisville, KY.

Ps. Go pre-order my new zine!

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to two music festivals in back to back weekends in the exact same place. Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life were put on by the same company at the Highland Festival Grounds in Lexington, Kentucky. They had two very different lineups but we will get to LTL on Monday, for now we are going to talk about Bourbon & Beyond.

I was working for Sailor Jerry photographing their tattoo activations so I didn’t see much of the music, but there were a few artists I was excited to see. I got to see Blondie and Duran Duran which was really cool. I am not exactly a Killers or Bruno Mars fan but they both put on great shows, and Spoon and the Black Keys are always enjoyable. Unfortunately I missed seeing Buddy Guy and Wayne Newton but they would have been awesome to see. I didn’t photograph any of the music because I was working for SJ and didn’t apply for a press pass, but I did for LTL so I should have some decent band shots for you next week. 

The bands were so eclectic and the crowd was as well. I don’t think I have ever been to a festival with such a differing variety of artists and headliners where you had Brandi Carlile playing after Train with a bluegrass band in between. The festival was themed around drinking more than anything, which is pretty obvious with Bourbon in the name, but there were a ton of booths from different alcohol brands, like my crew over at Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. There was also an element of food and there were a lot of celebrity chefs there including my friend Chris Santos. The SJ booth was on the opposite side of the festival from the food demonstrations so I didn’t catch mutch of that, but there were a ton of Top Chef alums there who I wish I got to photograph cause it’s literally my favorite TV show of all time. 

So I don’t have a huge gallery for you as far as music festivals go, because I was focused on my SJ stuff, but it’s still 100 photos for you to click through. I think there’s some fun stuff in there just because of the wide variety of people who attended. As I mentioned I will be back Monday with the Louder Than Life photos, and I feel like you guys are going to enjoy those. 

Now click here to see all my crowd shots from 2023 Bourbon & Beyond in Lexington, KY.

It has been way too long since I have updated this site. I had big one planned announcing my new zine but life got in the way and then I had to leave town on this big trip that I am about to talk about. I figured I would have time to work on it on the road but I never did so I am just going to do a big update about it when it’s available for sale, but in the meantime you can preorder it here now! Now, let’s get in to what I have been doing the last two weeks…

I started taking photos for Sailor Jerry back in 2011 and they had were one of my best clients for nearly a decade, but then came the pandemic and my back injury and suddenly it had been about four years since I had worked for them. Fortunately we are once again working together. You may have already seen the trip I did with them to Sturgis Buffalo Chip, but now we are back with not one, but two music festivals, and a handful of stuff in between. In total I was on the road for twelve days, four in Louisville, KY for Bourbon & Beyond, three in Nashville and then four more days in Louisville for the Louder Than Life festival. It was a ton of work, but also a ton of fun. I am going to have separate posts about the two music festivals by themselves, but I wanted a post to give you a highlight of all the Sailor Jerry activations, which primarily included giving out Sailor Jerry flash tattoos.

The first festival, Bourbon & Beyond was an eclectic mix of music with other events centered around food and drink. The crowd was equally eclectic and we tattooed a TON of people. Tattooer Justin Smith was in town from Dallas, TX and cranked out some great tattoos all weekend. One of the highlights was that Bruno Mars was playing and my buddy Shaun is Bruno’s tour manager, so I got to hang out with him a bit and his girlfriend signed up for her first ever tattoo while he was off working. 

After B&B I jumped in my rental car and drove to Nashville where we had a series of small events mostly catered to people who work in the alcohol industry there. I spent the week hanging with bartenders and bar managers which are of course my kinda people after working in nightlife as long as I have. The first event we did was a collaboration with a clothing designer named Travis Austin who helped everyone customize their own hat that he is going to make for everyone. Now, I pretty much only wear baseball caps, but I got a chance to design one too and I am pretty excited to see how it turns out. Perhaps “Retirement Igor” can pull it off. I have a handful of photos in here from the bar stops we made at Honky Tonk Central and Tootsie’s and a couple from the Nashville Sounds baseball game we attended but those aren’t really very interesting photographically so I only posted a couple from each. The final event we did in Nashville was another tattoo event, this time for local bartenders. We had Bradley Delay tattooing who happened to be in town from Portland. He tattooed a bunch of bartenders and VIP and was still tattooing when I left to go eat lunch at an Aquarium themed restaurant in a mall. I should also mention that my girlfriend came to Nashville for a couple of days as well which was amazing. 

After that it was back to Louisville for Louder Than Life which was a kinda nostalgia festival, but one for bands that were huge when I was a kid so that’s perfect. I got to see Rancid and Weezer and a bunch of other bands I listened to as a teenager, but more on that in a future post. This post is about Sailor Jerry. The SJ booth seemed like the place to be at the second festival. We had local artist Christopher M. Waugh tattooing all weekend. We had a ton of media come by, a lot of cute goth girls and our friends The Bronx did a meet and greet there after their show. Brad from the Bronx is a friend of mine and Matt their frontman does the Sailor Jerry Podcast so it was cool to be able to do something with them. Oh, also my buddy Buff Monster was there all weekend because his long time girlfriend is my SJ boss! The festival was a lot of fun and I shot a bunch of the bands so be on the lookout for that post. 

Okay, that’s it for now, but I will be back soon with seperate updates for Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life. I also have a couple other shoots coming soon and more info about my new zine so maybe check back more often than normal for a couple weeks. See you guys soon!

Now click here to see some highlights from my Sailor Jerry road trip!

Today would have been the 40th birthday of my brother from another mother Ross Harman. I met Ross when I was in college when a friend of mine told me I should check out this two man synthy dance band called the Gaskets. Even though I was only 23 I had been working in music since for nearly a decade starting when I was 14 with a punk zine, then running a punk record label a year later, booking shows and of course photographing bands. At the time it probably didn’t make a lot of sense for me to manage a kinda goofy dance band, but they just absolutely blew me away and I kept bugging them until they let me help out and over the seven years between meeting the Gaskets and Ross’ death I became as close to those guys as you could possibly imagine. They were my family and Ross’ death was absolutely life shattering. 

Teddy Blanks was the other member of the Gaskets and is still a great friend of mine. He’s a graphic designer now, who has done all of my books and zines, and oh, also the font for the god damn Barbie movie and a million other incredible things. But as busy as he is he’s spent years working on a project dedicated to the solo music of his musical partner who went by Ballpoint Pens. When Ross died Teddy was given Ross’ old laptop. It was actually Teddy’s old computer that Ross had been using so they could work on music together when Teddy moved to NYC. When Teddy booted up the computer he found tons of Ross’ music on it, from finished songs to rough bits and pieces, all recorded on a laptop mic in a bedroom with ballpoint pens for the drums (hence the name Ballpoint Pens). 

At Ross’ memorial service we played some of this stuff and everyone was blown away. Ross had put a few songs out on his MySpace page, but no one had really heard how much great stuff he had recorded. Most of the people at the service were in bands themselves and I had this idea that maybe we could get some of them to professionally record his music as a tribute album. Luckily people actually followed up and not only did we get enough music for a double length record but we were able to raise enough money to release the tribute album, as well as two more Ballpoint Pens records. It was such and amazing project and I know it meant a lot to the many, many people who loved Ross.

Over the last decade Teddy has been messing around here and there with the music. He used some of the tracks to release posthumous songs with Ross and started trying to clean up some of the old tracks. He had the GarageBand files for a lot of these songs and began to remix them. Over the last few years Teddy has been taking this project more seriously and has spent his own money having these songs professionally mixed and mastered. He’s stated organizing and remixing files, building new songs and using new AI tools to help isolate tracks so he, and other musicians, could re-record some of the instrumentations.  It’s been such a cool experience to get emails from Teddy with brand new Ballpoint Pens songs I had no idea existed and cleaned up versions of songs I have loved for years.

Today, for Ross’ 40th birthday Teddy has released the Ballpoint Pens archive and the first six tracks of the new Ballpoint Pens collection, Mazes. Each week a new song will be added which will give us weekly chances to share Ross’ music with the world. When the archive is finished it will have multiple albums, notes on every song, as well as the remixes, originals and covers for them all. The project is such an incredible way to honour our friend and I can’t wait to see it grow as Teddy continues to work on it.  I just really hope we can get some eyes on it who will be learning about Ross for the first time. It would mean so much to me if you checked out this music and shared it if you enjoyed it. 

Please check out the Ballpoints Pens archive and the first six songs of the new Ballpoint Pens collection,  Mazes.

Part two of my Sturgis trip is going to be a bit shorter of an update. If you didn’t check out Part One, do that first. Part One consisted of the first two days I was working ofr Sailor Jerry at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, while Part Two is just day three. That being said, the last day was my favorite and has some of my best photos from the trip so this should be a good one, even if there are less photos and less of me rambling. Speaking of less rambling, let’s get into it. 

Day two started with a surprise. I was told I was gonna have to work pretty much non stop from 1pm until 9pm so I decided to sleep in. Luckily I didn’t sleep too late because I woke up to a text offering me a helicopter ride. South Dakota seems to be the helicopter tourism capital of the world because everywhere I went I saw helicopter flights being advertised, I just didn’t expect to go up in one. It’s at this point I should mention that at sometime in my 30s I developed a crippling fear of heights. I can’t stand on a railing a few flights up without my palms getting sweaty. But the interesting thing about that is that I am not at all afraid of flying, and I thought maybe the same thing would be true about helicopters. Luckily I was right. It was legitimately an amazing experience and I think I got some cool shots of the Buffalo Chip campgrounds. I would love to do it again with a longer lens, less for the photos and more for just the fun of being in a helicopter. It was just really great even if we were only in the air for about twenty minutes.

After the helicopter ride we went over to an event at Camp Zero at Buffalo Chip. Not sure what the official party was but there was a bunch of mini bikes and drag races and everyone was young and wearing Hawaiian shirts and seemed like they could be from Brooklyn or Austin and less of the hard right senior bikers that seemed to be everywhere. I actually ran into a woman I had photographed in LA many years ago. This was way more my speed. The International Bikini Team girls were back in their Sailor Jerry finest and we took some fun photos as well. It was a blast.

Next on the agenda was the Sailor Jerry tattoo happy hour. The tattoo artist Shaun Kama was hosting a pop up tattoo shop on the Buffalo Chip campgrounds and Sailor Jerry of course had to sponsor it. They also did two events where you could come by and get free Sailor Jerry tattoo flash. I was only in town for one of them, but five people ended up with Sailor Jerry tattoos during the happy hour. I have done so many of these tattoo events with Sailor Jerry and I love doing them because it’s a lot of hanging out with tattoo artists and bullshitting while taking the occasional photo. It’s very low stress and a good time for everyone. 

The happy hour ran late so I actually missed most of the VIP event that Sailor Jerry hosted backstage. I did end up there just in time for the Sailor crew to go up on stage and toss out SJ merch. That was a nightly thing and not the most exciting of photos, but always fun to try and shoot t-shirt cannons. After that Styx and REO Speedwagon played which admittedly aren’t really for me, but the crowd ate it up and I enjoyed the hits. Part of me wanted to stay out late that last night, but I was exhausted after a few days of sleeping in an uncomfortable RV with motorcycles driving by every few minutes so I crashed early and got my only good night sleep of the whole event which made my 13 hour travel day way more chill than I was expecting. 

So that’s it! That’s a wrap on Sturgis. Thanks again to Sailor Jerry having me out. Was really glad to cross that one off my bucket list. I’m also down to just three continental US states that I haven’t traveled to. I got a road trip planned to hit Idaho and Montana and then I will just have North Dakota left. Lastly I should mention, that there a handful of very moderately NSFW photos over here, just because I am still using Flickr to host my galleries and I don’t want to get in trouble with them for posting a bikini model in a thong or whatever nonsense is against their TOS because we live in a country governed by puritans and cowards. Okay, go look at photos now. I gotta get back to enjoying my vacation.

Click here to see all the photos from day three of my Sturgis Buffalo Chip adventure! 

For years my favorite client was Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. We did so many events together and in the early 2010s it felt like I was going to some music festival or tattoo convention for them every other weekend. Times and budgets changed and that stuff slowed down but I was still working with them semi regularly until the pandemic canceled events and then I had my back injury and couldn’t really do any big events. A few months ago I reached back out to them and let them know my back was doing better and was down to work again and it wasn’t long before they reached out with the idea of me going to the infamous Sturgis Bike Week. That’s been on my bucket list for a long time so of course I said yes. 

Sturgis is both a city in South Dakota and a shorthand for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which is now in its 83rd year. It is synonymous for absolute chaos as hundreds of thousands of bikers descend on the area for ten days of scenic rides and total mayhem. Sailor Jerry was sponsoring the events at the Buffalo Chip campground who has been hosting thousands of bikers every year since 1981. They offer a place to camp, several bars, a swimming hole and live music every night. I got to spend three days in an RV right behind the amphitheater, mostly taking photos of Sailor Jerry related stuff, but I got to roam a bit too and I got some pretty fun pictures in the process. 

I have over 400 photos to share with you guys so I broke my three days into two halves. I didn’t shoot a ton on day one, so Part One is days one and two and then Part Two is the final day which was honestly my favorite, but mostly because I got to fly in a helicopter which is something I’ve never done before. More on that later… 

I booked my flight super last minute and so it would have been $2000 to fly in on Sunday  and the flight would leave at 6am which means I would have to wake up at 3am and since I usually go to bed around 2 that didn’t seem like an ideal situation. So I looked up flights the day before and they were significantly cheaper, but after getting a hotel and a far too expensive rental car, it was basically break even. But flying in a day early meant I would be well rested and I could check out Mt. Rushmore and Deadwood and some of that kinda stuff. I took the 6am Saturday flight and when I got to my layover they offered me $600 to stay. It was raining in SD and so my sightseeing options were limited so I accepted and spent six hours in the Minneapolis airport. I figured I could nap but I completely failed and by the time I got to my hotel I was absolutely broken. Still, the rain was breaking a little bit and I was only five minutes away from Mt. Rushmore so I went and spent $10 to look at some stone heads for about 5 minutes. Honestly it was far less impressive than the World’s Largest Wooden Bigfoot that happened to be across the street from my hotel. I went back to the hotel, walked around Keystone, SD for a few minutes, got some tacos, hit the pool and finally went to sleep well rested for Sturgis the next day.

The first day at Buffalo Chip was mostly getting settled. We got there a bit late because sadly there was an accident and the road getting in was backed up. Jason from Sailor Jerry picked me up and we did some grocery shopping and waited for the road to clear. Once we got there we had to get passes and deal with a few other things and then we got a tour of the place and checked out the Motorcycle As Art gallery. Buffalo Chip is huge and wasn’t really walkable but we had golf carts and mini bikes to use. Fortunately the stage and the Sailor Jerry sponsored bar was super close to our campsite so I mostly just walked everywhere. I spent an hour or two that day on my own. I walked past “Bikini Beach” where they were having an “air sex” competition which was pretty much like air guitar but for fucking. Apparently they had weird stuff like that all day there, which felt real Gathering of the Juggalos to me, but I was of course working for a corporate client so I just took a couple photos and moved on. That night the country singer Tommy Howell, formerly the actor C. Thomas Howell, performed and he was actually pretty good. I don’t really know why he changed his name though because he talked about how he was in the Outsiders between nearly every song. Finally the night ended with Lynyrd Skynyrd headlining. I mean the night didn’t actually end, there was a strip club afters thing and Bikini Beach and some of the bars were apparently popping, but I was off the clock so I went to bed. If I was covering this as a journalist I certainly would have stayed out a bit, but I had long days and I was happy to take it easy.

Day two we got to go out to Deadwood which I was psyched about because I didn’t get to go on Saturday. We brought with us four members of the International Bikini Team which is apparently a real thing. These girls basically served as promotional models for a bunch of different brands throughout the event so they would be working for Sailor Jerry one day and then Monster Energy the next or something like that. They also competed in a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night and also bartened and did a bikini bike wash. I just hope they got paid well because those girls were hustling. I would honestly watch a documentary about them. 

Anyway, in Deadwood I mostly just photographed them handing out Sailor Jerry swag to people. Not the most exciting thing but it was fun to watch everyone’s reaction to them. We did a mini photoshoot on the stage they had set up for the Legend’s Ride and then a bunch of people came up and took photos with them since we had accidentally set up a photo booth. After that we got lunch and then made our way back to Buffalo Chip. We had planned on stopping in Sturgis on the way back but we were all exhausted. After a quick nap it was back to photographing bands. Leilani Kilgore opened and then Lita Ford played. I had such a crush on Lita Ford when I was like 14 and honestly she’s still kinda a babe in her 60s. 

The night was headlined by Limp Bizkit. Seriously. While Fred Durst is super goofy and I never liked their music back in the day, I actually really enjoyed their set. The combination of nostalgia mixed with the reactions from the crowd made it a lot of fun. Plus my strongest Limp Bizkit memory is their Woodstock 99 performance so I was just waiting for bikers to just start setting shit on fire. It didn’t happen, probably because the average age of the crowd was 65, but we still had a good time. 

So yeah, that’s the end of Part One. I will be back soon with the final day of the trip. I should also mention that while I didn’t really shoot any super NSFW photos, there are a few that I felt were a little to risque for Flicker so I threw them up on Girls of DBB. That site has thousands of my nude photos from over the years and is totally worth the money, but don’t sign up for it just to see the few NSFW shots from Sturgis because it’s not much. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Now go look at some photos. And thanks again to Sailor Jerry for having me out!

Click here to see all my photos from day one and two of my 2023 Sturgis Buffalo Chip adventure.

Update: Jade is back to being called Jade Baker and the digitals from this shoot are here.

Jade Baker was one of my absolutely favorite models to photograph. I say was because she is no longer Jade Baker, she has rebranded and is now going by Rosie Jones. As someone who has had the same online identity since 2001, I totally get it. Clearly I am not the same person I was 20 something years ago and I know that Rosie is a much different person from who she was when Jade Baker was born. 

Rosie was visiting NYC and decided to book the room Dylan Thomas was living in when he died at the infamous Chelsea Hotel. Weirdly enough I had never taken photos at the Chelsea and obviously I couldn’t pass the opportunity to shoot there or to photograph Rosie so of course we made it happen. The balcony of the roof has a great view of the sign so most of the shots we took out there. Honestly I took so many of nearly the exact same photo of her on the balcony. I just wanted to nail it and I think I did. We shot it in her bra, topless, nude, during the day and at night. We shot some stuff in the actual room as well, but clearly it’s not quite as fun as that incredible balcony. I’m sure we were spotted by people outside, but it’s the Chelsea, I am sure that kinda thing is expected. 

After the shoot I went home and pulled all my favorites from the digital photos and was pretty much ready to post but I wanted to wait for Jade to become Rosie so I held off for a while. Before she made the announcement I got the 35mm photos we shot back and I was so psyched about them. The daylight flash looked great, the flash stuff in the hotel looked great, the low light stuff as the sun went down looked great and we even got a few decent black and white shots. They just blew away the digital photos and there was more than 50 of them so guess what, you guys get the 35mm shoot instead of the digitals. It had to be done. Eventually I will probably post the digital stuff, but it’s just not as good so who knows when that will be. 

I should mention once again, that my new nude stuff is paywalled because frankly I can’t afford to fix my broken website and I haven’t found a better solution than using Flickr for my galleries. One of these days I will figure out a better solution but for now just give me a few dollars and you will have access to nearly ever nude I have ever taken… on and there’s also some BTS video from this shoot on my OnlyFans. Just saying.

Now click here to see all the 35mm photos of Rosie Jones at the Chelsea Hotel!

It’s all over, we made it to the last post. Will we have to wait another whole year for juggalo content? Only time will tell but this is a wrap for the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos. All we got left is the music stuff, and it’s the largest gallery of them all. I got over 250 band photos to share with you guys, and some Riff Raff related drama to share and I will try and speak about every artist I photographed and maybe a few I didn’t. Let’s begin…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t shoot much the first night I was there. I didn’t get in until horrorcore legends NATAS were playing but it was too late to shoot them. So we start on day two when I photographed Korihor and by photographed I mean I took like two photos of them from the crowd because I missed the beginning of their set photographing the wet t-shirt contest. I feel like you understand. After that the 90s rock/grunge band Sponge played. They are from Detroit like ICP so that makes sense I think. You would absolutely know their song Plowed if you heard it. Speaking of 90s bands, Arrested Development was up next. Their first album was the first CD I ever owned and I was psyched to see them. They were great and juggalos absolutely loved them. A mosh pit broke out during Everyday People which was incredible. 

After they ended Riff Raff went on and people seemed excited about it. I barely knew that dude made music, but juggalos were like singing along to his songs. Despite what would have been a mostly positive reception he seemed terrified of the juggalos. He didn’t leave the very back of the stage, mostly hiding behind the DJ booth. Obviously some juggalos threw some Faygo at him, because that’s what they do, but he reacted to it with abject horror. Once juggalos saw that they of course started throwing more shit at him. He brought out a bodyguard which was hilarious to everyone. He forced his boys to go out in front of him and knock stuff down. He then proceeded to perform backstage. Eventually he brought out a second security guard and one of his crew had an actual umbrella and was trying to protect him. At some point a can of Faygo missed him by a few feet and he got splashed and ran backstage to jeers and laughter. It was fucking embarrassing. I posted a video of it and he responded with some hilarious shit about how he had paid for his whole crew to get new hair cuts or something. He deleted the Tweet a few hours later but that didn’t stop my Twitter mentions from becoming a garbage dump. Oh well. 

The mainstage headliners were ICP doing a “Wicked Clowns From Outer Space” show which was based on a tour they did in 1999 which I might actually have gone to back in the day. I don’t really need to do a write up about the Insane Clown Posse again, but if you ever are in a situation where you could see ICP live, I highly recommend it. Even if you hate the music, they are incredible live. Like, one of the best live acts I have ever seen even in 2023. 

Part of being middle aged with a back injury and having photographed the Gathering 13 times is that I tend to go home early. I get there late, go home early, get enough photos and try not to kill myself. So I usually head back to the hotel after the headlining band. Occasionally I do stick around for a late night act or two, and on Thursday night RA The Rugged Man was playing. I enjoy his music, we have mutual friends and he always puts on a good show so I figured I would check out at least part of his set. He did his thing as usual but at some point the mics stopped working so he just grabbed a juggalo’s megaphone and jumped into the crowd. It was a sharp contrast to the Riff Raff set, which RA made clear when he said “I don’t care if you all hit me with a cinder block, I’m not leaving!” He also brought a ton of juggalos on stage, had two juggalette’s serving booze to the crowd and brought out a rapper named Reverie Love who absolutely killed it. I was about leave when my friend mentioned that D Loc of Kottonmouth Kings was playing next. His team had reached out to me about filming something for them, but they weren’t trying to pay me so that didn’t happen, but I figured I could at least shoot a few songs of their set. Finally around 1:30am I escaped the Gathering. 

Day three started off with Whitney Peyton. She’s played the Gathering a bunch and when I first saw her I didn’t really think much of it, but the last couple times she put on an incredible show, so I knew I had to check out her set and I made the right decision. She crowd walked, talked shit about Riff Raff, stole my hat at one point and performed a couple songs from the mosh pit. Towards the end of her set I Tweeted a video of her in the crowd to contrast the Riff Raff shit and when I looked up she was in a kiddie pool crowd surfing. It was great. My only complaint was that she decided that she wanted pink bubbles during her set and you couldn’t even tell they were pink but they covered my hat, vest and camera with little pink dots that I still can’t get out of the grip of my lens. 

After Whitney was Ritz who is another rapper I have seen at the Gathering a bunch and then Mac Sabbath who are a McDonald’s themed band that does like Black Sabbath parody songs about fast food. I don’t really know why they exist but I am really glad I got to photograph them. Also, as I mentioned before my friend’s boyfriend was working for them so I ended up hanging out with him after their set during the headliner Ouija Macc, but before that happened we had a set from Yelawolf who I have photographed a bunch of times. Every time I am at the Gathering I make sure to do a good job photographing Ouija Mac, not only is he the most popular non ICP act at the Gathering but he’s the absolutely nicest dude and he’s managed by friends of mine. I had to get a quick quote from him for my Daily Beast article and I ended up missing City Morgue’s set the next day because we were just talking about whatever and now we are talking about me going out on tour with him for a few dates this fall. So yeah, we fuck with Ouija. 

On the final day of the Gathering I didn’t shoot a ton of bands, as I mentioned I missed City Morgue who were the pre-ICP headliners. I did shoot Alien Ant Farm who apparently still exist. I also shot Krizz Kaliko who has been at the Gathering a bunch. He’s on TechN9ne’s record label Strange Music which is a label that juggalos to tattoo to themselves. Penultimately I photographed a short set from the Sugarhill Gang. I think they only have one original member and they only did three songs but it was still amazing. So glad I saw that. 

Finally ICP did their second space themed set. I threw on a poncho and another poncho for my camera and did what I could to get some decent shots. I have photographed ICP like 20 times and I am not sure I have ever taken a photo of them that I love. It’s just really hard to shoot a backlit band that throws sticky liquid at you the entire time, but we do what we can. After the three songs we were allowed to shoot I threw away the rain gear and shot some of the crowd and then decided it would be a good idea to photograph the “Faygo Armageddon”. During their last song they bring tons of people on stage to throw the rest of the remaining Faygo into the crowd. I’ve actually done it twice and it’s one of the most fun things I have ever done. Unfortunately I had thrown away my rain gear and I got soaked in the process. I ran into a juggalo at my hotel that night and he told me he saw me get destroyed and keep going back. Luckily they ended up being some of my favorite band shots of the Gathering so I guess it was worth it. Plus it started raining right after the set so I got a little less sticky (and a little more wet).

And that ends another Gathering of the Juggalos. I hope you enjoyed the ride. I am sure we will do it again next year, and hopefully by then I will be a little closer to my juggalo book…

Now click here to see all the photos from the musical acts of the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.