After avoiding the chaos of SXSW, I dove straight in last Saturday with a day of customizing Converse at Fader Fort. Converse set us up in the VIP section of the fort, so artists and their entourages could get their new Converse decked out. I am so out of the loop about music these days that I had no clue who was who, but we could tell who was really important based on what kind of shoes they were comped.

I brought in my leather tools and set up a mini-studio to create custom leather shoe plates for folks. People would walk by and see me hammering away, wondering what the heck I was up to. Leather tooling = performance art in my book, so I just kept plugging away and managed to tool for 4 hours straight, which is a damn nice way to spend a Saturday.

All of the musicians were extremely nice (honest!) and excited to pick out what their shoe plates would say. Some folks went with their initials, while others tried to cram in funny phrases. I had a blast working with Goldie Glo, who had me create 5 pairs of these for his team, including Mr. Esquire. We got some business advice from other musicians, which was more charming than it sounds. Because of the time constraints, I couldn't dye the leather, but I am planning to keep working on this idea and it may make an appearance in the Canoe shop soon.

Tony Goodwin making magic happen. He nailed a crazy request for an elephant, which no one wanted to touch. Anything super tricky went straight to Tony.

Prepping for some serious spray paint work.

Masterful pair of shoes by Callie Thompson.