In 2016, we embarked upon another USA adventure. Bags were packed, and we were on the hunt for big metal giants. Multiple cities, multiple spots, many empty spray cans, resulting in many freight trains with fresh new paint jobs, and many sunrises seen – usually washing down a cold night of painting with Waffle House grease and cold beer for breakfast.
“Sleep, tankers, hoppers, sleep… and at some point tomorrow, chicken.”
We were in for some freezing nights, and the journey went down as planned. An awesome trip. Then, we lost the footage! So many hours of painting captured, lost forever due to a corrupted hard drive. We brought in the ‘experts’, aka a dude TUESY found in the yellow pages, and months later he couldn’t put Humpty back together again. The action was gone.
Fast forward to 2019 and we discovered a backup of SOME of the footage, hidden away in a weird folder on a different hard drive, stashed in a moment of sleep-deprived delirium and paranoia. Thanks to this lucky discovery, we present ‘The Lost Tapes’, covering the first couple days of our road trip, including one of the best spots. Sure, we can’t show you the moment things got a little off-plan, and we got stuck hiding in a swamp, worried about alligators, only to be eaten alive by mosquitos, but we’ll take what we can get. The 3:43 am start was worth it!
Stay tuned for the photos in a separate post.
Roll the credits:
Shot: Luke Shirlaw
Cut: OBLVS
Artists: MAPLE (@maple_tci), TUES (@tuesy), STAE2 (@getfreshrailroad), CUBA (@el_cubano975), CELF (@vtmnc) SLOM (@baconavocado)
Music:
Pala – ‘Stranger in the Woods’
Clams Casino – ‘I’m God (San Holo Edit)’
Sam & Dave – ‘Wrap it Up’
Ray Charles – ‘Georgia On My Mind’
Intro text: Luke Shirlaw (Artillery Projects) 
