greenvillesky

Bogart

Here's to Bogart, the king of all cats, who slept on my chest every night for 15 years and passed away today after a long, happy life. She could fetch better than most dogs and ruled the rest of the farm.  

There are many memories but the funniest  is probably when I accidently trapped her between the screen door and main door of my apartment in Greenville one winter night after coming home from work.  I found her there a couple of hours later and she was covered in frost - and ready for revenge.  She will be missed.

Grandfather, great-grandfather, great-uncle

This is a photo of my grandfather, Marvin Clarence Eans, Jr., left, my great-grandfather Marvin, Sr., and my great-uncle Jack Eans.  It was taken in February, 1931, in Kentucky.  My Grandfather would have been seven-years-old at the time.  He worked for the General Electric Company for 37 years and was a veteran of WWII and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.   In 1999,  I gave him a blank book for Christmas and asked him to write about his life and give it to me the next Christmas.  He did.  This is what he wrote about his experience in WWII.

Bits of the past - The Last Pair

I'm not sure how I wound up saving these - the last pair of drumsticks I used while playing in the marching band at Daviess County High School in Kentucky.  That would be, let's see, many years ago.  I remember going through quite a few rolls of electrician's tape back in those days - probably kept the local hardware store in business, and possibly the ear plug business, too.  I broke my fair share of these sticks while in the band but went through bushels of a thinner style that came down hard on a trap set. later.

Some work along the way

Resuscitating aged work is a bear because it's usually in a box somewhere or loitering at an obscure url I've stopped paying attention to along the way.  So, since I have been scouring through the annals lately, I figured I'd shine this one off and sit it on top of the stack for a day or so.  All of these pics are from my newspaper gigs in Kentucky and North Carolina.  Turn your sound up for the slideshow.

Bits of the Past - Waverly Schneider

Anything Waverly Schneider does is a work of art. Back in the day, if she made you a tape, you weren't just getting any old tape. You were getting the works. She would create these incredible designs and say, "Here you go. I made you a tape" - like it was nothing. And you didn't know if you should listen to it, or frame it. Wave lived at the Maxwell House in Lexington with the band and we first met while working at a photo lab. Our claim to fame is going to see REM in Cincinnati and not having tickets. The show was sold out, so we climbed the outside of the building to the second floor and made our way in through the men's restroom. We saw the entire show and bought extra t-shirts to make up for the tickets. Wave gave me the cassette and designed the cover for the Iggy Pop album, Blah Blah Blah, above, when we bought tickets to see him open for The Pretenders in Lexington, KY. The Pretender's Chrissie Hynde was mad at her band almost the entire show and Iggy blew them away.

BIts of the past - Quixotic

This photo is one of many taken around 1987 in Boonesboro, Ky, about a half hour outside of Lexington.  From left is Craig Lowe, me, Forrest Payne and R. Scot Payne. Scot, Forrest and I moved to Lexington from Owensboro and were living in the Maxwell House at the corner of Woodland and Maxwell Streets. We met Craig and decided to add a keyboard to the band - After all, it was the 80's!  We called the band Quixotic and wrote original tunes. I could go off in a million directions here, with all the stories within the stories, but, suffice it to say, this was our life.  We lived it to the fullest and here is where I met and hung out with some of the most talented people I have ever known.  The demo we were pushing at the time was called Jealous Dream and I believe it had five songs on it, broken up with some crazy four-tracked loops of sounds that we called "Parts".  The band later became Happenstance.  Craig is now in Utah. I am in North Carolina. Forrest is in New York and Scot is in Kentucky.

Bits of the past - Sugar Ray

Meet Sugar Ray Leonard. Well, that was the name on the business card he handed me when I met him on Main Street in downtown Lexington, Ky, in 1993. I was able to follow Sugar Ray around for a whole day. He was homeless.  He would walk and talk and I would follow and every so often he would let me know I was getting on his nerves.  This is the last photo I took of him and I believe it is where I finally did get on his nerves.

Bits of the past - Darrin Phegley

Darrin Phegley and I became friends in High School and played snare drum side by side in the marching band.  At the same time, my brother Kevin had become quite the photographer in my family and I guess that rubbed off on the two of us, so we started taking night time excursions way out in Daviess County, in Kentucky, armed with a camera, tripod, flashlights and film.  I guess that was the only time we had to take photos.  We were obsessed with long-exposure light painting and the only subjects we could find were ourselves.  I have tons of negatives containing nothing but streaks of light and either me or Darrin blurred in some fashion in the frame.  This is one I have always liked and it's pretty typical of the results we would come back with.  I still go out and create light paintings to this day.  Me, Darrin and my brother Kevin have all three stayed in the photo business, as well as several of our friends from that time, and also Darrin's wife, Rhonda.  This image is originally on color negative film and has been filed in a box for about 25 years. Here's a link to  Darrin and Rhonda's  website.

Bits of the past - Marty Brown

My friend Marty Brown. Marty and I played in a rock band together in High School, but he was a coutry music singer at heart - matter of fact he went on to do some great things after we moved on. He had a pretty good stint as a country music artist and I remember watching a couple of his videos on the Country Music Channel, one was filmed in Maceo, KY, his hometown. I remember Me, Marty and Forrest Payne speeding down the country roads near Knottsville, Ky in Forrest's car, going so fast we would actually get off the ground at the top of some of those hills. Marty would be in the back seat with his acoustic guitar, laughing and strumming as we flew down the road. This photo was taken years after those times, when Marty's band came to Lexington, KY for a show. I got backstage and took a whole bunch of photos of him and caught up. Here's a biography of Marty on AOL Music

Bits of the past - Innsbruck

Here's an image I shot while traveling on a Eurail ticket in Europe in 1993. This is looking out of a window in a hotel in Innsbruck, Austria - one of my favorite cities of the entire trip. One week after I shot this photo I was in this same hotel room, looking out this same window, and there was a foot of snow on the rooftops.

Bits of the Past - Out West

Here's another pic from Santa Fe. This guy was running errands around town and I saw him in his truck and asked if I could get a quick pic. He was proud of that truck so he readily posed for the photo.