Episode 4: Sign Writer Tom Collins, Limerick Ireland

In this episode Sean and Tom talk about their shared ignorance of sports, Morrissey, 1980s New Wave and, oh yeah... sign painting.

Transcription:

Coming to you from Starr Studios in Denison, Texas, this is Coffee with a Signpainter, a weekly podcast hosted by sign painter, Sean Star, that consists of interviews with other sign painters and some of the customers and characters Sean comes across while running his studio. Hello there. Welcome back to the show. If you're anything like me, you have a love affair for all things Irish. You're in for a treat today.

We will be speaking with Tom Collins in Limerick, Ireland of Tom Collins signs. And, we have a really fun conversation. I think you're gonna enjoy it. It's kind of a shame that Tom's in Ireland because I think this is a guy I could probably hang out with and have a beer with once in a while. But, let's go ahead and get into the interview.

We have some good discussions on painting signs as well as, get to talk about Morrissey and the Smiths a little with a fellow Marcy fan, which is always fun for me. So, kick back, open up a Guinness, or drink some Irish coffee or whatever you wanna do, and let's talk to Tom. If I had coffee this late in the in the day, I'd be up till the next day. Well, I need I needed it after the day I've had I've had Sean. But look, do you need do you need a bathroom break?

Are you good to go? Are you sure now? I I am in good shape. I just came back. Thank you.

I couldn't resist it sorry it's all good so okay first of all I have a it's totally off topic question but so yesterday I and I'm very happy I was invited because it's a nice thing and I like hanging out with people, with my friends and eating good food, but, like the whole Super Bowl thing, I just don't get it. I am not a sports guy, I don't understand the fervor for it. What about you? Are you a sports guy? Well, I was I was very nervous that you would want to talk about the Super Bowl, and, I was hoping you wouldn't because I know I I don't know.

I I I know the Patriots, the Patriots were playing the Phoenix, no, the Phoenix are the Patriots. Am I right? Am I right? No, the yeah, exactly. I'm about I'm about on the same page.

I have no idea. I had to to go on Google on the drive over when my wife and I were heading over to our friend's house to like look at okay who's playing because I have no idea yeah that's like fifth or sixth football game I've actually ever sat through Well, look, all I can say is that, here rugby, where I'm from in Limerick, rugby is the sport of choice. If you're not, you know, affiliated with a certain rugby team, then, you know, you don't quite fit in. Mhmm. And as a result of that, I've always felt a little bit on the outside of of of of that, and and, you know, when I was in school, we went to Christian Brothers, which was, you know, Gaelic sports and hurling and Gaelic football, and you know, it was fairly full on, and I think it put me off sports for life, thank God, you know?

I used to play a lot of snooker with my dad, which, and billiards, which is a sign of a misspent youth, and I've continued that into my adult life. Okay. And what I'm proud to say. I wouldn't classify that as sports. That's just like fun drinking games to them.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's it's, it's, you know, at least you can say you have some, you know, you have some ability to, you know, shoot a ball around a table, and, you know, tell a few jokes or whatever, but definitely the sporting for me, and some of my clients would be, would be ex rugby, internationals, like Irish rugby internationals, and you know I'm sure they're bored with guys asking them questions and looking for tickets, and I never do any of that. Yeah. You know, it just never comes up. And I don't know whether they think I'm I'm being okay about it, not bothering them about it, or I don't know what they think, to be honest.

But, you know, sometimes it's better to say nothing and and and seem stupid than to speak and remove all doubt. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Exactly.

So, I just I just I just I just say nothing. And if they have a good game or a bad game, I I, you know, I don't know. Well, that gives me comfort because it's like, okay, I'm I'm not the only one that's completely sports ignorant and doesn't care. I don't, you know, my life would might be easier if I like sports because then, yeah, you can, you know, I I had breakfast with a friend of mine named Rob this morning and we were talking about that because he doesn't have any interest in sports either. It would probably make life easier if you could like the whole stand around the water cooler and talk about who's what, you know, but P.

J. Yeah, absolutely. P. J. And what do you is Robin in the same game as well?

P. J. No, he actually, he designs houses. Okay. So you talk about design, or different things around creative, you know, creative endeavors.

Would that be fair to say? Yeah, and that that's one, you know, one I I guess why I brought up the sports thing is I just wonder how many people that do creative work, like, don't care about sports. Yeah. Yeah. I think that for me anyway, I I, you know, I I I most of my friends are like me who, you know, I've I've, I've sought them out, you know.

You know, I I think, you know, for me there's nothing worse than being in that situation where you're trying to, you know, like I say, wing it and, you know, you're dying a horrible death trying to, you know, and you're saying a wrong thing. Baseball terms when they're talking about football. Yeah. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Although I did watch a really good sports movie, recently called Million Dollar Arm.

And I really liked it because, the actor from Mad Men is in it, and he is, he's like one of these kind of Jerry Maguire characters Okay. Who's really down in his look and you know, he somehow joins the dots between watching an episode of the X Factor one night and a cricket game, and goes to India and, recruits, pitchers for, you know, for to bring back to The States and and it's true story based interest. So it was actually really interesting. You know, but what I know about sports, Sean, I could put in the back of the stand, my friend. Okay.

Well, I don't feel as peculiar, so thank you. So I was looking over your website and I've followed you on Instagram for a while, but I was looking at your website pretty in-depth before we did this and you've got like my most romanticized, ridiculous, you know, life because you're you're in Ireland. You you grew up above a pub, right? That's right. Okay.

And most of the sign painting that you do is, you know, old traditional work and you do a lot of pub work and all of that kind of stuff. So, it's like, for I don't I don't know if you know, but, like, in The United States, you know, obviously, there's a big chunk of people here that come from Irish background, but it it's almost like, I don't know, like, you know how there's Japanophiles that are just, like, geeks about everything Japanese, you know? I I think there's a lot of us that way about Ireland. So like I just reading through the list and I'm like Yeah. Holy crap, that's amazing.

Wow. It's run of the mill to you probably, but Well, it's it's it's, it's, you know, it's it's funny because I was reading somewhere recently about how, Irish bars in in The States are one of the fastest growing, you know, businesses. And, you know, there's obviously something there for people that they can they can relax, or they, you know, there's something, something warm and inviting and maybe seductive about those old bars. You know, and it it it it it it sometimes it's hard to even put your finger on it. But, yeah, I mean I've been very fortunate, and you know my background, you know, growing up at home, you know, I remember, you know, it was a big deal to get the sign painted.

It was one of the first kind of, you know, memories I have of of of of sign painting is is, you know how serious my parents were about, you know, getting the script just right. And, and you know there was often, you know, there was often a lot of toing and froing about where you put the apostrophe, you know. Okay. And that would go on for a while, and, but they treated the sign painter, with a lot of respect, I remember. Nice.

And you know, yeah, I guess, I guess, you know, you grow up with the term here sign writer, and I'm hearing sign painter more often. And actually I like, I really like sign painter. But anyway, yeah, I've just been very lucky with the way things went for me, and, also at home we had a lot of beautiful old whiskey mirrors, Sean, you know, the really tasty ones. Yeah. Powers whiskey, mirrors, easily a hundred years old plus.

And these would have been, just think about this for a minute, you know, compared to the plastic rubbish that, you know, reps dole out to bars now, these were beautifully made. Works of art, my friend. And you know, not only did the company that was producing them really care about their product and, you know, that they would go through this much trouble, but They really cared about their customer as well, you know, and the experience, for people to be in that environment having this beautiful, you know, piece to, you know, to both just, you know, be mesmerized by and you know for me growing up one of the jobs I had was to clean the mirrors in the bar and they had lots of big old powers whiskey mirrors and other mirrors you know. And explain that because from from what I read your your parents owned the pub that you lived over, right? Yeah.

That's right. It was a a third generation, family business, and, you know, it was it was at the time a lot of a lot of publicans, you know had their, lived over their businesses and it was a way of keeping an eye on the business, it was a way of being close to the business. You know Ireland wasn't a very wealthy country, you know, we kind of lost a run of ourselves in the last handful of years, and we're beginning to kind of come out of that now, and and with the hangover of all of that. But, in the, you know, when I was growing up in the seventy's and the nineteen eighty's, you know, people didn't have multiple homes and live, you know, too far away from their place of work, you know, they kind of worked close to, or lived close to work, you know. And so I suppose, it was, it was a business my grandparents bought in 1932.

And my dad Tom took it over, Tom senior, and I'm the youngest of six. So, you know, it was an old Georgian, townhouse. Okay. And, freezing cold, no central heating, you know, but big windows, lots of light. My eldest brother is a painter, so you know we were always around creative stuff.

I had two sisters as well who were very creative and had a paint effects business believe it or not in the nineteen eighty's, doing all these kind of old bars, and you know, with nicotine stained effects. Oh, okay. Effects and walls, and you know, marbling and all of that. And, so you know, I was around that a lot, and a lot of the clientele would have been very creative musicians, artists, writers, it was great. You know, and you would get a few of the rugby crowd coming in wanting to know what the score was, but you know, I'd run away from those guys.

Yeah. And it was great. It was a really great place to grow up, and it was social contact. You had you know, you had to learn to communicate with people, and, you know, take a rise here, or take a slagging, we call it here. It's, you know, to be teased, and to be able to come back and not be wounded and go away all hard.

Toughen you up, tough tough toughing you up is right. And if you weren't able for, you know, God, you'd die. Die horrible deaths, you know? So how if your family, is, you know, several generation pub people, publicans, you call it? That's the term?

Yep. Yep. How how did you go into sign painting? What got you into that? Well, I didn't plan to be a sign painter.

For a while, I mean when I was in school I just loved to draw and I was always drawing, I used to get into a lot of trouble because I was I was drawing in the classes I should have been not drawing in, you know. And so I was, you know, one of the first commissions I ever had was when I was put in detention, for drawing, and they decided to get me to do the school quest, for the gym on a big sheet of eight by four plywood. Uh-huh. And, and and you know, the other guy that was in detention with me had to kind of stand in front of me with his with his school jumper with the crest on it, and I had to kind of try and copy it and, you know, do the Latin and High-tech. High-tech, yeah.

And there was no vectors in those days. But you know, I really enjoyed it, and you know, they kept me there for a few days to finish it, you know. And so it was the most productive period of detention I ever had, and you know, they didn't really know what to do with me there, and, you know, I wasn't very academic. I, you know, the bar at home in a way was good but it was also bad because I always thought, well you know, I'll just get a job in the bar, you know, and, that wasn't, that wasn't, that didn't really, it didn't really do it for me, and you know, so I started travelling around and doing different things and miserable things really, and, I finally got to about 24 and I realized I, you know, I was really unhappy with all the choices I'd made. And the one thing I didn't really, give myself a chance to do was was was something creative, and I just, you know, I had maybe listened to too many people who were, you know, well intentioned trying to warn me off a life as a creative person, you know?

Right. And and for my own good kind of thing. But then when you're when you are a creative person and you try to do something else, and and nothing seems to work, it's it's a difficult place to be, you know. Mhmm. So you know, at that stage I decided to sort of just start again, and and I went back to, college as a mature student.

And I thought, okay, I'll try art college. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but in foundation you can try, you know, you can do a lot of different things. And, I moved to Cork City, your, your paternal grandfather is a Corkman, I believe. Yes. And Cork is a good spot, moves to Cork, and, I was killing time, I had a few months to kill, and I saw, a City and Guild sign writing course in a trade school there, called Foss.

Jerry Fitzgibbon, was running it then and still is running it now. And, I thought well this could be, this could be kind of something interesting to keep me occupied. But it was a six month sitting in Girls' course, and I said, look, I'll do a few months anyway and see how I get on. And I just really instantly loved it because know there was no pretentiousness there, it was, everybody was just you know, very real and, I loved, you know, I loved all that kind of nineteen forty's poster, propaganda art and all that kind of stuff, and you know, so I love pictorial work, and I love typography, and I never really understood what it was that I liked about it until I did this, you know. And after a very short period of time I realized I was in the right place and I decided to stick at it there.

So in a way it just was a complete fluke. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I kinda, I get it.

I mean, I think a lot of us kind of stumbled our way through the whole thing. And it reminds me of something that we discussed with some of our emails you had mentioned and I see this common thread because you know your your work is awesome and I'm looking at all these you know awesome storefronts and pub fronts and it's it's like the kind of stuff that everybody else drools about getting to do and of course you're shaking your head like it's crap no but it's not But you you had mentioned that years ago, you had gone to a letterhead meet and like you just like you felt like a fraud and you skipped it. Yeah. You know, that's just like such a common thing. But like this is now many years later and you still feel that way?

I'm I'm a bit braver. I I agree to do this. That's true. You know? I know, you know, I I think you mentioned it in, I think it was the first podcast where you were talking about being reprimanded at one of these things by someone saying you couldn't do it that way, you know.

And you know, I suppose I experimented a lot after I left that course, and I started working. And I worked with, you know, another guy, a really good sign painter called Steve Murphy, a Clarkman, another Clarkman, who had just returned from The States and had worked his way around The States, and just woken into sign shops. And you know, he did a very brave thing before he went to The States. He he went into a local sign writers, you know workshop and and and asked them to, you know, to apprentice him. And, you know, he he got the usual sweep up the floor for six months, six months treatment.

Right. And then prep a load of boards and you know all that kind of stuff before he was let near, you know, a pencil, let alone a sign writing brush. And, so you know, and again a lot of these guys were old school and they, you know, they were selective about who they would let in, and you know, but I think when he went to The States he had a bit of confidence and he went into those places. And when I met him and started working with him, you know, we were trying out different things that I wasn't shown on the course, and for example we didn't use a mahl stick on the course, which I now find that, you know, it's like, you know, I can't set my right hand, I can't not, you know, it can't not work with a mahl stick. Right.

And it was just the way the the the, you know, the, it was just the way Jerry worked and, you know, and, but I had my hand over everything, and, you know, the work was, I'm kind of messy, so the mall stick used to help me stay off the the surface and keep it clean. Okay. And plus plus it looked like I was a snooker player, because I could show up at these jobs and put this thing together like a sniper rifle or something. People were were impressed, and they got out of my way. Yeah.

There's some drama involved in it. There is. It's a theater. Yeah. Exactly.

And, it's all smoke and mirrors, you know? Yeah. But, yeah, I suppose, to answer your question, you know, going down to to that that letterheads meet, I was invited to it. Actually, Jerry Jerry rang me, and it was supposed to, that meet was supposed to be held in Kilkenny. And when was this?

This was '99. Okay. And, Peter Mccullen and Owen Quigley, who worked together, in that region, Dublin, Kilkenny, you know, Leinster, East Coast side of the country, were were were involved with letterheads and different things as well. And and they they they were organized, but unfortunately, Owen, got very ill and sadly passed away quite quite quickly around that time. And and, a lot of people had committed to coming from The States, from Canada, from Australia, from all over the place.

And so, Gerry in in Cork said he'd he'd, you know, facilitated, and they got they, you know, so they had they had a lot of people come to to that that trade school, I was telling you about. And then on to Chana Kilti down to meet Thomas Topair, who is, you know, as far as I'm concerned, the, the, the top banana of sign writing in Ireland. And so I was really keen to meet Thomas or see Thomas in action, and again I would never have approached him in a million years. So I really went down to see Thomas, but again it's just the way things went. Thomas had a family emergency and wasn't able to make the thing.

And he was going to a slideshow and a talk, which I was really keen on. And then when it wasn't happening, I just said, oh, I was just nervous to be in in in the middle of all these guys who I just, you know, I I I thought were far far beyond, you know, me and my skill set. And I just thought, you know, I'd be tired and fettered up the main street if I stayed a minute longer, you know. But I think I've kind of, you know, got over a bit of that, because it's great to get this kind of feedback, and and recently I've just got on social media, and I'm new to it, and Instagram, and I'm having a great time on it. It's burning a lot of time as well, so I have to watch that too, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. You know? But it's great to get that kind of feedback from your peers, and I mean, you know, your work blows me away man. It's just, it's brilliant.

It is brilliant work. I love it. And, you know to get that kind of feedback from you, I just can't take it in, you know. Well, thank you very much. I feel really awkward, but thank you.

Well, you know, I mean, you know, it's it's it's and I know here as well, you know, we don't have as much, you know, it's a smaller country and, you know, maybe the the the pockets might may not have been as deep over time. So there there isn't that much of a of a well, it's unfair to say that there isn't that much of a rich history here in traditional sampling. There is, but in terms of the material costs on on on, you know, kind of that high end glass work, that, you know, that was that was few and far between here. Mhmm. And when you did see it, by God did you notice that it was really it would just blow you out of the out of the water, like, you know.

And that guy, Owen Quigley, got rest in, you know, he was he was he was exceptionally good, and and Peter with him. And they worked with Rick, is it Glaw Glosson? Glosson, yeah. Yeah. They worked with all of those those those dudes, you know?

So they did a fantastic, they were bringing back amazing, stuff around, that side of the country. And I did a little bit of work up there, and I met him. Lovely guy, lovely guy. You know, we come up to you when you're working, and you know when someone's eyeballing you, and they're not just admiring the work, they're really looking at what you're doing, you know. And eventually he came up and he said hello, we went for a coffee.

He was a great, great guy, you know. And very generous, very generous spirit, like a lot of the people in our profession. Yeah. I I think, I think Americans are just good marketers, but I I don't, you know, I I look at at the work you do. I look at, you know, there's guys like, you know, familiar with Wayne Osborne.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you guys over there, I think, have neighborhoods that don't exist here because it's everything's so much newer here. And there's pockets like, you know, San Francisco has areas, you know, some of the older cities have areas that kind of generations have kept up with and and so there's that access to doing that kind of work but you know most of America is strip malls and just you know, garkey, plasticky throwaway signs that people you know bolt up on a building.

And what about Main Street? What about, you know, your towns, your local your local town? Would that be, you know, would that have nice nice attractive storefronts and and and shops? We're starting to see kind of a a shift in that way, I think, probably mostly in the last maybe five to ten years, where it a lot of it got abandoned. You know, not like Ghost Town, but, you know, everybody moved out, moved into little malls or whatever, or moved to big cities.

But we're starting to see, like, the the town that we're in is small. I think there's 15,000 people that live here, which for a city in this area is very small. Okay. And we've got the old Main Street that was built in the eighteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds when they brought the train station in. And you're starting to see that revitalizing and preserving and all of that but, in areas like this, but you know, you pick a point on a map in The United States and I guarantee you it's identical to a thousand other spots that you can put your finger on.

Okay. Because it's just it's all the same, you know, cookie cutter stuff, you know, oh, let's put an Applebee's restaurant here and Let's put a Best Buy on the corner. And it's, you know, it's all the same. But, you know, that that's why looking at work like guys like you are doing, you know, just those wood fascia storefronts and all that. It's just, it's a very romantic thing for sign painters over here because it's like, oh man, that's that's heaven.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad I'm glad that's what's coming off the side of us, what's coming true, but the reality is much the same as what you're talking about, but on a smaller scale here. So unfortunately, yeah, it breaks my heart to tell you this, you know. Corporate greed has taken over the world? What?

Oh, man, listen, it's it's just it's driving through, you know, it's the generic kind of stuff is everywhere and you know, where where I am, Limerick was the third largest city in Ireland. I think Galway recently, kicked us off that. Third place spot, which is a great town for traditional hand painted signs. And it's actually one of the things that if you took that out of Galway, you know, it would certainly Galway would just lose its heart and soul, I think. And people may not have joined the dots to realize that, but you know there's like one one guy up there doing, you know all the signs and and and you know he's not a one trick pony, he does lots of different stuff.

And you know it's the kind of thing that you know a town you know can can I think really benefit and you know it can have a whole other energy just from that one decision to let that guy operate in that town and support him, you know? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. The visuals are what give the town the personality on the surface. Then you've got the layers with the different characters and all, and the history and all that, but the That's true.

The visuals, that's the intro. Exactly. And you know what, it's great because even McDonald's there has a very reduced, you know, sign that proportionally is is is not too obnoxious, that, you know, sort of works with the with the street, with the other stuff, and, you know, Kilkenny is full was full of that. When I used to do work up there, there was a, you know, there was there was very strict kind of planning guidelines, urban guidelines on signage, and you'd often have Dublin sign companies, coming down on a Sunday, sneaking up, kind of rubbish, you know? They would all come back down, they would all come back down on a Tuesday, and they'd be fined, and the shop owner would be fined.

Oh really? You know? So I I was up there working on Sundays. I'd see this going on, so I never I never pushed that one, you know? But yeah, yeah, I it it there's a lot of there's a lot of that, you know, you know, that kind of, that kind of corporate branded look.

Yeah. You know, and, where everything is kind of, you know, it's it's it's it's just as it's lifeless and and, a lot of the sign companies got into digital wide format printing, and a lot of the print companies got into, guess what, signage. Yeah. You know? So now we've got we've got this kind of, you know, oversaturated kind of digital pop up shop type looking market.

That's all over the place here too. You know? So, I mean, what I what I've done is, you know, obviously, I've I've worked hard to, you know, do something I enjoy doing and try and make a living from it and and showed it off in the best way I can. And for and for it to come across like, you know, everything everywhere is like that, it's probably great, you know. It's it's my it's me doing my job, you know.

Well, it's it's good. Even if that's your only your little tiny corner of the world, you you've represented it well and it looks great. So so moving on to, a very important subject I like to discuss. What's on your iPod this week? And I don't care how embarrassing, just what are you listening to?

At the moment, today I was listening to, I was listening to Sigur Ros, an Icelandic band, I don't know what they're singing about, but it's great. Do they have a weird sound like Bjork or is it something? It's even weirder. Yeah? You know, so you can imagine, I mean Weirder than Bjork?

Weirder than bjork my friend wow s s I g u r r o s siguros and they're singing in icelandic and the the hairs are going up the back of my neck, and I don't know what they're singing about, but it's good stuff in the studio, and it builds and builds. So I'm listening to a bit of that, I like a bit of jazz, I like, MJQ, modern jazz quartet. I was listening to Booker T and DMG's this morning. Okay. Old school.

Yeah. I was shuffling, I like Tom Waits, I like, Randy Newman, you know, they're on it. And, a little, you know, some other stuff, you know, I like early eighties, new wave stuff. Echo and the Bunnymen, actually. Echo and the Bunnymen.

I love Echo and the Bunnymen. Another band called Dada. Oh, yeah. You know it? Yeah.

The Smiths and all that kind of stuff. That's all. Everything I grew up on. I I was a Morrissey Smiths fanatic for years. Cool.

Yeah. I walked around in a constant state of depression. It was beautiful. And you had the quiff as well, I hope. Yeah.

Yeah. My brother and I, we had a little really crappy band and, you know, that was we were just in our own little bubble. And that was in South Texas where, like, at the time, you know, people were still listening to Merle Haggard even though it was the eighties. Oh, right. You know, so but now I still I'll listen to in my ipod I'll listen to Morrissey alongside Merle Haggard so I'm kind of jacked up.

There you go and and Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, and Willie Sexton, or Willie Nelson, you know, they're just, they are giants, you know, I think. Yeah. Yeah. No. I love them.

Creative cheeses. Absolutely even even even I have someone I have for years I I would run out of the room if if someone put on bob dylan or or or lennard cohan but I've come around I've I love that talk time radio show he he has and and and that album and and then of course the album was great, you know? So as an Irish guy, like one of my all time favorites is the Pogues. I love Shane McGowan. Yeah.

I got to see him at the Fillmore in San Francisco, which was like a semi religious experience for me. Sure. So like as an Irish guy, do you guys listen to Irish music Yeah. Like makes it elsewhere or is that like cheesy like, oh, those guys are sellouts? Well, there's nothing worse than having having a band you love that no one has heard about suddenly become huge.

Yeah. You know? But you know, I mean, I don't know if you've come across, Christy Moore at all. Chrissy Moore, you should check him out, he's really good, and Donny Lunny, l u n n y, and they, together they were in a band, in the in the 70s, called Sculgin, and it was a traditional Irish music band, but they started bringing in, you know, fusion, into it as well, some kind of jazz chords and, Oh cool. And, yeah, other kind of, like kind of pre Peter Gabriel world music, they were travelling around Yugoslavia and coming home with weird instruments and, you know, and rhythms and and, you know, a lot of percussion, and, a lot of the old school didn't like it.

But again, this is one of the things I really like about about what what you're doing, Sean, is you know, I see you as someone who experiments and who isn't afraid to experiment, and you know, I've always It's sometimes like that in physics, you know. Well listen, clearly, that's that's that's the the you live and die by that, don't you, you know? Yeah. But you have to give yourself the permission to to, I think, you know, to do that, from time to time or is it or just isn't fun? Yeah.

No, that that's that's just it is I I don't know, you know, I've been doing this type of work in one form or another for over twenty five years and I don't think I'd still be doing it if I did an experiment. I went through a period of working in a vinyl shop, you know, because there was nothing available. And that was like a living death to me. But, you know, I think being able to, that's the, I kind of like the coolest thing about sign painting as a trade to me is that there's all these different things you can, you know, get into the details of like how this was done on glass or you know, how do you make this piece of wood look this way, you know. Mhmm.

I think that's And sometimes, sometimes, every now and again, something comes along that that, you know, some new thing that that you can, you know, you can see the potential in it. And and if you marry it up with some something that you, you know, that that you've been developing for for years, you might get a better, you know, job out of it. You know, you might take it somewhere else. Yeah. You know?

That's exciting. It is. And and I think that's that's, you know, that's why, you know, some of the music I'm attracted to, you know, I put on. I have another one, I have another little tip for you as well before I forget. A guy called Damien Dempsey.

Damien Dempsey? Yeah, Damien Dempsey. He supported Morrissey on his, on his, on his tour recently. Okay. And he's worked with Sinead O'Connor, and, he's great.

And and Shane McAllen, my friend, so, you know, you gotta check him out. Damien Dempsey, really, really good stuff. I'm writing it down. Yeah. Actually, here you go.

Oh, you got it right there, Yeah. I got it right here. You can see that. Alright. Okay.

He's got a few albums out. He's great. Really good. And and he's an Irish guy? Yeah.

He's from Dublin. He's, you know, he's he's he's a North Side dub, so he's, you know, he's he's he's a I think he was a boxer, and he sings very inspiring kind of stuff. And, you know, you know, kind of, I think in the way that, a lot of the people that, you know, you mentioned are are are championing the underdog, you know, and I think maybe we all kind of can relate to that a little bit, you know? Yeah. He's definitely one of those guys, and he's great live.

So if you get a chance to see him live, he's great. Okay. I would definitely hunt him down. Cool. Well, thanks for, thanks for doing this.

Not at all. I'm like like I told you before we started recording, I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants. I have no idea how to do a podcast, but I'm learning and, hopefully, I'll learn more tricks as we go so it sounds better and better. But for now, hey, at least we're getting conversations out there, you know? Yeah.

And you know what? Some people who are on the fence about this, you know, who who don't know whether they should kind of walk into your place or my place to say hello. Maybe we might come in now, hopefully. Yeah. Absolutely.

I mean, that's that's part of it too. It's like, you know, I think most, most people that do what we do, we're kind of in our own little tunnel and, you know maybe we don't seem completely approachable or or or open but it's just because we're OCD and we're looking at details that no one else looks at. Yeah, the trick is bring good coffee. That's that's what I say. Yeah, don't come in empty handed.

Yes, yes, these are important things to get out there in the universe all right well hey man I really appreciate you taking the time and our listeners tomcollins.ie tomcollins signs. Ie. Tomcollinssigns. Ie. Go check out his work and there's a, I posted an article, of yours on our Facebook page from Bach Magazine or blog?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's a blogger.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool story. So, yeah.

Go check out his work. Tom's a talented guy and I hope he squirms more as I say that, which he did. So there you go. Sean, you're a legend. Thank you very much, my friend.

Okay. Keep putting keep putting that brush into your hand, okay? And keep climbing up the ladders. Yeah. Keep posting your stuff on, on social media.

Some of us like to see it. Today's episode of Coffee with a SignPainter is brought to you by Full City Rooster Coffee Roasters in Dallas, Texas. Roasting distinctive coffees from around the world. Sean drinks Full City Rooster coffee every day in the studio. You can order their coffee online at fullcityrooster.com.

Thanks for listening to Coffee with a Signpainter, hosted by Sean Starr. You can find all sorts of info about the show and sign painting, including previous episodes at our website, seanstarr.com.