Sometimes opportunity comes knocking. Sometimes it comes charging at you in a bull horned convertible. When asked to do a Vince Gill Album cover out of the blue, how could we refuse? The only catch: we had to get it done in about a week.
The album itself is a collection of cover songs by Vince Gill and Paul Franklin paying tribute to the Bakersfield genre of country music. We already had a rough concept in mind involving a car driving under the iconic Bakersfield Sign in California.
Less than a week from the deadline, a trip out to California was out. Instead we scurried on down to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was hosting a Bakersfield exhibit. Also there were some interesting cars owned by country stars from the era. This particular car, formerly owned by Webb Pierce, was one that Vince Gill took a liking to.
Taking cues and reference from the exhibit illustrator Aaron Johnson laid out a dynamic composition, which the client was pleased with. Aaron used his car rendering wizardry to pimp their ride into a custom Pontiac inspired by Webb Pierce's car.
Taking it to the next level, Aaron rendered it in grayscale first for approval. As the ancient wise men of the mountains say, don't start painting the walls before you have the roof up. This way we can make any tweaks and changes before we get to color, which can really make things look different.
Once the rendering was approved we showed them some vintage color options inspired by the art and clothes of the genre. With the rendering done in two days, that left us one day to make color decisions and minor changes. You could say this album cover was done in...record time!
Bakersfield is avaliable to pre-order and will be released on July 30th. You can check out track listing and more info on the new album at Vince's website (www.vincegill.com).
