Design Kompany | Brand Marketing by Graphic Design studio in Seattle

Seattle band Friday Mile is having its CD release party on March 7 at Chop Suey. Doors at 8pm, $6. We’re telling you this because Friday Mile’s songwriter, Jace Krause, is a copywriter for Design Kompany, too.

Yesterday at a designer’s happy hour Akira hosted, it came up that Seattle has this weird obsession with NYC. Hearing this, I wanted to tell you why writing up this post about Friday Mile reminds me of something I witnessed on a summer afternoon in the West Village of Manhattan.

I was a store clerk at a used jazz record store in the West Village at the time. Not a place like Easy Street Records, the shop I tended was much more dusty and gritty, and much less known. I don’t even think it had a name. It was just there, and guys with Hawaiian shirts and women who could really sing (and did) would show up out of nowhere to browse collections that had anything but the mainstream. My job? Alphabetizing the records in the back.

I was handling a large yellowing square of cardboard one afternoon, admiring the typography, when I overheard Russ, the dredlocked owner who simply wanted to sell the place and retire to Jamaica, tell a customer that you don’t have to be famous or anything crazy if you’re some kind of an artist.

And, of course, every ear in the place perked up in that direction.

Russ said the next thing with such insistent conviction, spit flew. “Being good is its own reward.”

But the guy listening to this didn’t agree. “An artist,” came the counter, “needs recognition.” And so the classic back and forth: when do you stop promoting and talking about concepts for, and just start doing your art?

Following your vision takes confidence and guts, also a willingness to make yourself vulnerable to outside criticism. Starting a band? Perfect example.

So when Jace Krause invited Akira and me to one of his early Seattle shows at the Mars Bar (has it been more than a year?), we were there. And we’ve watched as the band has started to attract a following and make itself known. Jace published the CD ‘Using Up Our Trust,’ and DK bought a copy of that.

Later, three other musicians joined him, new songs emerged, and we got to hear sneak previews every now and again. Once he brought his guitar. The band’s 1000th friend on MySpace (also a friend of ours, hi D!) won one of the new CDs, ‘Love and Gasoline.’ The other day we saw a picture of a colorful vehicle pop up on Jace’s computer. “We got a van,” he said. “We’re touring California.”

And later, “We just got played on KEXP.”

With a vision and hard work, anything is possible. It takes trusting yourself to deliver, to maintain a specific, clear and true vein of creative intent that is unharnessed in order to succeed at following through with any artistic idea. The difference between good and bad art? Behind good art is an easily seen clarity of intent.

If my record store boss Russ’s mantra is right–”Being Good is Its Own Reward”–then sure, Friday Mile’s accumulated some karmic wealth. But getting to sell some CDs and T-shirts tomorrow at the Chop Suey show certainly won’t hurt, either.

Design Kompany’s illustrator Aaron Barker drew the poster announcement for tomorrow’s show. And in 2006, Friday Mile teamed with Design Kompany for: T-shirts and a poster design by Alex Hage.

If you ask Jace what the music sounds like, he says, “Have you ever heard of The Magic Numbers?” It appears that most people say “‘No.”

References:
Friday Mile on MySpace
The Magic Numbers on MySpace
Portland’s Fwis.com designed FM’s new CD’s jacket cover (above)