For the past 25 years, beloved Burlington, Vermont music venue, Higher Ground, the acclaimed design firm Solidarity of Unbridled Labour (formerly JDK Design), and Iskra Print Collective have had a unique partnership. The design firm has created hundreds of silkscreen posters for shows at the venue, posters that aren’t available for purchase and evoke the spirit of each band.
In his introduction to the gorgeously crafted new art book of original, silkscreen concert posters, ECHO: A Survey at 25 Years of Sound, Art, and Ink on Paper (out April 1st), Grammy Award-winning Wilco front man and solo artist Jeff Tweedy writes, “What coheres in these images is the work of the music and art communities intertwined and invested in each other … Concert posters are as close as one can get to the solid evidence that we all crave—proof that what happens when we create is beyond the scope of the individual work.”
ECHO is a curated collection of over 350 of those posters – including posters for artists like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Lumineers, Ice Cube, Robyn, Bon Iver, Norah Jones, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Rob Zombie, Sean Paul, Wu Tang Clan, The Black Crowes, Gregg Allman, Phish, Taj Mahal, Maggie Rogers, Willie Nelson, Modest Mouse, Jimmy Cliff, Ween, CAKE, Jurassic 5, Black Eyed Peas and many more.
These posters will be new discoveries for most music fans unless they’ve been lucky enough to catch a show at Higher Ground, where copies of the posters are handed out for free to a few lucky fans that stay until the final curtain.
This book’s high-quality production is designed to look like a stack of silkscreened posters bound into a book. Amidst the artwork, ECHO includes interviews with Alex Crothers (founder and co-owner of Higher Ground) and Michael Jager (Co-Founder and Creative Director of Solidarity of Unbridled Labour and Co-Founder of Iskra Print Collective); anecdotes on select posters and shows; a deep dive into the art of silkscreen printing; and more.
All proceeds from ECHO will support the nonprofit, Iskra Print Collective, a community space in Burlington, dedicated to the practice, understanding, and appreciation of the printmaking arts.
Alex Crothers is the founder and co-owner of Higher Ground based in Burlington, Vermont – an independent concert promotion company and separate music venue that produces more than 600 events a year. Crothers opened the venue in 1998 and has produced over 10,000 events in that time.
For more than thirty years, Michael Jager, Vermont’s first awarded AIGA Design Fellow, has been creating and collaborating with brands, driven by the idea that design distinction matters most and that brands are truly living ideas. His groundbreaking strategic brand design work continues with Solidarity of Unbridled Labour, a studio that conceptualizes and realizes ideas that help guide and create culture and positive change within it. His output for a multitude of today’s most recognizable and relevant brands — including Burton Snowboards, Microsoft’s Xbox, Nike, Levi’s, Phish, MTV, Virgin, Lululemon, Yara, Tomra, Seventh Generation, MasterClass, and Patagonia — is recognized worldwide. He is also the cofounder of the Karma Bird House, a creative-economy community space home to more than 60 inspiring entrepreneurial entities, as well as the Iskra Print Collective.
You can buy the book here: https://echo.
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