Real Fake Clouds

Real Fake Clouds
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The third title in Lemon o Books' Field Guide series!  Real Fake Clouds is a short booklet and two track CD. The project abstractly examines clouds, those ever-morphing agglomerations of suspended water and chemicals that travel through the sky. We tried and (by design) failed to pin down these transitory atmospheric phenomena in print and sound.

The CD features the work of Milwaukee noise duo Druome and Portland's Daniel Menche. The former offer an instrumental recreation of weather, progressing from tranquil to stormy, and the latter submitted what sounds like a lengthy field recording following a similar trajectory. Together with the accompanying booklet, these works represent different approaches to the quixotic task of representing (in ink or audio) inherently ephemeral and changeable clouds. Thanks to both Druome and Daniel Menche for their contributions.

Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of Real Fake Clouds can mail $5 well concealed cash to:

Lemon o Books
P.O. Box 11872
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Shipping costs are included in the price for anyone living in the contiguous United States. International friends should email for more information.

More photos are available at lemonobooks.com. Thanks for looking!

Our Moon

New from Lemon o Books!

With one week until the third annual Chicago Zine Fest on March 10, Lemon o Books is pleased to announce its newest publication, a short booklet and CD entitled Our Moon.

Following hot on the heels of Actual Bird Song last October, Our Moon is the second in a series of art booklets masquerading as field guides. It once again comes packaged with a CD focused on the same theme. Actual Bird Song dealt with all things avian, but for Our Moon we've turned our gaze even further skyward to contemplate the moon.

The CD features four tracks, the first of which is a heartbreaking, fifteen-minute piece by Adam Krause and Marielle Allschwang featuring guitar, violin and crackly snatches of ham radio conversation intercepted by walkie talkie. This might be the song that was in Michael Collins' head on the far side of the moon. The remaining tracks on the CD were recorded by Gen Ken Montgomery in New York City. His suite of three tracks commences with collaged audio from the Appollo 11 mission and ends, twenty minutes later, with a joyful section that reminds me of The Residents at their most beautiful. It's a great listening experience, and, really, the whole cross-country collaboration hangs together beautifully. I'm proud to have played a part in it.

Below are photos of the project. Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of Our Moon can mail $5 well-concealed cash to:

Lemon o Books
P.O. Box 11872
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Shipping costs are included in the price for anyone living in the contiguous United States. International friends should email for more information. Update: This title is sold out.

Upcoming Events: Chicago Zine Fest 2012 and Moon Ragas in NYC

Above: Fine dining, outside our hotel room, Chicago Zine Fest 2011

Except for the fantastic drawings received in the mail last month, it probably seems like a quiet start to 2012 here at The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music/Lemon o Books. However, a lot of work and planning have been going on behind the scenes.

First off, in a little less than a month Lemon o Books will be in Chicago for the third annual Chicago Zine Fest on March 10th. I've tabled at this event the last two years, and despite the bitter weather that a Midwestern March all but promises, it has always been a blast. The Chicago Zine Fest is housed in a beautiful space at Columbia College, and last year it took two floors to accommodate all of the talented exhibitors. It always draws a large, diverse crowd, and the organizers seem to pull off a better show every year. I'm definitely jazzed to make the trip again.

Here's the full schedule of events for the weekend:

Friday March 9, 2012:
1 - 3pm Gender, Race & Sexuality, a Discussion with Women in Self-Publishing at Columbia College
6 - 9pm Zine Readings at 826CHI
9:30pm - 12am Zine Olympics at Quimby's Bookstore

Saturday March 10:
11am - 6pm Zine Exhibition at Columbia College

Our Moon and "Moon Ragas"


Above: A stack of tape loops
(Tape loops and photo by Adam Krause)

In other news, the follow-up to Actual Bird Song is quickly taking form, and much like its predecessor, that form will be book and CD shaped. Where Actual Bird Song was a quasi-field guide and audio companion inspired by birds and notable for its lack of both fields and guidance, this next project takes its inspiration from the moon, Earth's satellite and cosmic dance partner. It will be called Our Moon and should be finsished just in time for the aforementioned Chicago Zine Fest. If everything goes to plan in the next month, Our Moon will be just as beautiful, weird and scientifically useless as Actual Bird Song was last fall.

Actual Bird Song began as a collaboration between myself (in charge of book-making) and Neil Gravander (aka Lucky Bone, sound-making). The project soon expanded when Neil invited fellow Milwaukee sound-maker Slow Owls to create his own avian-inspired audio.

In a similar way, this new project began as a collaboration between myself (once again handling the visual half of the audio-visual equation) and writer, musician, carpenter Adam Krause but expanded when he invited sound artist Ken Montgomery to contribute to the audio portion of the project.

This weekend, the collaboration gets even more collaborative when Adam travels to New York City to play a show at The Stone (Avenue C and 2nd street) with Montgomery. The event will be recorded and the results should find their way into the final version of Our Moon. If you're in New York on February 19th, consider attending this event.

Meanwhile, I'll be here in Milwaukee putting the finishing touches on the booklet for Our Moon. I'll post all the details right here as soon as the project is ready to share with the world. Thanks for looking and reading. Here's to an active and exciting spring!

Actual Bird Song Previews

Thanks to Neil "Lucky Bone" Gravander, you can now listen to previews of both tracks from Actual Bird Song, the booklet and CD released last October, from the comfort of your computer chair. Give 'em a try.

Lucky Bone - actual bird song (excerpt) by ursa--major

Slow Owls - actual bird song (excerpt) by ursa--major

Copies of this project are still available. Interested parties can send five dollars well-concealed cash to P.O. Box 11872 Milwaukee, WI 53211. Update: This title is now sold out.

Happy New Year

Above: 2011, the year in haircuts

I started 2012 the way I ended 2011-- with a whopping cold. So here, almost seven days and one bottle of Multi-symptom Cold and Flu Nighttime Relief Liquid into the new year, is a belated wish for a happy new year for you and yours from Lemon o Books and The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music.

Before talking about what 2012 has in store around these parts, let's take a quick look back at last year. It was a good one. The Chicago Zine Fest, the Madison Zine Fest, and, just last month, the stellar Milwaukee Zine Fest were great experiences. Taking myself, my projects and books out of the house and into the world is always a surprising, heartening, and illuminating endeavor.

And the books made in 2011 stand out for me as the best I've made so far. Last winter, The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music Volume Six cataloged drawings made by dozens of individuals (out of the total hundreds of drawings received so far) who contributed their work to The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music project. I am forever grateful to everyone who has made this silly idea of mine into a real and growing thing, and I hope it continues. While the drawers are the soul of this project, I think this book has my best design and craft yet for this series.



This fall saw the release of Actual Bird Song, the first non-hairdo project from Lemon o Books. This project was a collaboration between myself and two Milwaukee musicians, Lucky Bone and Slow Owls, who each contributed a track to a CD packaged inside a short booklet.



Now, with the highlights of 2011 lovingly packed away like so many Christmas lights, let's talk about some of my most anticipated projects of 2012. I'm still so excited by Actual Bird Song that my next project will continue in a similar vein. Two musicians are already on board to create sounds for a compact disc while I'm working on an accompanying book. I'm going to keep my lips sealed about the subject matter and the collaborators until things really start to take shape, but I guarantee that no one will be as disappointed as me if this project isn't just as good as last year's foray into audio-visual collaboration.

Also, the long-rumored seventh volume of The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music will become a real thing that you can hold in your hands. This will definitely happen before the project turns four years old in July.

Thanks for reading, everybody. Here's to another great year!

Actual Bird Song

The newest publication from Lemon o Books is the first to be totally unrelated to the ongoing Famous Hairdos of Popular Music project. I am incredibly proud of this one.

A "field guide and audio companion," Actual Bird Song is a short visual zine and a two track, 30 minute compact disc. I designed and produced the book, while Milwaukee musicians Lucky Bone and Slow Owls each contributed a track. These three parts were created in isolation but, I think, complement each other in interesting ways. Together they comprise an open-ended meditation on bird song and humanity’s relationship to the natural world. They are waiting for readers and listeners to join the conversation.

Below are some more images, a brief explanation, and information for obtaining a copy through the mail.








Writing here as the book designer, I can only explain my own motivations for the visual component of the project. Despite the title’s implication of scientific rigor and accuracy, Actual Bird Song is an exercise in pseudo-science-- book design and illustration as a vehicle for abstractly considering our relationship to nature as outside observers, our frequent inability to contain and grasp the wildness from which we have secluded ourselves and for which many simultaneously yearn. I tried to avoid using birds as a ready metaphor for human desires and ended up doing just that anyway. Taking the idea of a “field guide” literally, Actual Bird Song is an attempt to visually depict the sensation of standing in a field surrounded by the sounds of avian activity using the language of textbook illustration.

The books and CDs were produced in an edition of 100. The covers and endpapers are beautiful French Paper products, milled in the Midwest with hydroelectric power. The fore-edge corners are rounded to resemble the pocket field guides on my nightstand that never seem to make the trip to actual fields. The printing was done at Milwaukee’s own Clark Graphics, where their professionalism is matched only by their patience. Thanks to them and to Lucky Bone and Slow Owls for making this project real.
Anyone who wants a copy should mail $5.00 well-concealed cash to:

P.O. Box 11872
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Shipping costs are included in the price for anyone living in the contiguous United States. International friends should email for more information. Update: This title is sold out.