JIM KREWSON
INTERVIEW AMY KELLNER
PHOTOGRAPHY TEENAGEUNICORN.COM

Not a lot of people know about the insane artwork of Jim Krewson yet, but the ones who do are totally obsessed with it. Jim is one of those annoying people who can draw anything in any style perfectly. And he can also play like, every instrument. You’d hate him except that he’s actually the nicest guy ever. He recently had his first solo show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise where he showed paintings of rad stuff like Scott Baio and Willie Ames wearing lederhosen and drinking beer, Carol Channing screaming in the front row of the famous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont and a frightening portrait of a nude Richard Simmons with a little demonic hell creature perched upon his lap. And let’s not forget the painting of a woman giving birth with the heads of the mother and baby cut out so you can stick your own head in their places and take your picture. Like I said, it’s good stuff.
When he’s not making hilarious art, Jim plays in Jim and Jennie & the Pinetops, a bluegrass band that even people who think bluegrass is a type of marijuana “can” like. Their most recent album is called Rivers Roll On By (on Bloodshot Records) and surprise! It’s awesome.
So, who are you and what do you do?
You know me lady, I’m Jim! I paint with an airbrush and play guitar, banjo and drums in my bluegrass band, Jim and Jennie & the Pine Tops. Right now we’re touring New England and the Pacific Northwest and then I’m gonna get together a bunch of new paintings when I get back.
When did you start making art?
I was the little kid who sat in the corner drawing in order to avoid dealing with other humans. This evolved into spending all my time in the barn building weird shit because there were no other kids around, especially ones who weren’t assholes. So then my folks sent me to private art lessons but all I did was sit around drawing a taxidermy snake while my stinky teacher snuck out to smoke pot. High school art class was more of the same although I did win the congressional art award for my self portrait where I looked like a somewhat faggier Robert Smith. Art School was dumb so I dropped out, of course. But it was there where I met Randall Cohen, a great nut who influenced me immensely.
Who?
Randall Cohen had a magazine called Fuck that was lots of gross collages of corpses and that kinda Jim Goad type stuff. But he had an amazing sense of humor and was the first person to show me that art doesn’t have to be boring drawings of dead snakes.
What are some of the inspirations for your art?
Oh you know, drink a bunch of coffee and just start doing it. There’s not a lot of planning. It’s mainly that I don’t see lots of good art. Or I’m a nazi about what I like. So I make what I’d wanna see in a gallery. Like if there’s a sculpture, see, it should have some kind of entertainment value. Like move around or do something. I don’t expect anybody to want to get into my head trip unless there’s a little fun and games involved-and a little bit of loud DMBQ, the best band in the world.
When did you start making music?
Well I was an art fag, right? I didn’t know the bandies till after I graduated, cause my high school was immense. But I kinda knew a couple through the magic of punk. We bonded at senior week in Wildwood, New Jersey and they decided I was o.k. and asked me to sing (scream, actually) for their hardcore band, Quasimodo & the Eunuchs. Then around ’85, we discovered the Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth and Einsturzende Neubaten and said, screw boring hardcore. Our guitar player Grant broke the headstock off his guitar during practice in his parents’ basement (which was a magical disco den complete with mirror balls, rope lights and a bar) and I screwed it back together and put like, two strings on it and played it for years.
So how did you end up playing bluegrass of all things?
My dad always had some bluegrass albums around and I was always a little interested. So in addition to the acid-rock arty freakout band I was doing at the time called the Mag Dabinets, we also started the 79 Cent Bluegrass Show (after the “Dollar 98 Beauty Show”) and started listening to lots of Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe. We were pretty awful but really funny. We’d do Mad Lib bluegrass songs where the audience would fill in all the nouns and stuff and then we’d perform the song. And we’d play our hit song “Heidi Herring,” a true ballad about a girl Frank the guitarist knew in elementary school who would stick a pencil in her eye for a quarter. It went, “Heidi Herring! Stickin’ pencils in her eye for a quarter!” But after awhile a couple of us got seriously obsessed with bluegrass, much to the boredom of the other band members. That’s how it happens-you can’t help it. It really is amazing music.