2010, new year, new beginnings.
I’d like to start by saying welcome to my new website! This site is the new 1 stop shop for everything I do. Ransom, Blue Collar Prophet, Graphic design, Dj’ing and of course updates on Authority Zero. Make sure you bookmark the site, and subscribe using the mailing list to your right! Thanks for stopping by!
I’m honestly happy to say that 09 is over…. I’m really looking forward to a new year and a fresh start! I think I’m gonna use this post as just an overall update…
Authority Zero is officially in the studio starting next week. we spent last week with Ryan Greene doing pre-production, i have 2 more days of that this week then its off to do drums! I was talking to a friend last night saying how much i love working with Ryan in the studio cause he pushes my abilities above and beyond and i always end up being a better drummer and learning so many new things even though during the process I’m likely to get really frustrated hahah!! Well either way I’m stoked to get started, I think this record is going to be really great and I’m stoked to show the rest of the world what we’ve put together in the past months.
p.s. If anyone reading this doesn’t know who Ryan is here is a link ..::Ryan Greene::..
On an AZ side note we are playing a Rhythm and Booze show at Dirty Pretty in Scottsdale on the 14th of this month so don’t forget to come check it out!!
Blue Collar Prophet stuff is still coming along good but my focus hasn’t been so much on that as much as it’s been on a project I have with my boy Keith called Translator. Some of you may know this project or heard me talk a bit about it but I’m sure most haven’t. This I can honestly say is the only thing that is I’m super proud of coming from 2009…. I won’t go into detail about it right now but keep your eyes peeled for Translator. I promise you’re gonna love it!
Designing has been slow through the holiday’s but I’m hoping it will pick up now that the new year has started. I’m working on a few logos and such for a some bands right now but other than that i don’t have much on my plate so I’ve just been painting a bit more. If anyone needs any graphic work done feel free to contact me and get a quote!
I’m working on a new painting right now that I’m super stoked on. I’ve posted a couple photos on twitter and facebook of the progress of it if you would like to see.
Ransom is getting some new designs right now that will be posted up for vote when they are done. My idea is to go exclusive with it. I want to start letting everyone vote for there favorite design and then only make 36 or so shirts to be sold. Keep watch right here for more updates on that or follow me on twitter for more minute to minute updates.
Well I think that’s it for the first post of 2010. Again I’m happy to say that 09 is over and I’m really looking forward to all the opportunities of 2010! Cheers, JIM
Secret Show…
So Melis and I had the pleasure of catching the secret Myspace show on monday and I must say it was AMAZING!!! I’ve been a fan of Thrice for a few years now but Melis is and has been a fan for a LOOOONG time. She’s had the please of seeing them down in Florida at small clubs quite a bit and she’s taken me to see them a few times now but it was always a bigger show with all the production and stuff. Now don’t get me wrong those shows were amazing and i loved every minute of them but to see them in a venue like the club house was an absolute pleasure. No bells and whistles, no big light show, just Thrice in there raw simple form. The best part of the whole thing is that even striped of everything they would normally have they sounded just as good as i expected them to! So cheers to Thrice and thanks to melis for turning me on to them years ago!
Design's for you!
So I sent out an email to everyone on my mailing list about this but i figure it would probably be a good idea for me to do a blog post about it as well since many of you may not be on our mailing list 
(sign up above)
I know everyone these days seems to have a Myspace, Facebook, Twitter
etc. account so i got to thinking… What if I was to design you, your own
personal CUSTOM banner for your page!? Would that be something everyone
might be interested in? Now I wouldn’t be able to do animated banners or
anything cause I just don’t have the time but I could definitely do
something in the color scheme/ style you would want to match your page. If
your interested in this send me a message (click the hollar link above) and we’ll get going!
thanks for your time and support
p.s. were still having a sale so make sure you check it out!
Creepy?
So If you haven’t noticed I signed up for a Twitter account as part of my “driving more traffic” week for Ransom but I have to admit I’m a little creep-ed out by it haha! I mean when you really think about it isn’t it just an online version of stalking someone…. I guess your the one telling people what you are doing on a day to day basis but at the same time isn’t it a little weird that people are online following your every move? Maybe I’m just paranoid hahah. Either way I’m gonna try it out a bit and see if i get results from it 
So then make sure you check out our Twitter account (link above) and start stalking us!!! hahaa
CHEERS!
New designs on the horizon!
This week has been all about traffic (as you saw in my last post) and new designs! I’ve been playing with allot of different elements this week and have come up with a few things that I’m super stoked on! I’ve also asked the help of a good friend Chris (dickiejones33) to really make sure that the next few shirts we launch are going to be spectacular. One thing I’ve realized over the years of doing this is that you never can tell what is going to hit or not. I’ve had designs that have in our eyes been absolutely awesome and yet people just aren’t as stoked on them as i was, yet I’ve done some super simple things that I liked but wasn’t exactly “freaking out” over and those were the popular shirts. It’s always interesting to watch what goes down upon launching new stuff. Either way I’m super stoked to see what Chris comes up with and in turn see what all you people think of the new stuff!
CHEERS!
Driving more traffic
So lately I’ve really been searching for ways to drive more traffic to our site and I must admit its allot harder than you would think it would be. I’ve done countless searches on google just looking for any sort of free advertising or web traffic building sites. I’ve found a few but most seem to be a bunch of BS. Everyone tells me that myspace is one of the best tools but I have to say that from my Google analytics reports myspace isn’t doing a damn thing these days. Since it got over saturated with spam and they had to start blocking all outgoing links people never leave myspace to hit my store and actually buy anything which is the point of my having a web store to begin with haha! So for that matter I’ve given up the myspace thing… I’ll be changing the link to our Twitter account so all you web junkies can keep up on what’s going on in ransom land!
If anyone out there may have a few suggestions for me to get some more traffic in please send me a message and let me know! If someone can get me a great site or couple of sites that really help send some traffic I just might send ya a free shirt!
thanks
Stolen Treasure Sale!!!!
Starting tomorrow take 25% off all merchandise on Ransom Apparel.com!!!!
This sale will be running now through January 16th so enjoy some good savings and grab some Christmas presents!
Hope you all have a great Holiday!
Ransom Presents!
Make sure you check out these 2 shows this month presented by RANSOM!
Ransom will have a booth at both shows so you can pick up some new gear!
CHEERS!
Crossing the finish line
OK so i have to admit that this layout took me allot longer than i initially expected but i can also say that I’m more proud of this than anything I’ve done in a while! (no offence to any other clients) As everyone knows you get better with time when you practice and this was a huge challenge for me so i had to draw and draw and draw until i got it. I would definitely like to thank ADD for not going with any of my other ideas only because it really pushed me to do this and not give up even though i was getting extremely frustrated sometimes. I did the entire layout in Illustrator. Hope you enjoy!
There is a better photo in the “portfolio” section.
CHEERS!
sale!
So I’ve spent the last couple of days putting together all Authority Zero’s merch from our last tour and I’ve posted it all on line for a sale! Click “store” above or follow the banner below!
CHEERS!
Last Day!
So i just wanted to jump in here and say that I’ve had an absolute blast on this tour and today is the last day! Although i would love to stay out with these guys (PW and Strung Out) I definitely need to go home. I miss my girl, plain and simple…. To all of you who made it out to the shows, thanks for the support and we’ll be back soon!
cheers
JIM
tour update…
So the pennywise tour ended about 5 days ago in NY and i must say it was definitely one of the best tours we’ve ever been on. The entire tour was a blast and everyone on it was super cool, so thanks to the PW crew and the Strung Out crew for having us along for the ride!
Since NY we’ve traveled across the nation stopping in St. Louis for a show and last night stopping in CO springs.
St. Louis was hands down one of the hottest shows i’ve ever played in my life. I’m almost sure that it beat warped tour in July in Phoenix (almost)…. The club we played was around the size of The Big Fish Pub for those of you who have been there and the humidity was INSANE! I litterally had a stream of sweat runing off my chin the entire show. Note to self, BRING A FAN! HAHAH!
After HOT Louis we booked across the nation to CO to play at The black Sheep. The show was great! Merch wasn’t selling so well last night so Bill decided to offer to the crowed that if 30 of them would go buy a T-shirt, Authority Zero would buy a bottle of jeager for those shirt buyers to share……. it worked! We doubled our merch profits, grabbed a bottle, and got a bunch of people reaaaaly drunk! including me….. hahaha what a great idea Bill! After the show we headed back to the Double Tree,…. ya i said it DOUBLE TREE. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog, Bill has been booking our hotels through Priceline.com and let me tell ya we’ve never been happier! Sheraton, Double Tree, Mariott,…. 50 to 60 a night! Crazy!
Now we are headed through the Rockies (as im typing this) and we’ll land in Vegas tonight just to crash on our day off and then continue on to Pamona tomorrow where we meet up with Stung Out to do 2 more shows before home. 3 more days…
I’m putting together a tour video right now that i’ll have up sometime after the tour is over so keep your eyes out for that!
CHEERS!
JIM
HOT-lanta!
Dude seriously….. OK I live in Phoenix, AZ and ya its pretty f-n hot there but holy shit! Last night was a sweat factory! Earlier in the night we were just sitting in the dressing room, not doing anything but sitting and we were sweating our asses off. It was at that moment that I realized, the show would be insane. I think we had about 750 people last night and the ceiling was dripping! After the show I was at merch and my glasses were slipping off my face all night. HOT-lanta! REHAB I don’t know how you guys do it man. OK well that is all I just wanted to whine about how hot it was last night hahahhah! Over all the show ROCKED and we had a blast as usual!
Until next time~
CHEERS!
30 hours later
We land in Atlanta. We left yesterday morning and trucked it straight on through to Atlanta to meet back up with the PW tour. We are pretty stoked about now cause bill used priceline to hook up hotels and for the rest of this run we are staying at 3 star hotels for only 50 a night! Tonight is just relax and watch tv… soak in the silence before the tour begins again tomorrow…
CHEERS!
JIM
…. where to begin
So ya, I’ve really been slacking on the blog hahah! With the launch of the new Ransom shirt and all that has been put into getting Ransom’s site the way I want it I’ve really neglected my blog and I have to apologize for that. Authority Zero.com is also consuming my time. Trying to fix cross browser bugs is a real pain in my butt but hey that’s why I don’t do web design for a living! I find it much easier to beat on things and make noise!
So the Pennywise tour has been cruising along and we’ve had plenty of fun times and stories so far. Every day seems to have a new adventure in store for us!
OK lets see…. hold on while i check out some photos to refresh my memory……..
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Alright so we’ll go back to Texas. Somewhere between Houston and Austin Strung Outs van threw a rod. (engine blew up) We got the call right when we got to the venue in Austin so our merch guy Brian opted to drop the trailer and go get Strung Out and there gear and bring them back. So 4 hours later we are on stage trying to keep songs going because they are still not here and we need to fill in time. Finally we do our last song and about 5 minutes later they come running in with there guitar. Jumping up on stage to play all they can in about 30 minutes about 2 or 3 songs in a beer bottle flies up to the stage and hits Jake (guitar) in the face! Not only the face but right at his eye. He runs off stage holding his eye and they take him to the hospital. Luckily there was no severe damage, he was stitched with 3 or so stitches and sent on his was. The rest of the band had no idea what happened till they where done, so they finished there set and the show went off! I’m now trying to find Jake a pirate eye patch! If any of you out there are coming out to a show between now and the end of the tour please find me an eye patch with a skull and cross swords on it so we can dress Jake up in some proper ransom gear! ahahah!
To continue…. The show finishes up with Pw killing it as usual and we all get loaded up. Most of the band members end up in the back bar hanging out and talking about the day until bus call comes at 1. A few of Strung Out heads for the Pw bus and the others opt to ride with us for the next day. Although bus call for Pw was at 1 Randy and Jim from Pw came off the bus cause they we’re going to fly home the next day (day off). So now it’s Jason, Brian, Bryan, Jim, Randy and I all hanging out in the back bar getting hammered and at some point in time Jim bought us all Emo’s T-shirts (venue we played at). Now I’m not sure when compelled him to do this but hey I’m not going to complain cause they have rad shirts hahah! Finally Emo’s kicks us out at about 2:30 or so and we head down the street for some slices of pizza. Hanging out at the pizza shop an homeless dude comes up with a guitar and naturally we all start requesting songs. This guy is totally schooled on his punk rock. He started playing Black Flag, Bad Religion and the Descendants. At some point in time during all the song request our merch guy (wasted) says “do you know any Pennywise songs?”. The guy looks at us and says, “Pennywise is just a bunch of Black Flag rip offs!”. We are all amazed and laughing out asses off at this but the best part was that Jim turns, looks at us, and shrugs like “yea, pretty much”. I thought that was really cool. Those bands influenced Pennywise like Pennywise influenced us and its cool to see that he just agreed even though that’s not entirely true. I’m sure he was just agreeing kind of like paying respect to the bands that helped mold them, but thats just a guess from me.
So 3 slices of pizza and 10 punk rock songs later this night finally comes to a halt. We hailed a couple cabs to get us back to the hotel, I’m not sure but i think i passed out before my head hit the bed that night, lord knows i had plenty of help from the Whiskey.
The next day was a day off and we drove from Austin, TX to Albuquerque NM. Now the cool part is we have Bob and Chris from Strung Out with us so there is fresh faces and fresh stories to be shared along this loooong boring drive! Along this drive at some point in time we stopped to pee and Chris told Bob to climb on top of this water tower to pee, so he did. Next thing you know Chris come running out yelling “Bob you f!@#$# peed on me!” hhahaha I got some of this on video so you’ll be able to watch it soon. We kept going on our journey and low and behold we find CHUY’S! Now this isn’t the normal Chuy’s you find all over the nation this one is in the middle of no where off the highway and somehow we run into this place on accident. This was the 3rd time we’ve hit this place on our travels and we are stoked! What’s cool about this place is that its the home
of the John Madden hall of fame! I guess the short story goes that he was on a drive looking for a place to watch the game and he ran into this place. He enjoyed it so much that he started mentioning it in magazines and interview so he really put them on the map, (we don’t own that map hahah). I have to say this place is kick ass! The food is great the people are great and you just cant go wrong with good ol John Madden hahahahhah! We had a great meal and finished up our journey to Albuquerque NM.
The following day we headed to the radio station to talk about the show and I have to say it was all out antics! I really don’t want to give it away cause i have it on video but I’ll say that it involves a tazer and our merch guy….. good times.
OK well i think that’s all for now!
cheers!
OH! p.s. i also got our bassist doing some really crazy things with the ta
zer in the van…. video…. soon….
PW Tour update
Ok ok so I know its been a while since my last post… don’t hold it against me I’ve been quite the busy bee for the last week. I’ve got quite a bit to catch up on so here goes….
Tour has been great so far! We started in California doing a few headlining shows warming up for the Pennywise tour. The Headlining shows were great! I particularly liked the show we did in Hermosa Beach. We played a place called St. Rocke. I guess this place once was a major punk dive bar but new owners moved in or something and remodeled the place. Its beautiful! We had dinner at the venue and let me tell you it was fantastic! That night I got to hang out with a super old and dear friend Mandy and her boy Mark. We had a blast hanging out at the bar and it was super good to see the 2 of them again.
The next day we headed down to south Sandiego for a show with Hot Water Music, The Vandals, and Unwritten Law. We played an out door venue at a casino and the show went off! i think total attendance was 1600 people and it was a great crowd. I got to talk to the guys from Hot Water Music for a while and they are some really great people! We hung out for the night, watched all the bands play and then headed to our hotel.
So the next few shows went by and they were all good, nothing to freak out over though. Day 1 of PW tour started in Utah. We rolled up to the venue which looked like a sultans castle and the place was HUGE! Although the venue was surrounded by absolutely nothing i managed to get a pretty cool shot of the sunset over the salt lake…..
That night we knocked out our 30 minute set and just killed it! We are super stoked to be out with these guys and have the chance to get our crowd to the next level.
Last night was Denver (soon to be my home city). Last night was unbelievable! We played at the Filmore Theater, the last time we played this place we had an incident we came to know as “The Denver Massacre”, for those of you who know, you know what I’m talking about. for those of you who don’t, don’t worry we didn’t murder anyone hahah…. ask me sometime in person and I’ll clue you in. The show was solid last night. We played 40 minutes and played a new set list that D.J wrote. I must say D.J. really knows how to write a set! It was perfect! After the show we hung out with some friends from the area and had a good time. Bill, D.j., and I ended up at the Denver Diner for a late night snack before hitting the hotel, and then we crashed out. All in all the run so far has been fantastic! Thanks for reading and if you want to see more photos you can check out my gallery online. Click here or use the PW Tour link at the top of the page.
Cheers!
JIM
Back In The Van!
Well here we are again, headed for California and then off on yet another run across the U.S. This tour is a bit more exciting for us than a normal tour cause we are headed out with PENNYWISE! We are super stoked to be able to hit the road with a band that we have looked up to since we were all just kids with skateboards and dream. While at home for the last 2 weeks i did purchase my self a new digital camera so i’ll have plenty of great photos for everyone to see from this tour! I’ll do my best to keep the blog updated on a daily basis so keep your eyes out for the new post!
CHEERS!
Fun in the sun!
HAHAH! So I had a tattoo apt 2 days ago and I did my throat…. check out the video!
WHAT A F@#$%^ SHOW!
Melis and I have been fans of 36 Crazyfists for a loooong time now and we caught them at the Marquee tonight….. WOW…. again such an AMAAAAZING SHOW! If you don’t know who they are you need to check them out! Straight out of Alaska metal…. you won’t find anything like it anywhere.
here’s the website. 36 Crazyfists
Design update
So its been a bit since I did an update on what I’ve been working on lately. As some of you may know I’ve been working with Another Damn Disappointment on their new album artwork for “relentless”. This album has to be one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever had. In all my years of designing I’ve never really worked with mechanical things before so when I presented them with the idea of using the P40 War Hawk I almost shot my self in the foot hahah! Turns out I’m more stoked then I’ve ever been with any artwork I’ve ever done. Above is a small clip of what I’m doing and when I’m done I’ll post up the work so you can take a look.
Cheers!
Jam Sessions
Here are a couple of videos of us and Beat Union jamming, enjoy!
Colorado Springs
What a show! We’ve always had pretty good luck with the Colorado crowd but we don’t play the springs very often so we didn’t know what to expect. The springs rocked! Thanks to everyone who made it out last night we really had a great time. Tonight is Denver which should rock! Gothic Theater here we come!
St. Louis / Day off
Ok so I’ll start with St. Louie.
Show was Great! I had a couple of fun ones here and there but I’m no sure anyone noticed besides me… (or did they?)
Before the show was funny, we had this full blown prison yard workout set up outside the loading area. We brought the weights and Whole Wheat Bread had the bench. I think there was about 8 of us at one time out there working out and it was pretty crazy. Hopefully I can get some of the footage that was caught by The Frantic so i can show you.
After the Prison yard workout we headed in for a little UFC! As melis would say “GROUND AND POUND, GROUND AND POUND!” hahah! Fights were good while we had pizza and beer (there goes that workout) and enjoyed ourselves at the venue.
The next day was a great day off, 9 hours of driving in the van to reach some tiny town in the middle of god knows where only to crash and get up to finish the other 9 hours today, FUN!
Today though I have a special treat! While Melis was visiting she causght a Jam Session with Bill and I, and Dean from Beat Union on video, so i’m in the process of editing that and i’ll be posting it today! make sure you check it out!
Cheers!
Chicago
Tonight ruled! To start, The Frantic joined the tour and I must say if you haven’t checked this band out you really need to, they are absolutely amazing! We really turned it up a notch today and killed it. Everyone was really on point and the crowed was going nutts! Thanks to Chicago for showing the Zero Crew an awesome time!
Tomorrow is St. Louis and Jason’s family is coming out so that should be a good time!
Cheers!
