I got down to the Gathering pretty late yesterday. One of the writers I am with from the LA Weekly decided to make his own juggalo toy out of a Big Boy bank he bought at breakfast and it became a whole thing. I actually built a fake website for the toy today and he actually sold it at the Gathering. Incredibly stupid but it might make for a pretty good article (that I will post once it’s up).

When I got there a documentary filmmaker doing something on juggalos convinced me to do an interview and by the time that was over I only had an hour or so of good light. I still got some pretty decent shots before Gwar went on. Gwar did some insane political show where they murdered Obama, Trump and Hillary and sprayed a lot of pink blood on everyone. Good times. Violent J of ICP also preformed his solo album Wizard of the Hood with the help of Shaggy and Twiztid and a bunch of dwarves. Real weird.

Late night I shot some wrasslin’ because the LA Weekly is doing a story about wrestling at the Gathering. There will be a lot more of that tonight. Unfortunately I am kinda terrible at shooting wrestling and didn’t bring a long lens so all of that stuff will probably be horrible, but I am sure I will get enough decent shots for the article.

Very last thing we did was head to the Busey Beauties party which was a fucking insane but pretty much everything they do is nuts so yeah.

This is an incredibly boring update but I am unreasonably exhausted and I still have two more days of this. I am pretty sure I am going to die soon.

Here’s some of my LA Weekly coverage posted since yesterday:

• The Most Beautiful People of the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos
• Juggalo Pride: The Tattoos of the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos
• 10 Things You Can Buy From Random Strangers at Gathering of the Juggalos by Andy Hermann

And now here are five random photos from the day…

Yesterday was fucking exhausting but I managed to take 700 photos and didn’t at all die which is a success no matter how you look at it. I have no idea how I am going to make it through four days of this with four or five clients but I gotta make a living somehow and it’s better than a real job right?

I didn’t get to see much music yesterday because I was mostly out shooting juggalos but I got to see Rittz and Tech N9ne. Tech is always fucking amazing and he plays every year so I always make sure to pay attention to his set. Today Gwar is playing which should be cool but over all there isn’t a ton of music this year I am excited about.

Mike Busey and his Busey Beauties are back and I hung out with them a bit last night but didn’t shoot a ton of photos. Will make up for that today since everyone seems to fucking love those shots. I did shoot a bunch of naked juggalettes which everyone also seems to love so there should be bunch of weird nudity this year if that’s important to you.

Here’s some links from my LA Weekly coverage so far:

• Day one gallery on the LA Weekly
• Juggalos Are The New Ravers by Andy Hermann
• I Think I’ve Been a Juggalo My Whole Life and Just Didn’t Know It by Art Tavana

And now here’s some random photos for you to look at…

So I have done a terrible job of updating this while in Austin for SXSW. Don’t blame me. I have been busy making money so that I can pay my rent and continue photographing fun stuff that you want to look at. This is life.

So SXSW is over and I am headed home at 6am tomorrow. Since I last left you guys I shot two more days of FloodFest and I shot a little bit of the Levitation showcase at Hotel Vegas. I think. I also got a tattoo that says Chow Hound and hung out with some babes at Red Lobster and at a lake. It’s been a good trip I think.

Thanks a bunch to Sailor Jerry and Original Penguin for having me out and here’s a few photos from the last couple days before I get home and update this site properly.

So holy shit I haven’t had time to do anything so far. I can’t really explain it except to say I got old somehow. Normally at SXSW I sleep 4 hours and somehow just function perfectly fine but this year I am struggling. I started out on the wrong foot when I landed in Austin after sleeping a total of three hours over the last 72. That first night I crashed early because I had to hit FloodFest at 11am.

Here’s some highlights…

The Heavy. They were great.

Deap Valley. Rock and roll babes that I kinda want to describe as the White Stripes with more bluesy female vocals but that seems like kinda bullshit. Whatever the case they wore fringe and were hanging out with an actual human baby.

This guy who got a fucking SXSW 2016 tattoo on his knuckles. That shit is so wild. He was in a band called American Bombshell playing their first ever SXSW and he saw that Sailor Jerry was doing free tattoos. SXSW 16 is not actually a Sailor Jerry tattoo but it had to be done.

After FloodFest I randomly got hired to shoot a dinner for Atlanta hip-hop legends Organized Noize which was awesome. They have a documentary out in the film fest and were celebrating. So thanks to my buddy Chris for putting in the good word. It makes up for that time we split a hotel room at Art Basel and his sleep apnea machine lulled me to sleep to the sounds of Darth Vader snoring.

After the Organized Noize dinner I went back to edit photos and called it a night.

Day two started back at FloodFest. My friends Ho99o9 are destroying SXSW for the second year in a row and they came by to get some Sailor Jerry tattoos and then I took em over to Original Penguin for some button up shirts which is kinda a great look on some punk rock scumbags.

Band wise I really dug the September Girls. I hung out with them most of the day which was an ideal way to spend St. Patrick’s Day given they are all actually Irish. Rad babes with cute accents that make good music? Totally down to be their groupie if they need me.

My favorite band of SXSW so far is Sir The Baptist. They are a mix of gospel, hip hop and R&B and they put on a hell of a show. You should see them if you get a chance. This photo isn’t even of Sir.

After FloodFest I went over to Hotel Vegas to check out Thee Oh Sees at the Levitation showcase which makes the millionth time I have seen Thee Oh Sees in Austin. They are fucking great though so it’s a yearly SXSW requirement. Also there were a ton of cute babes at Hotel Vegas (including the September Girls!) which is the most important thing.

I left Hotel Vegas kinda early to edit photos and take a shower before going back out again but it’s now midnight and I am working on this post and haven’t even showered yet so I kinda have a feeling I am in for the night. Fuck it. We got a lot more SXSW to go!

Yesterday was the final day of the Gathering of the Juggalos and it was a pretty fun one. Gotta make this update quick though because I drove to Indianapolis instead of editing photos and now I am about to photograph a really hot lady and then go get food with my friend and then edit four days of photos so I can get them to Rolling Stone and Noisey by the time my editors get into work tomorrow. Let’s go.

They day started off with a fantastic surprise. One of my favorite people, Angel Beau, just happened to be performing her strip circus act in Dayton, OH the weekend of the Gathering and so Freakshow Deluxe, one of the sideshow acts at the Gathering, drove to Dayton and grabbed her and had her perform with them. Their sideshow was rad and it was so awesome to see her there even if she was only around for an hour.

Day four also featured more fighting, more Busey Beauties and more bands. Mushroom Head was totally silly up close. Their masks look like mid level halloween masks and there are far too many people running around on their stage. Really weird. Waka Flocka on the other hand was fucking amazing. Juggalos started throwing shit at him and instead of leaving stage like other acts have done at the Gathering he just jumped into the crowd and played several songs while moshing and hugging juggalos. It was awesome. One of the best performances I’ve seen in my life.

Machine Gun Kelly was next and he puts on a great show even if I don’t love his music. Waka Flocka came out for his first song which was pretty great as well. I’ve photographed him backstage at the Woodie Awards, at the AVN Awards and now at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Pretty random. He did leave with all the Busey Beauties I was flirting with, but I guess I can’t blame him…

ICP ended the music portion of the night and as always they put on one of the most insane shows possible. I don’t care what you think of their music or their fans; if you ever get a chance to see them live do it. You will be blown away. They ended with a slow song instead of their usual closer and I guess they gave out Chinese lanterns because during their last song everyone lit them and the sky was filled with them which was fairly epic. Plus someone shot one down with a fire work which was fucking impressive. Juggalos do fucking shit up very well.

After ICP I saw Judah Friedlander’s comedy set which was mostly crowd work and very funny. I think rolled over to the wrestling matches for a second but it was crazy over there so I visited the mythical burrito man one final time and dipped out.

Here are a few photos from yesterday and then starting Monday I will start dropping several updates a day on the main site until you get to see everything I shot at the gathering. Get excited.

UPDATE: Noisey ran my juggalo fight club photos! Go look at them!

Day three of the Gathering of the Juggalos was my take it easy day. There wasn’t anything I actually really cared about photographing. I slept in and got some work done and even published my first article ever that was more writing than photos. Check it out over at Noisey:

WE FOLLOWED ELECTRONIC PUNK RAPPERS HO99O9 TO THEIR FIRST ‘GATHERING OF THE JUGGALOS’ FESTIVAL

So that was cool. I wish people would give me money to write sometimes, not because I am good at it or that it pays well, but writers get a lot more credit for articles. Whenever I collaborate on an article with a writer it instantly becomes their article even if it was my idea and their name is always bigger, etc, etc. Then again they have to do actual work and for the most part get paid even worse than photographers do so maybe fuck it. I don’t know.

Anyway, back to yesterday… The highlight was definitely another bare knuckle boxing match. If you remember Nebraska from last year, he was back and absolutely destroyed a huge dude who looked like he could throw down. They fought two rounds with gloves and any sane ref would have called the fight pretty much instantly but the Wolfpac are not exactly sane and made them take the gloves off after two rounds and the other dude took a hell of a beating. I got some crazy shots.

I only shot one band, Twiztid and I only took like 10 photos of them because I have shot them a million times and only juggalos care about them although they did a collab with Mishka and I sat in on an interview with them and they seem like pretty good dudes.

One of the reasons I didn’t shoot any bands is because I finally got the Gathering of the Juggalos tattoo I have been talking about for years! It was my first tattoo that I ever got while bugs were flying all over me. I just got Whoop Whoop! tattooed to my leg and the guy basically just did it by hand and jammed it in some random spot on my leg. I kinda love it even though some dude on Instagram told me he was unfollowing me because of it. Gonna miss him. 🙁

After Twiztid I went to one of the weird after parties because this insanely hot girl told me she was gonna be dancing there which is one of the few reasons I do anything in life. I took a handful of photos there and then decided to leave so I could get some work done since I gotta be down there kinda early today. On the way out I caught a few minutes of Big Jay Oakerson’s comedy set but he was doing vaguely homophobic sexist and racist jokes which isn’t really my thing cause I am not a bigot. Maybe that’s what he though juggalos would think is funny but he wasn’t exactly killing up there.

I can’t think of anything else interesting that happened yesterday so here’s some random photos of juggalos…

Today I woke up at 2pm which would be more impressive if I didn’t go to bed at 7:30am. The Gathering is beating me but I won’t let it win. I feel almost functional this morning afternoon. Luckily I don’t really have anything I NEED to shoot at the Gathering today. Obviously I need to get down there soon anyway but let me give you a little run down of yesterday.

Since I spent most of Wednesday following around Ho99o9 I didn’t take a lot of photos of actual juggalos so that was a big part of yesterday. I think I got some really nice shots yesterday. After the sun started to go down the light was really nice for a few hours. I also brought a 35mm camera loaded with black and white film out and left my flash in the car.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find my car when I went back to get my flash and ended up missing the first few minutes of Flosstradamus which normally wouldn’t have been a big deal but they kicked all the photographers out of the photo pit before I got there. I have shot Flosstradamus a bunch of times, but never in front of thousands of juggalos. Their set went very well save for one asshole who hit Josh in the face with a rock. Made for a nice visual though…

After Flosstradamus I decided I didn’t need to photograph Dark Lotus for the 6th time and met up with the mythical Burrito Man for a burrito and then went to hang out with Mike Busey and his pack of strippers at the DJ Clay after party. Clay and I seem to have very similar tastes in hip hop and believe it or not I always look forward to his DJ sets. My friend Steak is filming a show for Vice’s new women’s vertical Broadly and apparently one for the HBO Vice show at the same time so she had two camera crews following her around so I hung out with those kids a bunch too.

I said goodbye to the Vice crew and went over to shoot Twista and when I got there they were already there again. Twista was fucking awesome although he didn’t seem to know he was at the Gathering of the Juggalos. He kept giving shout outs to Ohio as if we were all from Thornville.

Oh, I also saw Puddle of Mudd for some reason and I am pretty sure I am falling in love with about 6 of Busey’s Beauties. Perhaps it’s the body glitter… Everyone likes shiny things.

Here’s a few highlights and will be back with much, much more soon.

It’s finally over. It’s really fucking finally over. I ended my SXSW in ideal fashion last night by seeing just my third band of the whole festival when I shot the amazing Ho99o9 last night. I am still in Austin for two more days but I am just gonna be relaxing and eating BBQ. Perhaps going to the rodeo? Yeah that’s a real thing.

Anyway, I can finally talk about the parties I was shooting this week. I was working for Sailor Jerry as per always and they threw a bunch of secret parties that had more of a lounge vibe than the rest of SXSW. They had bands DJ instead of playing music and there were a lot of couches and free drinks. It was sort of an ideal way to deal with the madness that is SXSW.

The last two nights we had Lust For Youth, the Spits, Ice Age and Andy Animal Djing and we had some good people stop by. In between the two parties I got to shoot my friend and muse Erica for the first time in years time which was amazing. Plus the photos are way sexier than the really fun ones we took at Disney World!

I was really glad not to have to see a billion bands at SXSW because I always get completely burnt out, but I did miss the chance to find that one or two bands that blow me away every year. Fortunately my buddy Eaddy’s band Ho99o9 was playing right next to the Sailor Jerry house at the We Are Family showcase. I kept hearing so much great shit about them and they completely lived up to the hype. Eaddy is honestly one of the best frontmen I’ve ever seen and the other dude is fucking great too. I wanna go on tour with these dudes. It would be amazing shots every night but I am 100% I would break my camera because when they covered Attitude by Bad Brains I totally forgot I had my camera in my hand and just got in the pit.

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the last two days. I will probably update this Road Trip blog once more before returning to reality and updating my site as per normal. I got a lot of images to get up…

Music week is in full swing and I have been working parties I can’t really talk about until after they are over. Whatever the case, last night was a ton of fun and I have a feeling tonight is going to be a blast as well. Plus I have legitimately nothing to do until 9pm tonight and that fucking rules.

I did take some pictures of Thee Oh Sees and my friend Justin’s band the Residuals at Hotel Vegas yesterday but other than that I have completely managed to avoid seeing any bands this week which is precisely the plan. Not that there aren’t a few bands I want to see but every year I get so burnt out from SXSW so it’s nice to try to just chill out a bit.

Anyway, here are some highlights from the last two days… Pics from the Sailor Jerry gallery, Hotel Vegas and two parties that aren’t that secret but I would get yelled at for talking about. If you want to come by tonight though just let me know and I can list you.