Lonesome River Bluegrass T-Shirt

I originally created the artwork for Lonesome River Bluegrass many years ago, around 2016, when I was living in Maine and spending a lot of time around the bluegrass community there. The idea came from something I’ve always loved about bluegrass music… the combination of music, the outdoors and people getting together to play.

I was imagining an outdoor bluegrass festival: pine forests, a winding river, the sun going down and musicians gathering together to pick a few tunes late into the evening.

The original artwork was actually made as a linoleum block print. I later revisited the design digitally, cleaning it up and developing the artwork so that it could work as a T-shirt and sticker while still keeping some of the character of the original print.

The instruments winding their way down the river are a little nod to the music itself: fiddle, guitar, banjo, mandolin and upright bass.

I've always liked the idea of bluegrass as an outdoor music. There’s something about sitting around with a few friends, picking tunes as the evening gets darker, that feels very different from playing on a stage. That's the feeling I wanted to capture with this design.

Lonesome River Bluegrass is now available as a T-shirt and sticker, featuring the original artwork reworked for each format.