That said, like Sub Pop, Tooth & Nail also invests a lot of money and energy into making sure its records look good, which is what attracted Butcher to the label. And the music, of course.
"I had a friend from church and his mom had bought him an MxPx cassette tape," says Butcher of his introduction to the label and to punk rock overall. "My friend didn't like it, so he gave it to me, and I was, like, 'Dude, this is so fast! This is awesome!'" After learning MxPx's home was Tooth & Nail, Butcher naturally began exploring the label's catalog, ordering several CDs via mail order. The music was good and the covers were good, which was when Butcher realized that the essence of good album design is matching the artwork to the jams inside. The two elements should be inseparable, he says.
Renee McMahon
In the ring with Neil Young.
Jordan Butcher is up for a Grammy in the caegory of Best Boxed or Limited Edition Packaging category for his work on Underoath's Lost in the Sound of Separation.
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Butcher was born and raised in Buckhannon, a pretty little river town of about 7,000 that nearly leads the state in underage drinking, drug use, theft, trespassing, assault, and methamphetamine production. In Buckhannon, Butcher says, if you don't work for a coal company, chances are you're unemployed or work at the Wal-Mart. But Butcher is proud to point out that Buckhannon was home to Charley Harper, the modern graphic illustrator whose stylized work influenced Andy Warhol and Todd Oldham.
Says Butcher: "I think me and Charley Harper are the only two people from around there that do any kind of art."
Buckhannon, however small and rural, is also home to West Virginia Wesleyan College, which allowed Butcher to be exposed to some alternative culture as a teenager. He recalls that the college was a tour stop for the Goo Goo Dolls and New Radicals in the 1990s. But, proud as he is of being a native West Virginian, he also knew at a young age that he had to get the hell out.
"I realized I wanted to do art for a living," he says. "And if I wanted to make decals to put on the back of pickup trucks that say 'Ain't Skeered' and stuff like that, then there might've been some kind of future for me there. But otherwise..."
After designing posters for his friends' bands throughout high school, Butcher was given an invitation out of West Virginia in 2005. Knowing there was more to life than Buckhannon, he e-mailed Tooth & Nail's design team and another Seattle-based design company called Squad, a name Butcher recognized from a handful of T&N releases, about an internship. Though he never heard from T&N, Squad told Butcher that if he came to Seattle, they'd take him on as a summer intern. His internship turned into a paid position, which he held for a year before T&N contacted him through a friend of a friend. "I got a call from Ryan {T&N designer Ryan Clark], and he said, 'Would you be interested in working here? I need someone.' And I was just like, 'Holy crap!'"
He was hired as a production designer in 2006. Despite being so green, he couldn't have asked for better influences to work beside: Tooth & Nail's in-house design team has been nominated in Grammy design categories for four years in a row. Butcher's nomination is the fifth. 2010 has also brought T&N its first musical Grammy nomination, for Jeremy Camp's Speaking Louder Than Before, in the Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album category. (For the record, Sub Pop also has one Grammy to its name: Flight of the Conchords' The Distant Future won Best Comedy Album in 2008.)
"I'd say Jordan's strong points often lie in the simple details," says Clark. "He has a way of designing just enough and not too much, which is very appreciated in a ever-growing world of overdesigned mush."
"When I'm designing," says Butcher, "I try and think of the band looking at the artwork and seeing their soul in it, the soul of their music. When I go in to do a record, I want it to evoke some kind of emotion. It should enhance the music. I think bands like Sigur Ros do that really well with their artwork. It's not my thing, necessarily, but when I look at their artwork and listen to the music, I'm like, 'This all totally makes sense.'"
When Butcher thinks of his Grammy nomination, he can't help but feel lucky, especially when he considers his roots.
"A lot of my friends back there [in West Virginia] are still just...doing whatever," he says. "I wonder, like, why was it different for me...y'know? I don't know, I try not to think about it too much."
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