Album Artist: Q&A w/ Thee Oh Sees' Cover Man William Keihn

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To most San Franciscans, William Keihn is simply a comrade, sharing enthusiasm for the local music scene and a spot in the front row at shows. He sips thick ale, taps his foot, and applauds like the rest of us, smiling and occasionally singing along. But what most locals don't realize, much to Keihn's satisfaction, is that he is the man behind some of the most iconic local garage/psych album art of recent years.

Working with the likes of Thee Oh Sees on their albums Help and The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending The Night In, Keihn has crafted a style that is undeniably distinct. He has also cultivated an iconographic aesthetic rife with color and psychedelic chaos that exists as a product of the now, helping to give aesthetic structure to a current, vibrant underground culture in San Francisco.

Thee Oh Sees' "Help"

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All Shook Down chatted with Keihn in a Lower Height tavern about drugs as gateways to inspiration, album covers as myth makers, and the awesomeness of Cannibal Corpse's Back To Life.

At what age would you say you really came into a style that was your own?

When I was a little kid I drew a lot. I learned to make really appeasing art for adults. Then I went to middle school and didn't think I was any good. I was never the kid who was identified as the one who could draw. There only seemed to be room for the one guy who could draw the best Grateful Dead bear or draw a rad alien or something. I wasn't that dude, so I lacked the self-esteem necessary to project myself forward, but I kept drawing and drawing. I used to rip off Swamp Thing comics and just draw the entire comic series based on other comic books and things like that. Then in high school I started smoking a lot of weed and doing a lot of drugs and that kind of gave way to liberation for me to feel like I could be more expressive in my art. At that point I graduated school and moved away from my hometown and started making punk flyers for bands...Xerox art, in a really historically punk fashion.

When you began to collaborate with musicians and do more music-related art, did you go to the bands and musicians with ideas, or were people coming to you with ideas?

I would usually have a good idea of what I wanted to do and people took chances on me. I just always made myself available to do those things and a lot of people in bands don't have the time to consider all these different elements [besides] making music and performing.

Why does doing flyer and poster art appeal to you so much?

Part of what's appealing to me is that you can make them quickly, and they are easily accessible for someone to see, take, tear down, put on their wall, interact with in a tactile way, as opposed to a painting that you spend a lot of private time with. It's the quickest way to disseminate information. It's an equalizer because people who don't have printing presses can copy something and give it away. Some people say it devalues a single image, but it's either keep it singular, or share it with as many people as you can, and I like doing that.

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People are probably most familiar with your album art for Thee Oh Sees. How did your relationship with them evolve?

I used to visit my friend in San Francisco when I was still living in Indiana and he lived with John [Dwyer] so I would stay at their house and he was really warm to me. We would have conversations about Providence, Rhode Island, because I always had a strong appreciation for Providence, due to the strong art presence there. We would talk about artists that we were mutually aware of are friends with. As a "thank you" for letting me stay at his house, I sent him some of my art through the mail and he connected with it instantly and wanted to use it as album art. I had no problem with that.