Young musicians are embracing the art of punk rock posters

The telephone poles scattered across downtown St. John's make up a museum of the city's musical past. Every layer of paper posters reveals another month, another handful of local bands.

The young punk rock scene is keeping the do-it-yourself tradition alive— at a time when artificial intelligence can produce a graphic with a simple prompt.

Caleb Butt is one of the artists going back to the subculture's roots. 

"I like to help out in any way in the music scene because I love it so much here," he said, sitting on a Bannerman Park bench.

"One of those ways is making posters, which I've recently gotten into," said Butt.

He started by making posters to advertise shows his band, Twin Rinks, is playing. Butt likes to experiment with collages anyway, so he decided to bring the medium to a wider audience.

"It's one of the things I'm really passionate about," he said. 

It's easy to use the internet for marketing, says Butt, but alternative music is about pushing back against the norm. 

Young people are more drawn to physical media these days, he said. It's easier to look back to musical memories that way.

"It doesn't get, like, lost in all the content people have been putting out," he added. 

Stephen Chislett of Paradise appreciates the work.

A drummer for hardcore bands himself, Chislett digitally archives posters from shows he's been to.

"There's always a source of pride whenever you kind of see your band's name on a poster," he told CBC over the phone on Thursday.

"I think that people who take the time to actually, you know, design and make a nice looking poster to reflect what kind of music is going to be played, I think that matters a lot," said Chislett.

The drummer's favourite posters are the ones where the artist evidently had fun creating it, where the pen scratches and marker lines are visible. 

Chislett says it is important to use social media as a marketing tool, but it's more fun when musicians leave a trace around town.

"I really do like to see [posters] being printed out and kind of taped around poles around town," he said. "I'll see old ones from months ago that are still up and maybe there was one that I went to, and I get to think back fondly on that show."

The medium is oftentimes an opportunity for people to flex their creative muscles, even just starting out. 

That was the case for Mike Feehan, a St. John's illustrator known for his artwork in Star Trek comic books and the award-winning Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles.

But it all started over a decade ago in his DIY days.

"I remember one of the first shows I went to, someone said to other people that I could draw," Feehan said. "Someone gave me a Sharpie and people started asking me to draw pictures on their arms and things like that."

"I kind of made a name for myself as the kid who drew," he said.

That kid who drew used posters as a way to evolve his style while helping out his friends who were in bands at the time. 

Then he started doing work for touring bands, and it spiralled from there.

Some of Feehan's favourite designs included a surfing mummy, and another one with a giant robot hanging out with punks in a junkyard.

"[A good poster has] things that'll grab people's attention, especially when they're walking down the street," he said.

Feehan is happy to see that people are still drawing and designing posters by hand, saying that's what it's all about.

"I just think that art and punk rock and hardcore, really go hand in hand," said Feehan.

"It's not something to be dismissed," he said. "It's definitely something that should be embraced."

Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here. Click here to visit our landing page.