Fifty posters about souled american
In the summer of 1997, my friend Camden Joy asked me to help him with a street postering project about Souled American. We put out the word, asking folks for any thoughts they might have about this band we liked so much that had pretty much slipped from view. Lots of folks responded, and Camden typed up their writings and I designed some pretty posters and we hung them up anywhere we could around New York. We sent some to folks in other cities, and they hung them up, too.

The writers who contributed were S.E. Barnet, Camden Joy, Caeri Bertrand, Mark Lerner, Mark Donato, Jonathan Lethem, Richard Gehr, Jay Ruttenberg, Nancy Lynn Howell, Janet Steen, Erik Huber, and Hope Windle.

Posters don't last all that long, and we were so pleased with what everyone had written that we put it all together into a book, Make Me Laugh, Make Me Cry: Fifty Posters About Souled American. (There were actually 61.) We even had a little reading. Anyway, now it's a couple years later, and Souled American seem to have resurfaced a bit. You can actually purchase their albums in America now, and they've been playing scattered live shows. So maybe it's time to haul out these posters again and let more people take a look at them.

 

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

61

 

Update, 2022: Souled American have been silent for many years, though rumors abound of a seventh album still in the works. Their records are out of print and not on streaming services. But hey: Who knows? You can buy a book version of these posters now on Amazon.

Originally, poster number 60 had a blank space for writing in your own comments. I even had a nice web version of it, with a form thingy and a button and all of that, but I haven't been able to get it to work since I moved this site to a new server. So we take the low-tech approach: If you'd like to do some writing of your own about Souled American, comment about the posters, or contact the writers, feel free to send e-mail.