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<\/p>\nTim Kerr does not make divisions in his art. The music he made with ground-breaking Austin punk band the Big Boys connects with his lifelong passion for surfing, which turned into skate boarding, which turned into painting skate decks, which fed into other bands, which turned into making music and visual art his entire life without stopping.<\/p>\n
A new movie, You Can Color Outside the Lines: The Story of the Big Boys, celebrates the weird miracle that was the Big Boys, a genuinely original act in a scene that began to Xerox itself fast. It debuts Sunday in Austin; initial screenings are sold out, but this documentary will likely be a bigger deal soon.<\/p>\n
Kerr is dealing with a melanoma that has resulted in chemotherapy and a wound that requires outside care. He\u2019s had to cancel some art events, but, as he puts it, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t hurt when I play.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, he is playing with Up Around the Sun, an instrumental acoustic affair co-starring banjo player Jerry Hagins and usually a guest or collaborator. They\u2019ve been kicking around since 2013, have produced five albums and their shows draw a small but devout audience.<\/p>\n
We talked in his art studio, an explosion of color behind the house he and his wife, Beth, have kept since 1983. Over 40-plus years, he made thousands of paintings here, in addition to producing dozens of records. He sports an international following, from the skate decks of his Big Boys days to his portraits of musicians and politicians \u2014 almost always incorporating text. You can tell a “Tim Kerr” a mile away.<\/p>\n
The Hyde Park house itself \u2014 jammed with the books and artifacts and mementos that speak to a life in punk \u2014 has housed hundreds of musicians over the years and became a crucial part of the network that kept punk bands going for the past few decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were everyone\u2019s favorite aunt and uncle,\u201d Kerr says. \u201cOne South by Southwest, we had 32 people in this house and two tents in the backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in 1956 and already a surfing, skating adult by the time the Ramones album appeared, Kerr was a little older than a lot of his hardcore-kid contemporaries, so he was more open to putting non-punk-rock ideas into the music.<\/p>\n
Formed at the end of 1979, the Big Boys slapped together the funk Kerr and his pals skated to with raw punk rock, a strong visual aesthetic and a devotion to skating. The Boys\u2019 late frontman, Randy \u201cBiscuit\u201d Turner, was himself a scene legend \u2014 a large, extremely out gay man in an era and a national scene that wasn\u2019t known for supporting the same. (Gary Floyd, the singer for the Austin band The Dicks, was also an out gay man.)<\/p>\n
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Michael Minasi<\/p>\n
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KUT News<\/p>\n
Kerr has made thousands of paintings in his art studio in Hyde Park. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith us,\u201d Kerr says, \u201cyou have to have skating, you have to have [visual] art in there, and Biscuit was gay. Those three aspects of those three things are just as important as the band itself was.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Big Boys were seismic to the underground, but they fell apart in 1984. Unlike many peers, Kerr kept playing guitar in new and interesting bands. He kept skating. He kept making art.<\/p>\n
In Kerr\u2019s view, he wasn’t doing anything anyone else couldn’t do. As many of his records said on the back: \u201cYour Name Here\u201d and \u201cWhat Are You Doing to Participate?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was instead of [the punk rock adage] \u2018Go start your own band,\u2019\u201d Kerr says. \u201cIt\u2019s \u2018You can do something. You can celebrate your self-expression, your clothes, dance, music, whatever.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Color Outside the Lines has been in the works for over a decade. A Texas City native, director Joe Salinas has been a professional filmmaker since 2008 and shot amateur skate videos long before that. Also a punk musician, he knew the Big Boys as an entity, but didn\u2019t meet Kerr until the 2000s. They hit it off immediately. Tim and Beth asked him to take over the idea of the Big Boys doc in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are nicest humans I’ve ever met,\u201d Salinas says. \u201cThe way that he approaches everything that he does, it’s good human stuff. The idea that you do acts of kindness without any kind expectations in return. It’s just something you do. And making art for your entire life is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr found the art world opposite from the punk underground in crucial, unpleasant ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn punk,\u201d he says, \u201ceverybody shared all the contacts. \u2018You want to get up and play a couple of your songs? Cool.\u2019 That type of thing. In the art world, everybody holds those cards really close.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s worked for Kerr. Practicing the belief that all art you make, no matter what the medium, is part of one gesture allows for great triumphs and stuff that doesn\u2019t work. You can experiment. You can make things, today. <\/p>\n
What are you doing to participate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tim Kerr does not make divisions in his art. The music he made with ground-breaking Austin punk band…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,121686,1635,1636,121687,121152,113042,121690,27,121688,121689],"class_list":["post-341166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-big-boys","tag-documentary","tag-film","tag-joe-salinas","tag-punk-music","tag-punk-rock","tag-skater-punk","tag-texas","tag-tim-kerr","tag-you-can-color-outside-the-lines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}