Wow, what a huge canvas to work with. Kevin Morgan Studio did the artwork for the new bus line, GoBus, that travels from Athens to Cincinnati and Columbus.  The design was over 100 foot long and at least 5 foot tall, close to 500 square feet of space to fill, whew. It is a landscape of Southeast Ohio with it’s  rolling hills and the destinations of Cincinnati and Columbus in the distance. Of course, we put the GoBus logo right in the middle to get the most attention.

The GoBus Intercity Bus Service is a collaborated effort between Ohio Department of Transportation, The City of Athens, and Hocking Athens Perry Community Action. The project is part of a nationwide effort to connect rural areas and urban centers that result in connections of greater regional, statewide, and national significance.

The service was initiated by the Federal Transit Administration and the Ohio Department of Transportation. The City of Athens received funding from these organizations to manage and promote this service to help link Athens, Ohio and neighboring rural communities to the cities of Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio. They also received federal stimulus money to purchase three new deluxe motor coaches to operate along these routes. The City of Athens appointed Hocking Athens Perry Community Action, a non-profit corporation dedicated to the needs of the region, as the project administrator.

The buses run each route twice daily with connections to Greyhound’s nationwide system and the Port Columbus International Airport providing Southeast Ohio residents with greater access and mobility.

The studio was quite excited to design the new GoBus themes and had a great pleasure working with Carolyn Conley and Lantz Repp andf the GoBus team.

Friend of the Studio, Roger Steffens, is pictured here with a tin of Ras Hurl’s “Blessings” Tea. In the background you can see posters designed by Kevin for Roger’s multimedia presentation, Life of Bob Marley. The photo was taken by our friend Steve when he was visiting Roger’s studio and going through his archives.

Roger is perhaps best known for his reggae archives, in particular his archives of Bob Marley. He travels the world lecturing on The Life of Bob Marley at hundreds of venues including the Smithsonian Institution, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Experience Music Project, American Film Institute, Red Rocks-Denver, University of the West Indies and University of Technology (Kingston, Jamaica), Schomburg Center for Black Research of the New York Public Library; Missouri History Museum, and countless Universities.

Roger has enjoyed Kevin’s Reggae festival posters so much he included some of his favorite in his book, Reggae Scrapbook.

Here is the Amazon write up for Reggae Scrapbook.

Guiding us on this colorful book-length journey is one of the men who introduced reggae to America and helped rock the world with its syncopated beat, Roger Steffens. Through lectures, books, magazine articles, radio, and television, Steffens has shared his knowledge of reggae from coast to coast. He is the world’s premier archivist and collector of reggae memorabilia, and brings the best of his in-depth interviews with such reggae legends as Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, and “Toots” Hibbert to this unique scrapbook.

Roger also added Kevin’s artwork to his book, “World of Reggae”. A number of Kevin’s Reggae posters can be viewed in his portfolio of Event Posters.

Kevin was bitten by the Reggae bug early in his life. And for 30+ years he has been designing t-shirts, posters and album covers that express his love and devotion to the music and it’s culture. Here is an excerpt from an interview that did recalling his Bob Marley connection:

“Sinbad’s Reggae Records was opened in Athens by a guy named Phil Alloy, must have been in the late 70′s. One of the first Reggae record shops this side of the Mississippi. Phil and his wife Valerie were into Reggae before anyone knew what Reggae was. Image Graphics was right down the street and when Phil landed a contract with Bob Marley to do t-shirts and merchandising for Bob’s US tours, he had us do the art and printing. I was really blessed with the opportunity, they liked my stuff and we ended up doing a lot of work for not only Bob, but Rita Marley, The Melody Makers, Tuff Gong, Neville Garrick and more. Phil and I designed the original Bob Marley Museum logo, which is still in use today and our t-shirt “Tribute to the King” is part of the centerfold collage on Bob’s Legend Album. I could go on and on, but I have spent some great time in Jamaica, met most the Marley Family and still work with Phil today.”

Legend was the twelfth album by Bob Marley & the Wailers released in 1984. It is the best-selling reggae album of all-time, with over 14 million copies sold in the United States and approximately 25 million copies sold globally, the album was ranked number 46 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. So, if you think about it, there are literally millions of people who own an image of Kevin’s artwork. Pretty cool.

On the inside cover, in the compilation of the Bob Marley merchandise, you can see Kevin’s design which appears on a t-shirt that was designed for Sinbad Reggae Records and Tuff Gong. The image, “Tribute to the King”, was produced to commemorate the one year anniversary of Bob’s passing.

Here is a picture of the “Tribute to the King” t-shirt being worn by a concert goer at Reggae Sunsplash in 1981. If you look real close you can see the stage backdrop that Kevin also created.

Kevin is best known for his graphic design and fine art, but he has worked in other mediums as well. One of those mediums is sculpture. One of Kevin’s newest sculpture can be viewed at the Fur Peace Ranch. Originally titled “Jorma” the FPR staff have come to call it “The King of Strings”. I’s a towering metal sculpture that was created from one piece of heavy gauged steel, cut and welded together. It is unfinished which gives it a nice rusty patina. Kevin and his wife Janet are pictured with “The King of Strings.”

Kevin has done several wooden totems. Here’s an old picture of Kevin and some hand-carved wooden totems he created about 10 years ago.

If you are in uptown Athens you can spot these totems on Court Street. Oh, bet you can’t guess who made Kevin’s buck skinned suit. That’s right, he did.

I had the pleasure to design Hot Tuna’s new studio album “Steady As She Goes”. A lot of you out there might know, KMS serves as art director for Fur Peace Ranch, Jorma’s guitar camp in Meigs County, Ohio, and Hot Tuna. I think I’m up to 6 album designs now between Jorma’s solo and Hot Tuna combined. Red House Records was kind enough to hire us for Hot Tuna’s new album after doing the last two Jorma albums “Stars In My Crown” and “River Of Time”. Before that was “The Best of Hot Tuna” on Columbia and you can see all these in my portfolio.

Can’t tell you how blessed I am that Jorma and his wife Vanessa, moved to our neck of the woods. These guys are the best of people and turned me on to a number of other great folks who we now also do business with and have become dear friends. Also got to thank Jack Casady and Eric at Red House, again the best kind of people.

My Project Director Mike says I should be rambling on about process, where these designs come from and so on…. so I’ll try and write more about that later. Kevin=i=

Kevin had the great opportunity to design the Martin Guitar, Jorma Kaukonen Signature Model labels that are inside the body of the guitar and are used to number sequence and Jormas Signature. Kevin is seen here with C.F. Martin, in Anaheim, CA., Chris is holding Jormas Model.

Kevin Morgan and C. F. Martin