“It’s got all kinds of stuff in it. There’s just ridiculously wacky, funny things. There’s raunchy things. There’s some more sober or heavier things. There’s a lot of heart in it. It goofs off a lot.” Alec Berry attempted to humor me and sum up just what will be going on at Clientele Art Studio tonight at 8:20 p.m. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen the flyers up all around town, advertising a magazine release party, featuring Batman the Novel. With little time left to figure out what’s going on, I talked to Alec and David Anderson, the brains behind the operation, to get to the bottom of this.
The Walker Jr., II, first off, is a sequel. Last July, Clientele hosted the releases of The Walker Jr. (the first one). “We threw it together in a couple of weeks and we did a show at Clientele. We went into it really not knowing what this was. We were so nervous, we thought this was going to be a total disaster in front of people in a room, because we’re doing this on the fly. But it went really well, we had a good crowd, the response was positive, enough so that we convinced ourselves that we should do it again,” said Alec. So, they’re back, continuing on the strange notes of last year (there was, apparently, a dance about wanting to shoot John Lennon).
To get down to it, The Walker Jr. II is a literary magazine, a brain child of a joke, the answer shifts constantly. It’s inspired by all kinds of things, but mostly it’s another entry in the legacy of the do-it-yourself zine. They both stressed how the idea to self-publish a magazine was not original. “The zine is a really old idea, you can even take it back to the Thomas Payne days if you really want to,” Alec said, which lead to many a joke about just what part of this zine Thomas would like. In the vein of Thomas Payne, and many, many others, Alec and David decided to take their idea and make it something tangible for people. David summed up why. “No one’s going to ask us to do this, so let’s not wait around, let’s keep this in house, do the things we like, and not wait for someone to give us permission to do it.” They’re both big on creating just because you can. “If someone came away thinking ‘I can do exactly what those two dummies did’ then I feel super happy with both the zine and the show,” said David.
The friendship that led to the creation of The Walker Jr. is a key part of the work, in fact, it’s how Alec summed it up in three words: “friends hanging out.” (David went more simple: “The Walker Jr.”) The magazine is named after an old friend of David and Alec, and all the contributors are friends of theirs. They both praised the idea of just getting together and creating with your friends, and just how powerful that can be. “Rarely in your life do you come across people with whom you can truly share certain sensibilities, or people who you can trust with something you’re working on artistically. And Alec has always been one of those people for me,” David complimented.
While I’m still not 100% sure what I could see at Clientele tonight, I know that if it’s half as good as the compliments these two dished out for one another, it’ll be great. It seems that it will be “a bunch of different things put together between two covers” per Alec. “A combination of different styles,” according to David. I’ve also been told that Hannah Montana may make an appearance, but that information may be unreliable. “Part of going to The Walker Jr. is you don’t totally know what you’re going to walk into, but you’re open to spending an hour this way. And it’s not going to be like any other hour you could have spent,” Alec told me. So, maybe I didn’t get a straight answer, but it seems like that’s half the fun. All I can say is these guys are funny, and the show is bound to be entertaining. So, see you at 8:20?
