What the hay?

Rough Cow started out in the mid-1990s as an exercise between my buddy Jason and me to simply draw for drawing’s sake, to break up the tedium of working a retail job at a paper supplier. After a fateful phone conversation, we arbitrarily chose the cow as the form we’d work into different poses and situations. Our only rule was to draw cows roughly, to not think about the cow until the cow arrived. This practice overtook our creative life, until we were obsessed, drawing cows nonstop in our downtime. Rough Cow became the name of our two-man band, the name of our ridiculous armchair philosophy.

Friends sometimes asked for Rough Cow murals which Jason and I happily painted. We put together a Rough Cow exhibit in north Denver in 2006?7? We stage a few band Lockdowns, where we’d gather for a weekend with our instruments, beer and recording equipment (microcassette & 4-track recorders), press record, and then let what happened happen. Our buddy Shawn took part in one of them.

In the intervening years, Jason moved to nigh-Canada (upper Minnesota), and while we still keep in touch, distance has stretched the mania with which we collaboratively worked on Rough Cow. I continued my personal deep dive into the practice, drawing Rough Cows, compiling Rough Cow books each holiday season for my daughter, sketching & painting & compulsively turning scribbles, scratches & quick penmarks into rough cows.

The more I started to create things that took on Rough Cow’s likeness — postcards, t-shirts, lapel pins, murals — the more I wanted to find another creative outlet to express a Rough Cow philosophy in this world. My best friend, bandmate and newest creative partner Johnny James Dio suggested a weekly comic strip. Thus begat (st)Range Life w/ Rough Cow, a sometimes singlepanel, sometimes multipanel metaphysical & graphic hunt for our mutual zeitgeist.

Keeping in spirit with the original ethos of Rough Cow, we decided that anything and everything was game, whether it be politics, pop culture, music, or our personal histories and inner dialogues.

These strips and panels reflect where our hearts and minds are right now. But to paraphrase Twin Peaks, one of our favorite works of art — and one of our cultural touchstones — when you see us again, it won’t be us.

Confused? That’s ok. Let Rough Cow be your guide to the other side, the Light at the end of the Darkest Timeline. We’ll continue adding drawings, strips and panels as they arrive. And I’ll continue adding Rough Cow content as it arrives. It’s kinda like breathing at this point. I’m glad I can finally share it with you.