remembering Athon, II

Last Sunday, after hearing of Athon’s death, I posted a few photos from Black Tusk shows over the last couple of years. I didn’t have a lot to say in that post — I was just shocked and saddened like so many others.

Fortunately, many of Athon’s friends and fellow musicians have found the words this week to capture the tragedy of his passing and the beauty of his life. We’ve been learning a lot more about Athon this week in the reflections about the lives he touched, and I decided to pull together some of the public memorials into a single blog post here. If you’re logged in as a Facebook page, you’ll have trouble seeing some of these, so log into Facebook as yourself if that’s a problem. The embeds might be a little glitchy in other ways, but you should be able to click on through.

I’m sure there are many more remembrances that we could have included, so if you want to send us some URLs via the comments here or the hissing lawns Facebook page, we’ll add some others.

Black Tusk actually played an important role in the short history of this blog, which was founded in Sept. 2013. I knew Savannah needed a better platform for sharing news about bands like Black Tusk — the second post in hissing lawns’ history was about their fall 2013 European tour. Not long after that post, Tom Cartmel and I bonded over online discussion of Black Tusk photos. Tom has now posted dozens of galleries here and has helped define the blog’s aesthetic.

As we mourned Athon this week, Tom told me that shooting a Black Tusk show was the first time when he thought that he could take some decent photos. From that show:

athon-7

And here, in something of a jumbled order, with lots more after the jump, are some of the posts that have caught our attention this week:

May my cuts be a little straighter and my bass lines a little cleaner. #tcbt #athon #forever @tcbt @andrewtusk

A photo posted by Savannah Skatepark (@savannahskatepark) on

Our hearts are heavy with sadness for the loss of the wonderful Jonathan Athon from Black Tusk. Rest in Peace brother

A photo posted by Relapse Records (@relapserecords) on