Keep Swinging

Portraits by Micah Hughey

Legendary photographer Robbie Jeffers has shot for brands like Nike and Stüssy and has worked with bands such as Foster The People and Big Theif. Reckless writer and photographer Micah Hughey talks to Robbie about building a dark room in Kuwait, the iconic venue Pappy and Harriet’s, and how shooting film is like playing a game of failure.

Los Angeles, USA

How’d you get into photographing bands and tours?

ROBBIE:

“Well, I always wanted to be a musician first and foremost, especially as a little kid. I fell in love with playing the drums when I was like six and I got my first drum set. I was never any good; I played it throughout.. well, up until I was thirty something. Music and guitar. I'm teaching myself the piano now, so yeah, music has always been first and foremost.”

So music is just something that’s always been around you?

ROBBIE:

“Always, always. My mom plays the piano, my brother played the drums, and my dad was a musician, so music has always been a part of my life. Really it was an easy transition to shooting bands from that regard, y’know? Like everything else in life, it’s who you know. I knew a lot of great musicians who introduced me to that person and this person and then that person. With this one band, Big Thief, that’s how I got into shooting them.”

Yes! I’ve actually been listening to them quite a bit!

ROBBIE:

“This is a long story, so I’ll try to make it short: I was commissioned by the country of Kuwait to build them a darkroom in their Getty Center. It was super random; don't ask me how. I had never built a darkroom, but I said yes. I was like, ‘Heck yeah! Of course!’”

Not knowing anything?!

ROBBIE:

“I’ve been in darkrooms, but I’d never built a darkroom. I’m not a construction dude. I don’t even know how to change the oil in my car that well. That’s not my forte.”

Sometimes you have to say yes without knowing anything.

ROBBIE:

“Yes. I just said yes. I thought I’d wing it and figure it out because the money was insane. It’s Kuwait, y’know what I mean? This Getty Center was huge and I was teaching a girl whose husband was getting his PhD in Kuwait. I was teaching her how to shoot, print and process. She was one of my students, and, by trade, she was an interior designer for a couple of the princes in Kuwait. One of the princes was overseeing this whole museum, and there was a wing of it that they didn’t know what to do with. She suggested doing a darkroom and gallery. They loved the idea. So she hit me up asking if I could do it and I said of course.

I then went to my buddy Ray who has built many darkrooms. He's a brilliant photographer and went to photography school in the 80’s. He's just one of my mentors and he helped me out a lot. Ray and I then met at a coffee shop in Long Beach, my hometown. As I was ordering coffee, he asked me, ‘What have you been doing?’ and I said, ‘I just had a really fun shoot. I shot this band called The National at the Palladium.’ It was really fun. The photos came out great.

Then, this kid behind me was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s my all-time favorite band,' and I said, ‘Oh cool!' I had prints with me and I told him I’d show him after this meeting because he wanted to see some photos. Anyway, the meeting with Ray and I ended, so I was showing the kid the photos, and his friend walked in and said, ‘Here are those tickets to Big Thief out in Pioneertown. I can’t go so there's extra ones.’ So Nathan, the kid who wanted to see some photos, looked at me and said, ‘You wanna go see Big Thief?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know; I don’t really know them. I only know one song: Shark Smile.’ But I said yeah sure, and I ended up trading him a print for the two tickets.”

ROBBIE:

“Anyways, I’m driving out there to see the show and also a drummer friend of mine named Kyle Crane (rad drummer, plays with all kinds of rad people). He asked what I was doing and I said, ‘Well I'm driving out to Pioneertown, which is close to Joshua Tree, to see this band called Big Thief.' Kyle said, ‘Aw sweet. Tell Buck I said hi!’ I didn't know who Buck was and I didn't know the band, but I was like, 'Okay.’

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Pioneertown. Have you ever been to Pappy and Harriet's?”

No I haven’t, actually.

ROBBIE:

“Okay, so it’s a venue out in Pioneertown, which is an old spaghetti western town that Roy Rogers helped build.”

Wait. I think I have passed by it, actually, but only quickly.

ROBBIE:

“Yeah, it’s just super cool. Pappy and Harriet's is a venue that gets the most random bands and musicians like Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters.. all these bands play out there; it’s a bar. It’s literally a bar with a restaurant. Super tiny.”

That’s so random!

ROBBIE:

“Yes, super random! They get huge names like Willy Nelson.”

Pioneertown, Joshua Tree is really small isn’t it?

ROBBIE:

“Yes, really small. So, before the show, Buck walks by this outside courthouse. I didn’t know who he was, but the kid that I was with was like, 'Oh, that’s Buck.' So I walked up to Buck, introduced myself and said, ‘Hey Buck, I’m Robbie. Kyle Crane says hi.’ Buck was like, 'Oh, rad! I love Kyle. What do you do?’ I say, ‘I’m a photographer,’ and he’s like, 'No way! I’m a photographer too.’ He then says to me, ‘You wanna shoot the show?’ I said 'Hell yeah, that’d be awesome!' He also told me that I could go wherever I wanted to. I could stand on the amps.. wherever, y’know?”

So basically a fly on the wall?

ROBBIE:

“Yes.”

ROBBIE:

“So, I did what I did and the show was incredible. I was like, ‘Wow this band is great!’, ‘Really talented band!’, ‘This band is amazing!’ This was a Friday night and I knew they were playing at the Long Beach Festival that Sunday. As the night ended, I said to Buck, ‘I live in Long Beach or thereabouts and I know you're playing there Sunday. I would love to come and shoot that show too.’ Buck said sure. Then I just processed all the film, got some prints and showed Big Thief on Sunday at the Long Beach Festival. They were stoked and that’s how that relationship started. All through friends.”

Do you always carry prints around with you?

ROBBIE:

“No. I usually don't carry prints, but at the coffee shop, for some reason, they were in my car. I picked them up from the darkroom. They were dry and I just had them with me when I met Ray and Nathan. Then I wanted to show Buck and the band. Like, I wanted to shoot them and I wanted this to continue. I’ll be straight with you; I just wanted to impress them. It worked. We’ve been working together for a few years and we’re talking about doing a book.. talking about something. It’s fun. But that's how I met Big Thief.”

They’re honestly a really fun band and.. kinda dark? Actually, my favorite song by them is ‘Not - Live at The Bunker Studio’.

ROBBIE:

“They’re awesome and yes, super, super dark. Yes, great song.”

How has the lockdown affected your photography? If it did or didn’t affect your photography, how so or how come?

ROBBIE:

“It was the best thing for me. I was burning out when it started and wanted to quit, so it brought a great time off for me. I also started shooting for a high end eye brand, Barton Perreira, and I have never been busier. So it was a great thing for me.”

So it was basically a much-needed time off where everything just finally slowed down for you?

ROBBIE:

“I actually became busier, but it was a new style of photography. It was very technical, too, so it was a nice change.”

So you mainly shoot black and white film. Would you ever make the switch to color?

ROBBIE:

“When a gig requires it. I shot a fragrance gig last week and they wanted color so I shot some portra. I don’t like it; I find black and white to be more interesting. Color.. well if Kodachrome was still around, I would probably be more excited. E-6 and C-41. It’s just bland right now.”

I agree; it does feel dull. I get that feeling, too. I think there is more detail in black and white film.

ROBBIE:

“I don’t know, yeah, maybe. I just don’t like it.”

Besides music photography, did you also shoot skating?

ROBBIE:

“No, I didn’t really shoot skating. I shot more of the skating lifestyle. Working with Nike, working with Stussy, going on tours.. I was also a team manager and did marketing for all that. I did shoot some skating, but I didn’t love it. I didn’t wanna lay in a ditch and, 38 rolls later, get a sequence of HUF. I remember being with HUF and Chris Ortiz, a photographer, in London. I was watching how many rolls of film he was burning through while just trying to get the sequence. It’s just not fun to me, so I always shot hanging out for dinner, on the plane, traveling, or something of that nature with the skateboarding community. Never really had the desire to shoot kickflip-over-a-trash-can content.”

It’s honestly so easy to burn through rolls. I was actually in Venice at that famous skatepark and I was just waiting for the shot I wanted. I still managed to waste half of the frames.

ROBBIE:

“Yes, yes. I’ve been shooting surfing lately only because I borrowed a 500mm lens—a Hasselblad. It’s so hard to shoot surfing with that camera setup.”

And Hasselblads are heavy already.

ROBBIE:

“Yeah. I have it on a tripod and the 500mm lens is like two and a half feet long; you can’t hold it. Then, with the Hasselblad, everything is reversed in the rangefinder, so if the subject is moving left, you’ve gotta move the camera the opposite direction. It's awkward.”

I’m not sure if I could do surf. It would be too trippy.

ROBBIE:

“It was hard. I burned through a couple rolls and I think I only got one photo that was worthy.”

I actually shot some polaroids last night—behind the scenes shots for this band Songs For Sabotage’s upcoming music video. There’s only a few I like.

ROBBIE:

“You know, I always tell my students—or people that want to get into film photography—that it's like baseball. I don’t like baseball, but baseball is a game of failure if you think about it. Rod Carew, one of the greatest hitters of all time, went into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His lifetime batting average was 328.. something like that. That’s thirty-two percent. That’s a game of failure, and to say he’s the greatest of all time with thirty something percent? With Ray Barbee, on a roll of thirty-six exposures, if we get three that we wanna take into the darkroom and print, then that's a successful roll. That’s less than thirty percent, so it's a game of failure. There’s so many variables, like if their eyes were closed or the exposure was off. The hard thing about shooting film is you can’t see it. So you gotta keep swinging.”