Joseph Angelo Warner

Greg tweeted that he needed a screen printer and my friend Tommy back home in Michigan called me up right away telling me to ‘get on it’. So I did. Within days I was at Greg’s house working on designs for The Reigning Monarchs, and eventually spent nearly 36 straight hours hand-sewing prints onto the backs of nice sweaters for him and USA Mike to wear on stage. Within weeks we’d become good friends and were working on releases for his podcast Walking The Room he hosted with Dave Anthony, as well as making special items for the Starfish Circus live shows. Within months he moved me into his guest house and we set up a printing shop in his garage. 

Over the next year I was a full-service Art Director for all things Greg Behrendt. We made album covers together, printed shirts until 4am, had late-night breakfasts discussing love and relationships and art. A couple times a week I would get a knock on the door to come with him to a show he was doing and just... hang out. It was over this period I not only gained a whole new respect for him as a working comedian, but also as a person. Watching him balance a career in entertainment while also being a devoted family man made me feel like the American Dream is a real, attainable thing. 

Yes there were struggles I witnessed with him getting booked, being on the road and away from home, and generally working to come back from being known mainstream as a relationship guru instead of an insanely smart and witty comic. Both of these things being respectable titles on their own, but I could tell Greg’s passions were somewhere more along the lines of loving to make people laugh while personally being completely immersed in fashion and art, rather than being expected to solve someone else’s dating problems in a few chapters. Not that he doesn’t enjoy that, but there are many more layers to the man that women have come to idolize for giving them back the power in their dating relationships. 

Greg has taught me about hard work. He’s taught me about the difference between something that’s well-made with a point of view and something that’s just a knock-off, thrown together to be a product that will sell at a ‘more reasonable’ price. I had been living my life in a world of knock-offs rather than trying to manifest something that’s well-made and strong. I’m not talking about the difference between a $13 Target tee and an $80 shirt from Barney’s, but instead about what actually goes in to making something strong and worthwhile and will last. Sometimes things cost more in life if you want them to be around for a while. 

That concept was mirrored even more in Greg’s personal life as he’s always striving to create a life that isn’t a knock-off of something greater, but instead a unique, creatively curated existence that pays tribute to the things in life that are genuinely real, intangible, and beautiful. It’s hard to make friends in Los Angeles because of the over-saturation of people looking to turn a dime and get that Bentley they’ve always wanted, at whatever cost to others around them. But Greg is one person I can count as a true friend, a good friend, and one of my best friends. 

From a guy unafraid of wearing glitter pomade, painting his nails to match his daughters’, and always wanting to wear short pants even though I told him he was crazy, comes a treasure trove of advice, good times, and an incredible way of looking at the world differently. He’s also someone that will help anyone that needs it in the drop of a hat. I feel infinitely lucky to have spent a year having a front row seat to this journey, and 4+ years and counting of being a part of someone’s life that is living to make a change in the world. 

So yesterday Greg decided let’s get this Pompahawk Chop Shop design ready to go. It’s something we’ve been toying with for over a year now, and thought it would be great to do it as a bit of a fundraiser since cancer not only sucks, but is ultimately very expensive. A lot of stuff Greg has me design takes a while because I’m a perfectionist and will out-think myself from completing things. But this design just flowed easily and I finished the main typography in a matter of hours, adding to the great illustration Guy Tensen drew of Greg over a year ago. 

We have Unisex and Female tees available as well as a Hoodie. All great quality like you’ve come to expect from us at Estoy. Greg and I started Estoy to make items with character, rather than run-of-the-mill plastisol prints on stiff cotton tees like merchandise is generally known for. Our merchandise became fashion and Estoy became a lifestyle more than anything. 

We’ve each made an incredible amount of friends over the past couple of years because of it, so I’m proud to release this today, and even more proud to have Greg Behrendt be someone that’s changed my life considerably. 

Thanks for reading. 

The fundraiser shirts can be found here: http://bit.ly/GreggersMerch

It seems a lot of things in my life are ending lately. I went to a punk rock show for the first time in a few years. Many years. The Swellers, a straight up pop-punk outfit from my home state of Michigan has called it quits and are on a farewell world tour. I had go, actually ordering a ticket in the mail rather than the typical print-at-home option, or even just showing the email confirmation on my phone at the door.

The last time I saw The Swellers was 10 years ago, when my old band Never Say Never drove across Michigan to play with them in Flint, and they opened for us. We borrowed our bass player’s parents’ van, packed it with our equipment and piled in. It was one of our first road gigs outside of Grand Rapids, and was a pretty epic night in general- Our much younger 17 year old bass player messed around in the van with a local female fan, we almost got in a fight with some even crazier punk kids, and it felt like we were getting a glimpse of the real rock star tour life we all dreamed of. I had a blue mohawk and was enjoying the thrill of drinking under age and getting into clubs my favorite bands had played at. A couple years later The Swellers got signed to Fueled By Ramen and Never Say Never broke up. 

I was nervous at first tonight, wondering if these kids in the crowd were going to smell the amount of age and supposed sophistication I’ve accumulated at 31. Was I doing to be the old guy they whisper about and make fun under their breath? I own a business now, am struggling to afford my own health insurance, and haven’t pulled my guitars from their cases in at least 3 years. Something that 21 year old me would want to slap me for. I decided tonight I would get up to the front, sing every word to every song, and bang my head and jump around as if I was 21 again and had a Sociology class the next day I’d already planned on skipping to recover from the show. 

My dream was to go to film school, find a band, and live a rock star dream of touring and sleeping in a van until we could ink that major label deal. We didn’t. But they did. They toured, recorded, and made a pretty big name for themselves. A part of me was always a little jealous, but I had become such a fan of their coming-of-age lyrics and catchy hooks and melodies that the jealousy subsided and instead turned into genuine adoration. Just when they had made a large impact on me through their music over the years, I find out they’re done. And this will be their last set of shows. It was like a piece of my life was also being laid to rest with the band’s 13 year career.

Maybe it’s this, coupled with the fact that a legendary podcast Walking The Room also just ended, giving their last performance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival on the same day. This podcast is the reason I have a company right now. At WTR’s height, they had a good amount of extremely loyal fans across the world that would buy everything we released. So much so, that it birthed a business just to handle their merchandise needs. A business I would continue to run even past their sadly prophetic demise, expanding and handling over 50 other comedy and podcast brands.

Oddly enough, one of the highlights of the evening was being able to talk with artist Dave Kloc, also from Michigan, who is involved in the same comedy scene I supply with shirts and posters and CDs and digital downloads. He’s extremely talented and prolific, and humbles me with his incredible illustration and printing skills. Especially since I’m self-taught and built my first screens from canvas frames, and my first press from Home Depot lumber, screws, and springs.  He had a pretty close connection to The Swellers as their tour manager through their ‘peak’ years and now is in LA making amazing art for comedians I also work with. We swapped printing stories, had a couple laughs, and each went home to continue working on our respective projects. 

It’s an incredible ‘full-circle’ type of connection that kind of gives me hope that life isn’t a series of our favorite things ending, but maybe just transforming into the next step of exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, Rather than thinking of things as stopping and being no more, they’re all just pit-stops along a very crazy journey of life. And each one is special and you get something out of it that inspires you, and then you move on to the next. 

I hate change. I hate ‘new’ versions of anything. I hate when my favorite rock clubs turn into electronic music venues. I hate it when one of my favorite bands (Fall Out Boy) comes out with a record I don’t even really want to buy because I can’t relate to it. I miss when FOB were singing Patron Saint of Liars And Fakes from their first record with verses just as driving and catchy as their choruses and half-time breakdowns that have now been traded in for electronic drum breaks and seemingly infinite layers of vocal tracks where guitar used to be. 

Maybe it’s an incarnation that has to happen though. Not everything stays as it is, and the only constant in life is that everything is going to change. I can’t go back to being 21 and jumping around on stage like I used to. I can’t go back to being art director for Walking The Room while they’re doing a Starfish Circus at Largo. While you’re in that moment, you can’t ever see it changing. And then it does and you feel cheated. 

I guess the moral of the story is don’t ever take any moment for granted. Live in it. Feel it. Experience it to the fullest. And I guess later on, be thankful that that moment was another step in the staircase we’re all climbing up. There’s never a destination to our journey. The only destination really, is death. Everything up to that point, you have to enjoy and learn from and know that you were there and it meant something. Sometimes you can get too caught up in something that you miss, that you wind up cheating yourself out of what’s happening now, and when this moment is over, you’ll look back with the same feelings and wish you’d lived it to its fullest.