In keeping with both Ashworth and Toubin’s “by-gone” artistic integrity, the work is styled after classic posters made popular by Globe Poster Printing Corporation, based in East Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1929, Globe used bright and iconic graphics to promote events for movie theaters, vaudeville acts, burlesque houses, and carnivals but quickly became a source for performers announcing their tours--especially R&B, soul, jazz, and rock artists as well as hip hop, funk, and go-go acts--famously utilizing DayGlo daylight fluorescent pigments for optimum vibrance.
“The design process is pretty seamless nowadays,” says Ashworth. After an impressive 74 posters together – 47 for Soul Clap, the other 27 for special events in Toubin’s New York Night Train lineup, including the Sunday Soul Scream series, the annual Haunted Hop Spooktacular, and New Year’s Ball – Toubin and Ashworth’s combined love for the music vibrates off the page. Usually after a color study, a few mock-ups, and Toubin’s final layout approval, Ashworth produces consistently bold and vibrant posters that perfectly capture the essence of the events, becoming collector items for music and art lovers alike.
A collaboration in its tenth year.
This decade-long collaboration pairs Phil Ashworth’s hand-inked illustration principles with the joyful musical celebrations of Jonathon Toubin’s Soul Clap and Dance-Off.
“A match made in analog heaven,” says Toubin, whose monthly Soul Clap and Dance-Off events debuted in March 2007 as an outlet to play his growing collection of soul 45s to a tightly-knit Williamsburg underground art/rock community in the spirit of the 1990s D.I.Y. indie/punk scene parties from which he emerged. So, in 2014 when he asked a young Brooklyn illustrator to create a poster promoting Soul Clap’s seventh-anniversary show, it was clear they struck a chord that would reverberate through their future pen nibs and turntable needles, respectively.
