JOE WIGDAHL PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG

Spin Magazine called me up in January and asked me to take pictures of Yeasayer and MGMT playing at Schubas’s here in Chicago. I had just started to get into both bands and I really love MGMT’s Time to Pretend video so I was glad to meet them both. They were interesting guys- Ira from Yeasayer has a hilarious story about how he now carries a knife with him because of an incident of being trapped in a bathroom by a guy who started screaming and speaking in tongues. The MGMT guys talked about magnetic bio-vibrations and spirits.

I was asked by Spin Magazine a week or so ago to go down to Indianapolis to take some portraits of the band Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s. The last time I went to Indianapolis was a year ago for a shoot for Rides Magazine of a custom car shop there called Killer Customz and it was a pretty strange experience.

My friend Jeremy and I went down to meet up with the band and as we were rolling up to their neighborhood we noticed that it was sort of a rough spot and there were a few burned down houses in the area. When we asked the band if they were blown-up meth labs or if there was an arsonist in the area or something Jason said, “No, people get in to feuds around here about a dog crapping on the lawn or something and then they just light your house on fire.”

Nice.

The band was super-super cool. They were game for any ideas and they took us out for fish and chips at the Lockerbie Pub afterwards. We drove back to Chicago in a snowstorm.

The pic is an outtake from the shoot. Spin decided to use an image that is way different so you’ll have to get the issue or check back later to see how that turned out…

Here are some other pics of the band’s house.

I shot this spread of Lupe Fiasco in his house out in the Chicago suburbs for Spin Magazine. It’s on newsstands this month. I had heard from a friend that Lupe was into martial arts so I asked him to do some of his Tai Chi while I took pictures of him in front of all of these piles of shoes, thousand-dollar jeans and skate decks and whatnot. He was in the middle of finishing up recording his next record and packing up all of his stuff to move but was super chill and gave us enough time to do the shoot and have fun.