Like what you see? Be sure to check out our slideshow of Uncle Charlie's coolest concert posters.
Uncle Charlie chats with an aging punk while people buzz inside his Bayou City Arts Festival tent, which looks like Walt Disney's toilet after a long night of swigging paint and dropping acid.
The swarm rifles through Uncle Charlie's works: graphic-designed posters pimping dozens of rock bands like The Who, Wilco, Radiohead and Willie Nelson. Each print is splashed with sugar skulls or alien gangsters or demented circus clowns.
With blue eyes behind black, thick-lensed frames, brown hair, and an orange ketchup stain on his shirt, Uncle Charlie, 42, is a legend. Ever since he was a private-school kid in a punk group, Uncle Charlie — real name: Charlie Hardwick — has created fliers for music shows.
Now, he's a rock art legend, one of the first people famous bands turn to when they need a brash, fuck-you poster. In Art of Modern Rock, a book co-authored by rock-and-roll historian Paul Grushkin and largely considered the bible of rock art, Hardwick appears in more sections than any other artist. With experience in the worlds of both corporate design and punk DIY, Hardwick graces Grushkin's chapter "temporary insanity" as effortlessly as his designs grace Minute Maid products. "You can't look away," Grushkin says. "The best rock-and-roll artists have always had that about them: the ability to stare down the public. The public has got to react. You cannot look at Charlie's art and not react."
Most of his fans here today have seen his colorful work on House of Blues marquees in Houston and across the country, and they line up to meet Uncle Charlie in the flesh. He greets his many admirers with a slow and purposeful handshake, one that starts as a right-angle bend at the elbow and extends forward on an even plane. Sometimes he misses by a few inches.
"I'm gonna go run to the restroom real quick," Hardwick finally says to the punk after what seems like half an hour. But this is no quick escape. He stands shakily as his wife Stephanie, who's sitting beside him, reaches into his backpack and hands him his retractable white cane with the red tip. Hardwick snaps it into place and heads off slowly, sweeping the crowded sidewalk in front of him with his stick. The punk looks confused, and people watching from a nearby bench start whispering.
His fans know that Uncle Charlie's art has changed throughout his career — especially over the past few years. What many of them don't know is that Uncle Charlie is blind.
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Twice a week, Uncle Charlie mounts his bike and teeters three miles to the closest bus stop in The Woodlands. Provided he doesn't wreck his bike en route, which he's done eight times already this year, he catches the bus all the way downtown. He then walks the few blocks to the Metro rail, rides it a couple stops more. For Hardwick, the end of the line is always Tacos a Go-Go.
The whole staff knows him at the small, cheerful taqueria right off the rail. Hardwick's touch to the decor there is unmistakable; his Día de los Muertos-esque skull stickers hang next to the menus, and his same colorful design graces the stools.
Hardwick smiles to the whole store and greets the staff personally with animated hellos. He orders breakfast tacos at the counter and hands his card to the cashier, knocking over pens and menus. Bending his head close to the receipt, he squints, and the cashier indicates the signature line with an exaggerated flourish. "You know the drill," he tells her brightly in the direction of her voice.
Hardwick has been fleeing the suburbs ever since he was a kid. The fifth of five boys, and the youngest by eight years, Hardwick was largely left to raise himself. He was an angry kid, and nothing seemed to interest him: not school, not his parents' country club and not even art, though his talent was recognized early on. Little Hardwick won the local Hallmark's Halloween children's contest. He drew a scene creepy beyond his years with bubbling cauldrons, witches and his trademark skulls. Hardwick's neighbor enrolled him in a drawing class at the zoo, where kids would draw the animals. He hated it, he said. The people were weird.
Everything switched at 13, when Hardwick's closest brother took him to a Who concert. That night he discovered two things that would change his life forever: rock shows and Montrose. "It was just fascinating," he remembered of lower Westheimer. "All this just stuff, you know, hookers walking up and down the street, gay people everywhere, cars — it was like, wow. This is awesome, all this color."
Hardwick was hooked on the grit and graffiti of Montrose. For the next few years, he'd sneak out of his house at night and catch the bus there. Hardwick would stroll the streets alone or with friends, befriending transvestites and absorbing local art.
