Photo courtesy of Dana Gorab

I’ve been working on concert crews for nearly 40 years, and I’ve probably seen more performances than most people could imagine. Some were spectacular, some were unforgettable and a few actually brought me to tears.

Stagehands love live music, too, and what’s more, we love bringing shows to life for audiences. We may be working above the stage, behind it or underneath it, but we feel the energy when a performer really connects with an audience. It’s one of the reasons we do this job. Even though I’ve seen thousands of shows, things still happen that raise gooseflesh on my arms.

One of those moments came during Fleetwood Mac’s reunion tour, The Dance.

I’d worked with Fleetwood Mac before, back when things could get pretty wild. But seeing them reunited in 1997 was an entirely different experience. They were together, they sounded incredible, and from the very first note, you could feel the energy coming off that stage. It rolled across the front of the audience and flowed right up to where we were working in the catwalks.

There were people weeping in the audience, and I understood exactly how they felt. It was one of those performances where something extraordinary happened between the musicians and the crowd. My voice still shakes when I talk about that night, almost thirty years later.

Another time, I was working a Neil Young show at Great Woods, the outdoor amphitheater outside Boston that’s now called the Xfinity Center.

I’ve worked on productions with enormous sets, elaborate lighting and huge props. Believe me, I appreciate what goes into creating a spectacular show. That’s my job.

But Neil’s stage was almost bare; nothing but Neil, a stool and his acoustic guitar. Behind him was a string of Christmas lights arranged in the shape of a ship. That was the entire setup.

I was up on the catwalk, running a follow-spot, and I had a wonderful view of the performance and the audience. Neil was playing his greatest hits, including songs from the 70s, and the audience was on its feet all night long. He connected with those people in a way that’s hard to describe. It was like lightning going off. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

We can build the biggest, most elaborate stage in the world, but when a performer really connects with an audience, none of that other stuff matters. I think we all cried that night.

And then, there was one of my idols, Tina Turner. This happened in the early 90s, also at Great Woods. I had immense respect for Tina, not just because of her talent, but because she was a true performer. Every single time she stepped onto a stage, she gave it everything she had.

For this particular show, they’d brought in a cherry picker - or a mechanical lift for Tina to use during her performance. Somebody asked me if I’d try it out first to make sure it was safe for her. I said, “Absolutely!”

They put me up in that thing and extended it all the way out over the audience seats. It was cool as hell.

Time came for the show. Now, I had tested the cherry picker, so I knew what it felt like to be out there. But who knew Tina Turner was going to hang off the thing with one arm and one leg, wearing leather pants and stilettos? She was amazing! When Tina came back down onto the raised stage, there was a ramp leading offstage. My friend Rusty and I were standing at the side, ready to help her.

And here’s the thing: at that moment, we weren’t thinking about the fact that this was Tina Turner, one of the biggest stars in the world. We were stagehands doing our jobs. She was coming offstage, and we needed to help her down safely.

Tina came right into our arms, and we caught her. We were all sweating because it was the middle of summer and hot as hell. Tina had been giving everything she had to that audience, and Rusty and I had been working the show.

As we caught her, Tina handed me an armful of teddy bears! Then she grabbed Rusty’s face and planted a great big kiss on his cheek. She told us, “Without stage hands, I would be nothing.”

Rusty and I just stared at each other with our eyes filling up with tears. You have to understand something about working backstage. The crew is responsible for making sure everything happens the way it’s supposed to happen. We’re there before the performers arrive, and we’re still there long after they’ve gone. We do our jobs because we love what we do, but we don’t always get a lot of recognition from the people onstage.

And we don’t expect it. That’s not why we’re there. But here was Tina Turner, this incredible woman I’d admired for years, taking a moment to acknowledge us. Not just with a thank-you, but with genuine affection and appreciation.

We were gobsmacked. Rusty had this big lipstick kiss on his cheek, and he told me, “I’m never gonna wash my face again.”

I’ve worked thousands of performances over the years, and I’ve seen some extraordinary things. But I’ll never forget that moment with Tina. The audience had spent the evening showing Tina how much they loved her. And when she came offstage, she turned around and showed a couple of stagehands how much she appreciated them.

That meant the world to us. Of course we busted out crying!

The idea of making music was something that I leaned into early on, or at least my enjoyment of it. I can remember dancing and mouthing the words of “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel” to my parents’ Elvis records for my babysitter at about 8 or 9 years old. That was definitely the start of my enjoyment of music. Shortly after I got into The Beatles, the Grease soundtrack, classic rock songs, disco, ABBA, The Clash, etc.

One of my first ‘dabbles’ of writing music was re-writing the words of “The Logical Song” by Supertramp. This was just for myself and I was probably 11 years old at the time, but as I sang the song, other words seemed to inspire me. So I wrote them down (and sang them).

A few years after I had taken up guitar, I started to try actual music creation in high school. I became inspired by a synth we had in our music room. I wrote several instrumentals with the midi keyboard there. This probably stemmed from my siblings’ love of all things new wave: think New Order, The Smiths, The Housemartins, OMD, etc. Ironically I had just come out of a heavy metal phase, and had just left a high school metal band that I was in.

I only started to write on the guitar near the end of high school. I wrote a couple of songs on guitar with very goofy lyrics, one of which I recall was “The Rocks Cry”. At this point I started to get really into 54-40, R.E.M., Skydiggers and other alternative bands of the time.

At university I joined a band called Trains of Winter. They already had someone who was taking on the main songwriter duties, which I was completely fine with. I just focused on the music, mainly the riffs and the solos. One of our biggest gigs was opening for the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir during frosh week at Queen’s; very fun stuff.

After moving to Toronto and a few years of not being in a band, I decided to try again. This is where my other band, Vicky von Vicky, was born. In the beginning we were struggling with writing songs, and it was at this point where our drummer, Paul, pointed out something that wasn’t obvious to me. He said that I already wrote melodies for guitar solos, so how hard would it be to put words to those and create some songs?

He was right. I tried this, and it wasn’t long before I started to write my own songs. It has to come from inspiration, first and foremost. I have a lot of bits of songs I have recorded into my voice memos or elsewhere. Sometimes from them I somehow get inspired and create things out of thin air. It’s another type of problem solving, which I love. It’s very therapeutic. I think in some ways I enjoy the process more than the completed product. In the case here of my latest single, “You Win the Trophy”, I believe I did most of the vocal melody in only a few takes, and the words probably started as gibberish at the beginning. But once the theme starts to materialize and the song takes shape, that’s when I am able to finish things.

Realizing I could be the lyricist was the moment where I went from one level (just a musician) to a songwriter. And I really haven’t looked back. I write and create songs for myself first; I don’t force it.

Graphic created by Hard Pass Creative

When Kate Moore made her theatrical debut as a director in the 2010s, she had an epiphany that, despite being in her 30s at the time, she was still discovering new interests. She wanted to find another play to direct that shared a story of powerful women, and came across These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich. The historical drama about the true story of the “Radium Girls” piqued Moore’s interest; she felt an immediate connection to the story. She ordered a copy of the script, read the first two pages, and turned to her husband. “This is the play I have to direct next,” she said.

She pitched it to her theater company, who agreed to put on the play, but received pushback when applying for the rights. It was devastating news as she had already allowed herself to picture every moment of it. After expressing her vision and passion for the story, she received the green light.

She did as much research as she could on the “Radium Girls”, a group of women whose exposure to radiation in the workplace had fatal consequences. Their determination to improve labor laws while in the midst of terminal illnesses had never been extensively documented, and Moore was ready to change that.

10 years later, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women is a multi-award winning, New York Times best selling book.

“It was from getting the yes, knowing it was a true story, doing as much research as I could on the real women so that I could tell my cast about them and impress upon them the responsibility we had to tell this story accurately and authentically and with heart and emotion and truth, that I realized there's no book that's actually about the women,” Moore said.

Although this was not the first book she had written, Moore now has the retrospect to see how naive she was during the writing process. She had gone from being a full-time editorial director to a freelance writer and editor, which gave her the opportunity to devote as much time as necessary to tell a story. Her past releases were quick turnarounds and she was convinced The Radium Girls would be the same. She had already done a fair amount of research for the play, which was put on in the spring of 2015. However, a November deadline turned into a mid-January 2016 deadline, which ultimately became an end-of-January 2016 deadline.

“I had given myself this ridiculously tight deadline to do what actually takes most writers several years,” she said. “I was working seven days a week. I was working 18- to 22-hour days. My husband was amazing; he did all the cooking, the cleaning. I would literally stop, eat whatever he'd put in front of me and then go back to researching. I say this now, looking back with rose-tinted spectacles: it was kind of beautifully intense, because it was just me and the women.”

It was a happy surprise to find as much material as she did. Something that particularly fascinated her was the decades-long scientific study where the women were tested and examined. She was able to locate the questionnaires that provided detailed accounts on when they started working for the United States Radium Corporation, how many times they put the paint brush in their mouths and how many dials they painted each day. She reached out to family members and was able to look through their records and interview them as well.

Moore immersed herself in their world. The book was written from the women’s perspectives and she wanted the tone to accurately match the era. She travelled to Illinois and New Jersey to assist in the physical descriptions of the women’s surroundings. She stood across the street from where the Ottawa studio had been, at the site of Catherine Wolfe Donohue’s church. She walked the same route the Maggia sisters took from their Orange homes.

She attempted to locate as much material as possible, but unfortunately the full court transcript of the Ottawa trial was not easily accessible. Instead, she used notes and documents from lawyers, including documents given to her by the son of attorney Leonard Grossman.

“All of that stuff was really, really important for getting a sense of what their worlds were like,” she said. “When I'm describing Grossman's office, if you went to the Metropolitan Building yourself, you would see all the stuff that I've put in the book that I saw with my own eyes.”

After its U.K. release in 2016 and its U.S. release in 2017, a young readers’ version was published in 2019 featuring a glossary, timeline and dozens of bonus photos. Since this version relied more on illustrations, she went back through her original files and pulled out train tickets, newspaper clippings, business cards and signed contracts to add to this version. Moore said that she does not hold back on the young readers’ edition, explaining that sanitizing it would not do the women justice. The basic storyline of women standing up for their rights is so inspirational that, in a way, it transcends age.

In March 2027, an anniversary edition of the U.S. book with bonus content will be released.

“It was such a privilege and a cherished time to be able to go back and be in this world again and write about these people,” Moore said. “Some of the women that I wrote about who I hadn’t found family members at the time I was writing have reached out to me, and I’ve been able to interview them and meet up with them, see their pictures, hear their stories, and some of that is in the anniversary edition.”

The Radium Girls became such a success due to a passionate readership. It was more than documenting history; it became a never-ending conversation. Translated into over a dozen different languages, Moore still travels the world to share the stories that these women can no longer tell themselves.

“The most amazing thing is that I get to talk about these incredible women who were always so special to me, from that first moment of finding their story and reading that opening monologue and saying to my husband that this is the one,” she said. “My passion for their story hasn't dimmed in the slightest over the 10 years. If anything, it's got more impassioned because I can see the impact that it's still having. I really feel like an advocate for these inspirational women. I partly wrote the book to pay tribute to them, to help them be remembered, so that they’re not lost to history. There is a book that records their personal trials and tribulations and triumphs, and it just feels so special that I get to share that story.”

Pre-order the anniversary edition of The Radium Girls here and sign up for Moore’s newsletter here.

Graphic created by Hard Pass Creative

"The Outfield" by Good Charlotte, submitted by Molly Hudelson

Graphic created by Hard Pass Creative

On her birthday, July 1, in 2016, Katherine Forbes purchased the domain for Designing The Row. Originally, the site was used as a blog to document her career in artist management. She would share the analytics she was tracking or the types of marketing emails she was sending. The more she did for artists, the more she realized that the most critical piece of marketing was a fully developed website.

10 years later, her services are now an internationally trusted Squarespace design agency and educational platform across many industries.

She had spent years working in artist management, loving certain aspects and stressing over others. It all led back to the website, and if she didn’t have control over the website or if the website was not in decent working order, there was only so much she could do. She refers to a website as the home base. Social media is for sharing, while a website is for the actual business. Anyone selling a service or a product should have an easily accessible platform, and she quickly learned that many artists were lacking this crucial aspect.

A series of events led to the inception of Designing The Row. First, her boss at DS Management announced her retirement. Then she landed an interview that, on paper, was her dream job. There was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on during the interview, but she knew it wasn’t meant to be. She had something much bigger to plan instead.

“It was that moment that I [knew] I was going to do this my way,” she said. “I didn’t want my creativity to be controlled by people and old processes and systems.”

A few months after purchasing the domain, she created the Music Biz Besties Facebook group. She was looking for a place to share ideas beyond her happy hour group in Nashville, and thought that surely others would want a space to do the same. If everyone invited one or two people into the group, maybe a total of 10-15 people would be interested. By the end of the week, 200 people would join.

2017 was when she officially made the transition into web design, with the intention of staying within the music industry. As she brought her ideas up to other people, they shared their opinions that she should offer her services beyond music. She enjoyed the simplicity of creating an artist’s website, but found that she also loved the challenge of creating for businesses and organizations.

Despite branching outside of the music industry for web design, music remains her first love for a multitude of reasons. She has played piano since she was 7 years old, majoring in piano performance as well as music technology. Her background in coding actually came from her studies at Virginia Tech, learning it during a time where custom coding was considered lavish.

“At the end of the day, piano is always what I come back to,” she said. “That’s why I came to Nashville. That’s why I was in artist management. It all comes back to music for me.”

At a time where creative fields are threatened with the unwelcome advances of artificial intelligence, Forbes found a positive aspect that has driven her business forward in a way she was not expecting. Over the last few months, her services have been recommended by way of AI chatbots and introduced her to nearly a dozen new clients.

However, she stands by the idea that in order to succeed, all one needs is to have one person that believes in them. For her, it was her piano professor. She gave Forbes a difficult piece of music to memorize in just four months, knowing that she had the skills to do it. It was also her boss at DS Management, who emailed her established contact list to inform them that Forbes was starting her own business. Sending that email helped her build a portfolio of high profile clients, and that impressive portfolio is what search engines recommend when asking chatbots for website designers.

“Whether it’s believing in yourself or just leaning into that one person that believes in you, it can really get you far,” she said.

Designing the Row is known and sought out for its clean, simple design style that prioritizes usability and messaging over trends. Katherine Forbes believes websites should be an asset that grows alongside brands and businesses, and her goal is to empower clients with clarity, confidence and ownership to make that a reality.

Photo courtesy of Ariel Kassulke

The stereotypical trajectory of a musician is to begin in high school as a mediocre cover band, maybe write a song or two that should not see the light of day, graduate and find another project that turns into something concrete. For vocalist Colton Schroetter and bassist AJ Folino, Alley Eyes is their first band. Learning who they are as musicians is happening in real time, and that leaves constant room for improvement.

In the year since Alley Eyes released their debut EP, bondage in the afternoon, their main takeaway has been that the question “What do we sound like?” has not been fully answered.

Experimentation has been crucial to the three singles they’ve released this year. They agreed that “bloodstain.” from the EP was a sound they wanted to lean into, and after a writing session at Folino’s home, “MY LOVE” was an easy next single to release. It ended up not being the right direction soundwise, and when they began the creative process of “Punisher”, American rock band Quarters heavily influenced Alley Eyes guitarist Griffin Larson.

During a writing session with him and Folino, they came up with the syncopated part before the last big chorus. Once again, the finished project was not the exact direction they felt best represented them. For drummer Jason McCullum, the songs that interest him the most are the ones he feels are relevant from a friend standpoint. When he hears lyrics and can immediately grasp what Schroetter is ruminating on, he believes those are the songs worth pursuing. “Good Times” is one of those songs.

These songs do not leave the listener with a sense of hope but instead speak to the reality of not wanting to feel hopeless. The lyrics are broad enough to manipulate the meaning in a multitude of ways, but with an overall desire that it speaks to someone personally; that the feeling of loneliness is shared.

“A lot of the songs that we’ve been writing moving forward, some that we’ve put out and some that we’re working on for future releases, [have] an emotional throughline of just being very tired by everything around you and very weighed down by life,” Schroetter said.

As they continue to write and record new music, it is clear that these three singles will not be part of a bigger project. They are the perfect representation of their sonic exploration, but they agree that it is not something they want to explore further.

“I’m glad that these stand on their own as their own living, breathing thing,” McCullum said. “We’ve very much started to find where we want to exist in a musical space. I think it will be cool for years down the road, there’s people who have this relationship with us and our music to be able to trace us searching our way towards that.”

While they have given more thought to what they do not want to sound like, they feel as though they are finally on the right track. The three singles have helped them gain a sense of intentionality that wasn’t necessarily as important for the songs on bondage in the afternoon. They believe they found enough of their DNA that their goal is now a full-length album. They are most excited for what one another is bringing to the table for this next batch of songs. For Larson, his contributions are both anticipatory and in demand as he moves away from the direction of “Punisher” and into something uncharted.

“I feel like now I’ve realized, having worked on some of the newer songs that we’re currently in the process of making, that level of instrumentation for us might not be what we want to lean into going forward,” he said.

For Schroetter, as the main lyricist, he writes from a place of instinct and doesn’t necessarily have an inherent feeling or meaning attached to the lyrics as they are being written. When he and his bandmates are locked in on something, that inspiration means something in that moment that may translate differently the farther removed they become from it. Right now, they are on a journey of creating a body of work that emotionally, sonically and thematically feels like they all belong together.

“I think this band functions the best when we have a North Star,” Folino said.

Alley Eyes is closer than ever to answering the question, “What do we sound like?” They have embraced the moments of exploration, tested their abilities and can honestly say they know where they want to go next.

Fandom culture of today functions as so much more than just physical media. Fandoms have become communities; safe spaces that provide friendship, common interests and a collective voice. For many, fandom is about nostalgia. That movie, television show, album, comic book or sports team that meant everything during adolescence means even more now. One of those safe spaces are comic and pop culture conventions, and someone who understands how fandom is best represented there is Jason Marsden.

Marsden has always been immersed in fandom culture, with his introduction into the convention circuit being a Quantum Leap-focused event. Leap Con began in the early 1990s in Southern California, and one year Marsden and a friend spent the day there meeting screenwriters, editors, costume designers and actors from the show.

His first guest appearance at a convention came after his episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Trekkies have been gathering since the 1970s, making a significant impact on show-specific conventions. He heard they were a fun experience and really wanted to be a part of it.

Since then, he has become a regular guest at various conventions throughout the country. He admits that he loves being the center of attention, and weekends spent among fans is the ideal place for it.

“In a convention situation, for the most part, you are receiving love and praise from people,” he said. “As an actor, that’s something that we don’t get a lot of. In the theatrical world, in the auditioning world, it's a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’. It's a lot of rejection. To get validation from people is also very fulfilling.”

Marsden’s extensive resume attracts generations of fans, many who use the phrase, “You were my childhood.” Whether it was his recurring characters on Full House, Boy Meets World and Step By Step or his voice in A Goofy Movie, Hocus Pocus and Spirited Away, his roles have made an impact on its audiences.

In particular, he participates in many heartfelt conversations surrounding the storyline of A Goofy Movie. The collective emotion of having watched that movie with a parent and finding a shared love for it, no matter the parent-child relationship, become meaningful moments that stick with him long after the conversation ends.

“I have had many people come up to me and, with tears, say, ‘I lost my parent’ or ‘I lost my grandparent, but we love this movie so much.’ That's when you go from an actor making an appearance to maybe a little bit of therapist. I don't mind it; I can handle it. I'm ready to be present for people when they are in those emotions. It's humbling. The silly thing that I do, doing cartoons, and how it hits people that hard in the feels… It creates an extra layer of responsibility when I make these appearances.”

Although he spends much of his time on the receiving end of admiration, he understands the fan perspective. He, too, is a fan of many things, and has been lucky enough to share that fandom with those he admires.

He has the luxury of sharing spaces with fellow guests at conventions, and says that he is starstruck constantly. A few years ago, he was a guest at a convention alongside Marisa Tomei, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. Recently, he got to meet Sam Raimi and Mr. T.

“I interact with actors who make me feel the same way,” he said. “It was my childhood, you know? These are icons. We’re all in the green room together, but still, am I allowed to talk to them? I've made a fool of myself many a time in front of an actor that I admire.”

When he isn’t signing autographs or taking photos, you might find him teaching a voice over workshop or two over a convention weekend. He refers to it as a “lips-on” workshop, taking a boot camp approach to showcase how challenging voice acting can be.

“I'm giving everyone a taste of what it's like,” he said. “I'm trying to recreate the moments that I've experienced.”

The concept of fandom has multiple meanings for Jason Marsden. He has an impressive Batman collection. He has said things out loud to his childhood heroes that hopefully weren’t as embarrassing as he thought it sounded. He has signed a significant amount of glossy photos of a talking black cat. He has given hugs to many tearful people as they share how significant his work has been. He is one of the many reasons why fandom culture has become a community.

Jeff Brennan’s career as a comic book, storyboard and 3D artist has landed him in situations that he had only dreamed of. He got his start working as a background inker for DC Comics before moving into animation, notably working on Courage the Cowardly Dog and Dragon Tales. Though his resume is impressive, his ability to find himself in unique situations with legendary creatives is just as noteworthy.

The first time he was able to meet an important figure in his life was at a comic convention. Spanish-Mexican-American cartoonist and writer Sergio Aragonés has provided new material for Mad magazine since 1967 and created Groo the Wanderer in 1970, among many accomplishments. Brennan admired his work, and immediately recognized him thanks to his appearances on television. He was so starstruck that he had no idea what to say to Aragonés, and went with a simple, drawn out “heyyyyy!” Aragonés repeated it back in the same cadence, and they both went on with their day.

After his success with Dragon Tales, he found himself as a featured extra on a television pilot that never made it to air. He was sitting at a table near craft services when he heard someone ask if they could join him. He looked up to see one of the lead actors, Betty White. He was more than happy to share the space with her, talking about her experiences as an actor and what he wanted to do next in his own career. At the end of the day, he had to provide personal information that he thought surely meant he was being removed from the set. When he got the courage to ask what was happening, he was informed that one of the actors requested he become a series regular if the show was picked up by a network. He was never able to prove it was White who requested it, but he was pretty sure that was her.

When he was living in Los Angeles, his frequent trips to a local comic book store paid off in a big way when Mark Hamill was browsing the same day as him and a friend. For a few moments, they geeked out from afar before Brennan’s friend decided to approach him. Brennan tried to play it cool, eventually joining them and getting to spend their lunch break discussing their careers and how Hamill’s son was interested in animation. As they drove home, they realized that was their opportunity to assist in Hamill’s son’s career and completely blew it.

As much as he loves telling stories of his most memorable moments, he equally loves hearing stories from admirers of his work. When he spends weekends at comic conventions, he finds it unbelievable that people will still approach him and share versions of how impactful his work has become.

He also loves the moments where fans give off the same energy that he did when meeting Aragonés. He has a specific memory of one New York Comic Con where a woman needed to stop by the ATM before purchasing his artwork, and decided to leave her daughter at Brennan’s table, “so you know I’m coming back.” She walked away before he had the opportunity to protest, returning minutes later. That moment still makes him laugh, and he hopes that mother and daughter also find the humor in it.

From his impressive resume to his impressive storytelling, Jeff Brennan is a table worth finding at a comic convention’s Artist Alley. Watch him sketch a new piece of art, take home a completed version, and be sure to ask him about a memorable moment in his career; there will definitely be a story to tell.

Graphic created by Guy Gilchrist

Throughout the weekend at FAN EXPO Chicago, a table tucked into the heart of Artist Alley saw generations of people come together for a shared love of The Muppets. Guy Gilchrist is no stranger to the convention circuit, and his table is a cheerful display of beloved childhood characters.

A father and his two children approached the table Sunday afternoon. His bashful, younger daughter was half hidden behind her father’s legs, half intrigued by the green puppet casually sitting in a chair. Gilchrist asked, “Would you like to meet him?” Kermit the Frog came to life right before her eyes, which sparkled as bright as her smile.

For over 50 years, Gilchrist has been a part of keeping Jim Henson’s creativity alive. It was initially an intimidating role; knowing that millions of people would be seeing his artwork was unfathomable. A few of many pinch-me moments happened in the early 1980s when then-President Ronald Reagan shared with Henson that the Muppets comic strip was his favorite. Reagan initially invited Henson to the White House, and Henson told him that Gilchrist was the one who deserved the recognition. In 1984, he was the guest of honor at their Easter celebration. Not even two weeks later, Reagan’s wife Nancy informed him that his artwork was going to be permanently enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution.

“I called Mom for that one,” he said.

When Gilchrist had the opportunity to create the art for a Muppet Babies lunchbox, it felt like a childhood dream come true. He still has a vivid memory of the yellow Mickey Mouse metal lunchbox shaped like a school bus, the one that all the elementary-aged children seemed to have except for him. He wanted his to be just as memorable, and ended up asking Thermos if he could have an extension in order to make the entire design himself. The bright blue metal lunchbox featured the Muppets Babies playing as Star Wars, fairy tale, Superman, King Kong and Raiders of the Lost Ark characters. His first plastic lunchbox design featured the characters from his My Tiny Dinos book series, bright purple with yellow detailing.

“Those were special,” he said. “That was cool for me.”

There are moments where he is reminded of how much his work still means to people. During his weekend at FAN EXPO Chicago, a woman brought her beloved copy of Just Imagine: A Book of Fairyland Rhymes. The 1990 Little Golden Book has been out of print for more than 20 years, and seeing it decades later was a heartwarming moment. He also recently received a letter from a fan inquiring about another of his children’s books, Strummer, the One-of-a-Kind Duck. They were looking for another copy that was around $4 in the 1980s and currently going for over $1,000 on eBay.

“I know you love me, but nobody loves me that much,” he joked. “That’s mind blowing to me that my stuff is around that long and that people still care about it and it means something to them.”

In the midst of these pinch-me moments, Gilchrist’s children were born. They also grew up with Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock, seeing their father’s designs on lunchboxes, board games and toy guitars. They became part of a multi-generational love for the creations of Jim Henson.

“I would work for them, and then it would be for the whole world.”