Van art more than just a dirty joke
Seamus Enright
A fresh approach to the generic 'Clean Me' or 'Wash Me Please' so often etched in the dirt on vans and trucks, one local man has motorists doing double takes at the wheel to check out his incredible, yet filthy, Blues Brothers' homage.
A member of the Cavan Big Band and their Ultimate Big Band Show, Cootehill musician Tony McMahon was out cleaning his aplty titled 'Blues Mobile' one day when he came up with the novel idea to instead turn his van into a picture perfect advertisement.
“I was about to start cleaning it down when I came up with the idea to put a picture on it instead,” Tony says of the stencilled image depicting comedy actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as characters 'Joliet' Jake Blues and his brother Elwood. “I drove it around a while, then cleaned it off, and no sooner had I done that but I was getting calls from people and stopped in the street asking me where the image was.”
The peak in interest presented bassist Tony with a dilemma, so much so that he took to driving around until the van became dirty enough to put the image on the back of it once again.
“It's a bit of a laugh. I parked it up in [Cootehill] and we had people taking pictures of it. It's funny really. I'm a member of the Cavan Big Band and we've an Ultimate Big Band Show coming up in the Garage Theatre in Monaghan on April 14, and the Ramor then in Virginia in May, and it's some good publicity for that.
“It's going to be a great night, with lots of great music, we do a blues bit in the middle and we were thinking of what we could do to bring a bit of attention to that,” he adds.
While not quite agreeing to taking the doors of his van on stage for the purpose of stage props, Tony believes he may have uncovered a new art form and hopes it could take off.
“The way things are at the moment, it doesn't take long for a car to get dirty. You never know, we could be tapping into a new art form here, the likes of ice sculptures, they don't ever last too long. I'm open to suggestions on what else we might put on there, I'm thinking some Banksy maybe, I won't go as far as the Mona Lisa, but so we'll wait and see.”