Prick Magazine - Oliver Peck and Keith Underwood tattoo the Warped Tour Feature

OLIVER PECK & KEITH UNDERWOOD
TATTOO THE WARPED TOUR

by Lisa Sharer
Photos by Sylvia Hagar
From the September 2007 issue of PRICK Magazine.

Oliver Peck of Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas, Tex. and Keith Underwood of Taylor Street
Tattoo in Chicago, Ill.

This year the Vans Warped Tour included a couple of new and interesting people on staff. Oliver Peck and Keith Underwood were the official Warped Tour tattoo artists, and were loving every minute of it. Peck, in his third year of tagging along with the bands, made a move to poster designer, shoe aficionado, and tattoo artist to the stars. The famous Keith Underwood, friend and colleague to Peck, was riding along on the tour for the first time and slinging ink with his family in tow.

How did you guys get involved with the Vans Warped Tour?

Peck: I started traveling with bands, and tattooing on their tour buses. I did Warped Tour a couple weeks at a time, a couple years ago. Then, last year I built this trailer, and got the okay to be on the whole tour. It worked out really well. Then this year Keith Underwood partnered up with me and we're just doing the whole thing.

Who have you tattooed so far?

Underwood: We tattooed all the guys from New Found Glory, all of them, I think.

I heard you guys were pretty much booked for the whole tour, is that right?

Peck: Well, we just started. Yesterday was really the first day we got back on the tour after a break, and now we're booking up. In the next week, it will probably be booked for a month. Plenty of people want to get tattooed on the tour. There's more people on the tour that want tattoos, than we would have time to tattoo. It's like eight hundred people...

Underwood: There are also the people that work on the tour, too.

Peck: You got bands, techs, merch people, drivers, set up crew…

What's the 13 tattoo all about?

Peck: Oh, yeah, every Friday the 13th I do nothing but number 13 for thirteen dollars. This year we did it on the Warped Tour, and it's the thirteenth Warped Tour, so it was this whole big...you know, we did about a hundred and fifty tattoos in San Antonio on the thirteenth.

Underwood: Two guys, twelve hours.

Peck: Yeah, two stations, twelve hours, that's a lot of tats.

How long have you guys been tattooing?

Underwood: I've been tattooing about eleven years.

Peck: I've been tattooing about sixteen years.

How did you two start working together?

Underwood: We've been friends for awhile, just from doing conventions and stuff. Recently, we just started doing conventions together.

Peck: We met from our common friend Scott Harrison. One time we did a convention where we got our booths next to each other. Next thing you know, we did a whole string of conventions in a row where we split the booths. We do a lot of traveling together. I did this thing last year with a couple other guys, and when we were in Chicago Keith came out and worked one day. He obviously realized it was the coolest thing ever.

Underwood: Yeah, it's the greatest thing ever.

Peck: So, this year when I was getting ready to do it again, the other guys I did it with both had other obligations that wouldn’t let them leave for six to eight weeks, Keith was just totally into it.

Underwood: The only thing was I couldn’t do it without the family, so they came along with.

Are you guys enjoying doing the Warped Tour?

Peck: Oh, it's tons of fun. Me and Keith work together well, and we get along really well. I guess we’re similar enough tattoo artists that we can work well together. If somebody's coming to get a tattoo it doesn't really matter which one of us they get. It's better than having some type of "who wants who" [situation].

Underwood: Neither one of us have a real prim Donna attitude about it. You got cash, we’ll do it.

Peck, you just designed shoes for Vans?

Peck: I designed two slip-ons. Two years ago when I was on the tour, I met a bunch of people that worked for Vans, and last year on the tour I got in really tight and did a little artwork for the company. Then I got to do their shoes, and that led into [this year] I did a bunch of artwork for the tour. I did the all the logo and t-shirt designs, a bunch of the banners and posters, and all the ads.

Any last words?

Check out uwoodpecker.com. We're filming the entire summer, and were going to make a summer tour tattoo DVD product that everybody can check out. Coming soon to uwoodpecker.com.