It’s 2016 and in June Kick Bright will turn twenty years old. That’s a long time! It’s always been fun sharing my life and interests with anyone who would listen or pay attention. I’ve met many people and made many life-long friends through this zine. It’s neat.

I’ve been doing a lot of things with my life for the past couple of years that made Kick Bright not such a priority. It never went away but took on different forms.

The band, Hot Hands, took off in a big way in October 2013 when Kristin and I packed up our worldly possessions into a storage unit and embarked on an ambitious tour of the United States. It lasted six months and thousands and thousands of miles and many nights sleeping in our van. We ended up with a fun YouTube channel of videos we made traveling. We spent the following year recovering from the financial fallout that such a venture would befall in a small town in North Carolina literally in the middle of nowhere.

We made the decision to move back to Orlando, Florida in June 2015 to open a “vintage” shop. Get this- it’s called Kick Bright Shop & Buttons. We opened two months later in August. It’s a natural extension of the zine: vintage clothes, records, buttons, artwork and collectibles. I have a lot of ideas for the shop so I may as well do them!

I had some crazy idea to release a compendium book of everything I’ve done. I don’t think that is going to happen. A lot of material has been lost to the digital age of failing hard drives, stolen computers, lost domain names and a heaping pile of zip drives. What do you do with those?? I managed to get a lot of writing off the Internet way back machines. It will be a huge undertaking! For now,  I will look ahead here because there is always something new to share. This is my way of making the world a better place.

***,

Jeffrey Howard