House Call with Drew Vincent
To start the year off strong, we made the trip to South Louisville to visit the hardest working man in the city.
Drew Vincent works three separate day jobs, runs his own lawn care business, and somehow finds the time to create art at home.
We had some tea with him on his day off and picked his brain to find out how he manages to do it all.
Who are you?
Drew Vincent. 30 years old. From good ol’ Louisville, Kentucky. Southwest side. We outside.
What do you do?
Oh, I do a lot…I do a bunch of shit. I work with my hands…skateboard shop, tattoo shop, restaurant, lawn care. I'm out here.
Morning routine?
If I’m on it…Okay hold on, that's a lie. Currently, I've been waking up around 7:30. I hit the bathroom to do the classic shit, shower, shave and then I go get coffee. I've been trying to read at least a chapter of a book and then wherever I work from there, that's where I go.
Who do you look up to?
Number one, I look up to my granddad, rest in peace. My granddad, looking back, taught me more than anybody else in my entire life. I’m forever grateful for the relationship I had with my granddad. I look up to a lot of people, but at the end of the day, I don't put too much value into a lot of the people because I don't know them personally. Because I don't want to get let down if it turns out, they did some stupid shit or something.
Gas station pickups?
It's always Jack Links (the 23 gram original protein sticks), a Vitamin Water zero (the pomegranate one), and 3 Tootsie Roll pops.
That checks out. Coffee order, and from where?
I go to a lot of places for coffee. I'm not going to shout a single place out but it has to be a cortado with oat milk and a little dash of honey.
There might be a great little place to get a cortado on Logan Street…
That’s a good cortado, and there’s one on Shelby and one on Main.
Last thing you bought?
Sabritones and Hershey's cookies and cream dip pretzels.
Top artists on Spotify this year?
I was literally just looking at this. I think it might be That Mexican OT. I don't know the order but it was also Sunami, Foghorn, BLP Kosher and Three Six Mafia.
Homie that inspires you?
Lake. My boy Lake, he works super hard. He's doing what he likes to do and he's just putting in the time and it’s cool to see somebody grinding.
Shoutout to Lake and Gasoline Press. What’s your favorite trinket in this room?
So many trinkets in this room. My favorite trinket…I think it's got to be my signed Beagle Medtainer from Shake Junt.
What are you most proud of?
I guess I'm proud to say that I'm 30 years old and I own a house. That’s pretty sick.
What do you get stoked on?
Well, a lot. I get stoked about seeing my friends do cool things because it makes me want to do cool things. I get stoked with the smallest stuff. I can literally hear a certain song and it'll put me in a mood. It doesn't take a lot for me to get pretty stoked. I'm just stoked to be able to wake up every day.
Sentence of advice for the youth?
I think a big thing is just to slow down and look up. I'm guilty of being on my phone, but just like, take time everyday to just look around and see what's going on around you.
What kind of art do you make?
I make collages, I paint, I do some illustrations. I try to put my hands into a little bit of everything so I can kind of figure out what I want to do. And I don't let anything hold me back. If I feel like doing something, I'm going to do it that way that time. And if, a month later, I want to do something else. I'm going to do it. I don't think you should be confined to one type of art.
Where does your love for art come from?
Definitely stems from my mom. I was homeschooled for a lot of my childhood and she made it a point to do a bunch of arts and crafts. Like I remember, she taught me how to sew. I like sewed pillows and I just really enjoyed working with my hands. So between my mom and then just building stuff with my granddad, I fell in love with just making stuff.
Tell me about the Sauna Boy project.
The project of Sauna Boy or the Sauna archives, as it has become, is going to be a kind of illustration/mixed media thing. I don't even know how it's gonna be documented at this point, whether it be through a zine or collage work or whatever. But the Sauna Boy Collective is, as it sounds, a collective of all my labor put together.
Where did the name Sauna Boy come from?
To be honest, I couldn't tell you if somebody said it to me, or if I said it somewhere and it became a thing.
But once it got tattooed on my body, it just kind of became “the thing” I guess.
What’s your day job…or rather, day jobs?
Day jobs. Well, right now since it's wintertime I’ve got three. Currently, I work as the floor guy at Neon Moon tattoo shop. I work as a little bit of this and a little bit of that at Home skate shop. And then I work as, once again, doing kind of whatever you need me to do at The Post pizza.
How does working in all these different places with different communities influence the way you live?
I think it's a big influence in both good and bad ways. It always keeps me on my toes. So I'm always walking into a different environment, which I think is very important, and I'm not getting stuck in one certain movement or motion. It's putting my name, and just who I am, out to more people. I just like talking to people…Because I get to interact with so many different people in so many different walks of life, it makes sure to keep my eyes open, in the sense of not getting tunnel vision. And I’m not just in my own little itty bitty space, so I'm getting to pull from other people's inspirations and see what makes them tick.
A jack of all trades. Drew giving and receiving cuts outside of Home skate shop.
What keeps you inspired?
Everybody that I run into, because some of it's really awesome and some of the interactions are not very awesome. But then it makes me take a step back and think about why. And you can pull from that a ton of different stuff and use it to your advantage, rather than letting it get you down or whatever.
What do you do when you're feeling uninspired?
I go for a walk. I just try to move. If I'm not feeling inspired, or I'm feeling some type of way, I've just learned that I need to move. So whether that be get on my little exercise bike, or literally just go outside and walk around for 15 minutes or 20 minutes. I feel like that helps a lot.
And just listening to music. Sometimes playing into those feelings. Because then you'll start thinking like, “Wow, listen to this. This is so sad.” And then you're like, “That's stupid. I'm gonna listen to BLP Kosher and we'll be all good.”
What’s your creative process, how do you get into the zone?
It's a funny, funny thing. A lot of times I have to be rolling from like, something really good happening in my life. Which means I'm gonna have that cup of coffee or I'm gonna look at some piece of a magazine or something. That's just going to pull an idea into my head and I try to run with it.
Or I’m coming from a very dark place in my life, and I'm gonna pull from that. Which is more of an introspective like, “I'm going to make this art to kind of figure out why I feel the way that I do so that I can come out of it.”
Drew working from home.
What does success mean to you?
I think success, to me, is just waking up every day. With a roof over my head. And good people around me.
Dream scenario in five years?
In five years, I'll be 35. Oh my god...Well, one of the jobs I had mentioned that I’m trying to make the main job, is my lawn care business. And I would love to, in five years, have a full crew so I can work my tail off for six to eight months out of the year and then get to go on an actual vacation and not have to worry about what happens when I come back.
With the lawn care business, something that sets it apart for me is that you throw in a bit of creative flair as well as putting in the physical labor, like you’re making sick stickers and a calendar and stuff like that. What inspired you to do it that way?
Well, all of that was an accident. I never thought I would even have a lawn company. I just started posting whenever I mowed my yard on Instagram and then people started hitting me up asking me if I could mow their yards and I was like, “Yeah, that sounds sick.” And then I realized I could make a career out of it, which was like, “Oh, this is awesome. I don't have to talk to anybody. I can just put it in headphones and like make somebody's yard look phenomenal.”
Then I was like, “How can I do that but also put my own little flair on it?”
I want my money to work for itself. So I was like “I'm going to be mowing yards, but if there's something else I can do so there's other income coming in to make sure that I can have some fun that would be sick.” So that's why I started doing stickers and a bunch of other stuff that hasn't come out yet.
Winner’s Circle 2024.
That’s Right. Winner’s Circle lawn care. I'll take your yard on a victory lap.
So you have a great collection of little trinkets and things around your house. How did that happen?
I don't know. I think it was because as a kid, like, it wasn't that I grew up in a place where I didn't have everything I needed, but I didn't get everything I wanted. So as I got older, I would find stuff that I thought was cool and then I just realized that I'm lowkey a hoarder. And there's just certain things where, like, I don't care what it is, I'm gonna just pick it up. Yeah, I've got too much stuff.
How does it influence your daily life? Like when you come out to your living room in the morning, how does it make you feel?
Oh, it makes me feel great because I get to throw on a record. Or I have the option of books and magazines to look through that I, one, draw inspiration from, and two, kind of put me in a mood, depending on the day. Like I can't stand when it's gray outside in the morning, so I have like a surfing magazine or something I'll flip through just to look at something bright and colorful.
I think it definitely plays a big part in how I interact with the world. Getting a look at all this...stuff. I won't call it junk. It’s better than junk.
Some of Drew’s stuff *not junk*.
What makes Louisville special to you?
One, it's home. I moved away, because I had always wanted to be away. And then after I moved away, I realized there wasn't a place like Louisville, Kentucky, because it's like a big, small town. I think that makes it pretty cool. You can go anywhere, almost, if you've been around the city, and you're gonna run into somebody that you know. So one, that kind of keeps you in check, or it should. And two, you just get a better sense of community, especially with the smaller businesses and stuff. It's pretty cool.
And everybody's down to help each other out for the most part here. Like, it's kind of hard to find somebody that's not going to at least kind of throw you a bone. I hate to use the word gatekeep, but there's not that much gatekeeping that goes on here. And if there is, I guess it's behind my back.
So I know that you lived out in Seattle for a while in a van, tell us a little bit about that.
That taught me a ton. The day I moved out there, my van got broken into and I lost everything of importance in my life, camera equipment, everything. So I got to just really focus on myself, especially living in that van because you know, you gotta figure out where you're gonna go pee in the middle of the night. So you're kind of just learning how to be resourceful and it taught me kind of how to just navigate my life. Once again, if you just stop and look around, you're always gonna figure out where you need to go. There was a moment where I was running around doing a bunch of crazy stuff, and I had to stop, and be like, “Hold on a second. What are you doing?” And then you know, you're good. Because when you're thousands of miles away from your home and you don't have but one or two people out there, you realize pretty quickly if you're making a bad decision, so it taught me to just slow down.
What’s up next for you this year?
Well, I'm working on some new merch for Winner’s Circle lawn care and I'm gonna get that stuff popping here in the next month or so. And then honestly, I'm just working on myself for the next few months. Trying to get everything in check and be an adult. Just turned 30, trying to pay off my debt, I guess we'll see. I'm trying to use my creative resources to pay off my debt.
Good shit. Any last words for the people?
Don’t pay attention too much to what’s going on on the internet. Just live your life, thats it.
@itsdrewbro
@winnerscirclelawns
@saunacollective
Let Drew put you on. Listen to 10 of his favorites hand picked for US below.
January 2024
Photography & Interview by Isaac Barnett
@iebcam