ROADTRIP!JONATHAN MEHRING

BY R. ANTHONY HARRIS

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN MEHRING

Who are you? What do you do?

I’m Jonathan Mehring. I am a photographer and filmmaker, based in Richmond, specializing in action sports.

How did you get into that?

When I was in the sixth grade, a buddy of mine started skating. I grew up in the country outside of Charlottesville on a dirt road. He gave me a hand-me-down board and I became obsessed with skating, even though I lived in the middle of nowhere. I had to go down to this tennis court that was two miles away to try to learn to skate.

Then there was photography. My high school started a photography program around my junior year. The teacher for that class was by far the best teacher in my high school. I was probably a C student in high school. But I got so into photography, I started getting A’s. I was suddenly inspired. I would go to school an hour early every morning so I could get in the darkroom before classes started. I was in love.

Were you mostly taking photos of the people around you?

Yeah, so I realized I didn’t have a lot of natural talent for skating, but I did seem to have some for photography. I decided to take pictures of my friends, who were all better than me. We would skate all the Charlottesville spots and I always had my camera– just obsessively taking photos and developing them at night.

I wanted to go to school for photography. At the time, I was taking pictures of all the Dominion guys and I would send my best shots to Transworld and different magazines. Grant Brittian was the photo editor of Transworld at the time and he sent me this photocopied sheet of skate photography rules or instructions on how to improve and what they were looking for.

It was interesting; it was good. But it was just like, man, not only did I get a rejection notice, but I also got a sheet explaining how to do it.

Was he trying to encourage you though?

There was no communication. It was just like, here’s this letter. I think everyone who sent in photos might have got it. It did help, but it was also a little bit hard to swallow. I thought I was doing pretty good. Turns out I wasn’t.

Yeah, all your friends were telling you how awesome your work was, and then he’s like– not so much.

Yeah. I was like, “I got a friend who can grind a flat bar.” They basically came back with, “So what?”. <laughs>

You eventually become a part of a publication. What were you doing?

So I went to VCU and studied photography. I got really into Slap Magazine because two of my favorite photographers, Mike O’Meally and Brian Gaberman were working there.

And I was like, man, I honestly like these photos more than what’s in Transworld. Even though they’re rough around the edges and they’re not as polished, that’s what I liked about them. When I started sending my more artistic stuff to Slap, they called me up and they’re like, “Hey, we like your stuff, keep sending it and we’re gonna send you some film.” I was freaking out.

This was while I was at VCU, and I had teachers telling me to leave skateboarding alone and that it was not worth my time. I was doing my art assignments and they were pretty average. But when it came to shooting skating, I could see myself getting better. But anyway, I finally get a photo published in Slap – it was a two-page spread. It was a shot of my buddy, Will Lee skating in Charlottesville. I thought it was so cool.

Since Slap was so supportive, I started giving them everything. I wasn’t spreading my work out to different magazines, because nowhere else was doing anything with it. My next idea was to go on a road trip with my friends Brian Davis and Rob Lee after we graduated. I was working valet at the Omni Hotel and had saved up $1,500. I bought a Nikon fisheye, which was $1,000.

Those are still $1000!

Car overheating somewhere out west. 2000 Road Trip.

Yeah, it hasn’t changed at all. So I got the fisheye and then had $500 for the road trip. And then Brian had $500, Rob had $500. And so we’re like, alright, let’s map it all out. I did the gas mileage using a map; I was drawing our line and totaling all the mileages up and I figured out that we could go if we didn’t stay at any hotels. If we camped the whole time, we could do a month.

Wow. Off $1,500. Gas was like $1.50 at the time, probably.

<laughs> Not even that. It was $1.29 or something. So the three of us packed the car and headed out. My idea for the article was to photograph all the pro skaters we were sure we were gonna meet and then compile it and write about our road trip and meeting all these pros. It wasn’t the worst idea, but it’s pretty hard to meet these pros when you don’t know anyone.

I’m taking pictures as we go through St. Louis, Denver, Albuquerque, and Phoenix. From Phoenix to San Diego, my car started overheating. So we had to only drive at night and then we had to stop every half hour and wait 20 minutes for the car to cool off.

Were you calling your parents at this point? Asking them to wire you money?

No, no, we never had any support. We were on our own. When we finally got to Ocean Beach, we slept in the car because we had driven all night long and it was 4:30 in the morning. We got there and we’re just like, fuck, this is gnarly.

We started meeting some sponsored skaters once we got to Albuquerque. We met DJ Chavez who was, I don’t know if he ever went pro, but he was one of the people that ended up be- ing in skate industry. Then we went to LA and met Adam Alfaro who later became a Black Label Pro. The people we talked to were up-and-coming skaters who were down to shoot with a random ass kid with a camera.

We were camping the whole time we went up the coast. Though we did stay in one hotel in Albuquerque. I think it was like 20 bucks a night. When we got to our room, the lady at the front desk didn’t just give us a key. She walked us to the room, I guess to see if it was okay, maybe? She didn’t have any shoes on and she was missing toes. Then we got to the room and there was a crescent moonshaped crack around the deadbolt–somebody had kicked the door in and knocked the entire mechanism off! It had been duct taped back on. We were so skeeved out, there were dead roaches in the drain of the bathtub. We just laid our sleeping bags on top of the beds.

Eventually, we make it to San Francisco. This guy I knew, Dave Rosenberg, took us around the SF area. He asked if I wanted to meet Mark Whiteley from Slap Magazine, who I had been corresponding with. We went and met him at his house. We were chatting, but it was a bit awkward. I thought we would get the invite to go to the Slap office, but we didn’t.

By the time we get to Seattle, we were out of money and tired. On the way back to Richmond, we blew a tire around Chicago. We had to get towed, which was the last of our money. We had just enough gas to make it back to Richmond– I don’t think we even ate.

When we got to Richmond, I called Mark to let him know we made it home. And he’s like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “We met in SF? I was hoping to go to the office?” He didn’t even realize that was me. I was too shy to say, “Hey, I’m the guy who has been sending you all these photos.” We kept working together and I ended up working for the magazine after that.

Did you write a good story after the road trip?

I wrote a story and sent it in, but nothing happened. Total fucking waste. Well, no, it wasn’t a waste. It was awesome; it was amazing. But as far as getting something published, it did not work.

But they started to tell me that they needed me to shoot pros. The rest of that summer, I would go to DC every weekend and I’d photograph all those guys. The Capital/Nicotine days were over but Pep Martinez (RIP) and those guys were still up there ripping. I decided to write an article called The Forgotten City and feature all these older pros who were no longer in the spotlight. That article finally ran. And it was 14 pages. It was huge. And that is how it all began.

Cosmic Girl

Photographer: Kimberly Frost

Model: Tatianna Jackson

Wardrobe Stylist: Geraldine Duskin

Makeup Stylist: Rachel Austin Boxley

Photo Assistant: Steven King

I saw the new video and loved it. Today I wanted to touch base with you about your move to Chicago, and your growth as an artist.

I haven’t grown at all. I’ve actually grown less. I became more of a hater since I moved to Chicago. That’s the first bit of information.

Lovely. I love that. I’ve been a fan since I first heard your stuff. With the video work and the new album, it feels like you’re moving on up, man.

It definitely takes time. Everybody in Richmond was there before everybody else heard it. But even back in Richmond, it was a communal thing. Everybody was proud of it, which is nice. It’s always good to have those affirmations.

How did the unrest and the Robert E. Lee statue down on Monument affect your music? Or did it?

I don’t know, it didn’t really affect me too much. I think that a lot of those things, especially towards black folks who exist within the artists’ community, can definitely be seen as a gesture of– not false hope because there’s progress within taking down those sorts of monuments– but is more so a sort of sleight of hand thing. It’s like, we took down this monument, and this should satisfy you for a little bit.

It was cool that Monument was a circle where little homies were playing basketball, and people were singing and stuff, but that should have been everywhere, you know? Those sorts of communal gatherings should have been everywhere, and then they took it away. Now it’s an inaccessible space, that’s just growing weeds. Like it was cool for that summer, and then they were like, Nah, we can’t have your little kumbaya out here. No more. So taking the monument down is progress, but it isn’t a celebration to me.

I love the new album, by the way. Can you speak on the growth between your first album and the latest album?

Thank you. The last album took three years. It was a well-traveled album, in the sense of distance and time because it started in 2018, maybe 2017, and spanned all the way to 2021. It became this thing where I recorded wherever I could. Now I’m lucky enough to have Nina and Lillian and Brooks and all these people working with me. But before I was fucking around and trying to find out what was gonna happen.

So a lot of the album is not very cohesive sonically, because I recorded it wherever I could. But this new album was really dope because me and Sam of No BS! Brass came together with a bunch of concepts. I wanted to make an album that was recorded in the same place, whether it was a studio or a home.

What prompted your move from Richmond to Chicago?

I was in Richmond for school, and then I stayed there for another 12 years. I thought I did everything I could there. The city is way different than it was a decade ago. Rest in peace, Strange Matter. So many places that catered to the middle ground that a lot of people existed within are gone. It felt like if I wanted to continue to grow outward at this point in my life, I’m gonna have to find a place that is a little bit more of my speed.

Chicago had that magic. There have been so many little moments of magic in the past year because now I live in a neighborhood that looks like me. That’s the other thing about Richmond. It’s very segregated. Brown people to the south, black people to the north, with white folks everywhere else. I think that Chicago is really nice because everybody has their own space. And that gave me enough space to see how black people operate in this commu- nity. I’m inspired a lot quicker, which is good because I have to make it out a lot quicker. I’m not used to making an album in, I don’t know, fucking seven months, or whatever I did.

Chicago has a rich history of hiphop and jazz. Do you have any favorites?

Chicago do got a lot of people up in this bitch. There are obviously the staples like, the Sooper Record group. There’s NNAMDÏ and TITUS–they’re really big. Then there are a lot of younger artists and smaller artists that are coming up in the rap scene. We got Josh Virtue, who is really cool. A lot of those people started out in punk bands. And now they’re rappers, but they also do jazz. I think the dynamic of moving genres is way more fluid here and way older.

As much as I love Richmond, I was the only cat doing rap with the instruments for a while. And that was what set me apart, which I’m very thankful for. It’s a privilege to do that. It’s just here, I can go see someone else that does that and it’s inspiring. Richmond definitely has its own groove. The groove is just not as fast as I’m looking for at this point in my life.

Yeah, absolutely. So, what are you excited about? What’s coming up? You’re on tour, right?

Yeah, we got a tour coming up and an album coming out. I’m going on tour with Tank and the Bangas in March, which is really exciting. South by Southwest is fun too.

We also have a couple more singles coming out in March. Run Run Run is one of them. And then we got a live video for” Tyler Forever” and a live video for ”Run Run Run”. We went through Spacebomb in Richmond and Spang in Richmond too.

You deal with a lot of difficult subjects. Do you feel any pressure on the commercial side with trying to bridge over into the mainstream?

With the album For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like He r, I think if it focused more on a commercial aspect, people wouldn’t enjoy it as much. It was kind of a big deal to start the record with that sporadic jazz song “Chain Sooo Heavy”, and then end it with a six-minute-long harp song.

With this one, the key to that commercial success– which I haven’t even found yet– is making the songs shorter and catchier. That’s what I really focused on. Like in the song, “Sun, I Rise” where the chorus is, “I took my chain into my shirt, you niggas never finna catch me,” that sort of melody. But the song is still dense. I’m not trying to lose throwing a bunch of instruments on top of shit, but I am trying to clean it up a little bit. Because now it’s not just me.

That’s also the key to the commercial switchover is having other people take a listen. If it was just me, every single song would be six minutes long and have a whole instrumental breakdown in the middle, and everybody would be fucking mad at me. I’ve found friends and they’re asking, what if this were two and a half minutes long instead of five? And we figure out a way to pack everything into that?

From the outside looking in, the biggest thing that I’ve taken away between the two albums is, you’re a spoken word poet on your earlier albums, and then you’ve now condensed it and made it more poignant.

Exactly. My last album was spoken word like you were saying. It was a really long, beautiful book. Whereas this one, the book is moving a little bit too fast, but the pictures are still really nice, you know? You feel it throughout the first one, but with this one, you get to the end and you have to ask if you still feel that love that you felt from the beginning. And you do– so you start it over again. I think this one will have a bit more replays. “Never Will Know” is my most popular song on Spotify now, and that song is just six minutes of whatever I could fit. I was putting whatever I found in that song, which was cool, but this one is definitely more condensed.

Let’s talk about your favorite Richmond musicians real quick.

Yeah, put a shoutout section. We got Alfred. They’re on every record I’ve ever done and also did the cover art for “Tyler, Forever”, and “Sun, I Rise”. Ice Cream Support Group puts on crazy dance black, brown, and queer dance parties– really beautiful stuff. My friend Monica just dropped her first hardcore record. It’s some punk ass name– it’s called Ordinate . Shouts out to everyone else in the city.

Thank you, McKinley, and congratulations to you man. We’re all excited for you in the city. You have fans here and love here for sure.

Thank you. I miss the city every day.

BY JUSTICE SMITH PHOTOS BY JOEY WHARTON

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