Wine Me, Dine Me, Over the Rhine Me
Neil’s Blog Entry
As Laura mentioned in her last post, I do have some exciting news. A while back I entered a t-shirt design contest. I know, I know – enough with the t-shirt stuff already! Well, I understand, but humor me, okay? Anyway, the contest was for the band Over The Rhine. They used to have these shirts that said “Wine me, dine me, Over The Rhine me.” I guess it was kinda like a catch phrase for their fans. Well, they haven’t had these shirts available for a long time and so they decided to hold a contest to develop a new one.
So I came up with this design that I thought looked pretty good and entered the contest.
Now I have to stop here and confess that I’m very bad at contests. Specifically the waiting part. So imagine the degree of my psychosis when the deadline for judging came… and went. A few days later I read on their website that the band was currently touring in Europe and that they’d deal with the t-shirts when they got back and to check back later. Well, needless to say, I did “check back later.” About once (or twice or three hundred times) a day, I went back to see if they had announced the winners.
Days turned into weeks… months into years. Well, not really, but it felt that way. Anyway, the other night, as I was checking for about the twentieth time that day, I saw my name on their webpage along with my t-shirt design.
I was one of three winners.
Laura was very excited because the prize is Over The Rhine’s complete CD catalog. That’s about 20 CDs of their wonderful music. I really, really like this band and I’m just excited to have my design be one of the ones they will be selling at shows and on their website this fall. To me, it’s a real honor. They are great musicians and really wonderful people. I know it sounds like I’m gushing, but that’s only because I am.
Still with no pithy catchphrase,
Neil
The Smiths' Occasional Blog 
OK Neil,
I think you can now officially declare “Still with no pithy catchphrase” your pithy catchphrase!
Love the design… it’s almost like you are a per-fessional or somethin’.
I just thought, if you want to change the aforementioned pithy catchphrase, you could make it “Neil Smith: Shirt Designer for the Bands”. I wish I had a band for you to design a shirt for.
Nice you guys. OTR is coming here next week. I think I’m going. I will look for your T. 🙂 Sorta weird. Neil was in one of my dreams last night. I think he was teaching me design stuff.
Thanks for the comments guys! Bsherm, you’re catching on to me in regards to the pithy catchphrase. Jeff, you’re scaring me when you say I’m in your dreams. Did I have knives on my hands? Did you use a demonic puzzle-box to summon me?
Hey Neil,
Congratulations with your t-shirt design! I’m one of the others that won :-). And like you I waited for ages, then and now actually. Seems to me fall is long gone.. I guess I’ll just have to be patient. (But to be honest; I can’t wait to see mine for real!)
When OTR was on tour in Europe, we met in the Netherlands after the played, and that’s when I knew I was one of the last three. I guess they couldn’t make a choice between those three!
Eveline,
Wow that’s great! I went to see which design you did, but I can’t find them on the OTR website. I don’t know when they’ll be going into production – we saw them in mid December and they weren’t selling them yet. But when they do I’ll be sure to get one of your as well.