Hot Rods and Kustom Cars
This episode Royboy talks with Scott Haines of B. Scott Studios about his 32 Roadster with a bit of a history.
Continue reading “176 – Roadster Pilot – B. Scott Studios”
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This episode Royboy talks with Ed Beachaine, Lou Calisibetta, Bill Yeager, Bob McCreary, Travis Hess and Todd Lancaster on the 48Cars48States trip.
Continue reading “Chrome Pipes & Pinstripes Ep. 175 48Cars48States Weeks 7-9”
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On the way from Walt Disney World to Louisiana for my 48 Cars 48 States I stopped to check out the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, FL. I had passed by the museum back in 2002 when I was in Florida and I’d wished that I could have stopped since. I wasn’t going to drive by this time!
When I hopped out of the Galaxie I met Chris Bumpus who is the shop foreman in the restoration shop at the museum. He was kind enough to give me a behind the scenes look at some what was going on there. That was awesome! The museum is amazing and be prepared to be there for a few hours, you’ll need it!
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. You can pre-order the book here!
Continue reading “48 Cars in 48 States Extra : Don Garlits Museum”
I’m going to do things a bit out of order here, on the way to Louisiana I stopped at Don Garlits’ Museum of Drag Racing but I’ll share those photos tomorrow! My original Louisiana car had to drop out so I got ahold of Jacob Miller on instagram since he’d expressed interest in being the car for the state before and we made arrangements to meet up on my way back from Florida at the end of the trip.
The 1946 Ford that you see here came into the Miller family recently and is a favorite already. The car did the 2017 Hot Rod Power Tour and has a few more road trips planned for it already.
The Florida part of the trip was a fun one for me. I hadn’t been to FL for 15 years and was excited to get to go back for a couple of reasons. First to shoot photos of this killer Suburban owned by Dallas Marine of Tampa, 2nd to meet up with a couple of old friends that I hadn’t seen in far too long, 3rd to surprise my nephews who were vacationing at Walt Disney World!
I needed to be down to Florida by Sunday evening so I left Nashville and hauled butt south into Alabama! I met up with Brian Logan to shoot photos of his Chevy here as the sun set. It was perfect timing and within a few minutes of these photos it was far too dark to take any more. That’s when we decided to go grab some ribs at the world famous Dreamland BBQ in Tuscaloosa, AL. Best ribs I’ve ever had.
After that I made a couple of hours drive to take some of the Sunday drive away and made my way deeper into the heart of AL.
Pistons & Paint is always a great time, there are tons of great cars, most of my north Texas car family shows up so there’s great people, and the music is always good too. This year Junior Brown played, it’s awesome to see shows put the time and effort into getting great bands to play at their events.
I want to send out a huge thank you to the Chupacabras club for all of the hard work in putting on the show and especially to Martins Rod & Custom for making this coverage possible! It’s expensive and time consuming to do these show coverages and it’s advertisers like this that make the coverages possible. Please support those that support Royboy Productions!
This week’s posts are brought to you by Martins Rods in Lampasas, TX.
Find them on their site here or on Instagram here or on Facebook here.
Like most of the last few years the sky was a bland grey cover instead of blue and clear, which means I could shoot photos from any direction but it also means that the sky in the photos is pretty blah. I wonder if it kept any cars away? The fairgrounds seemed pretty full but I always wonder what has an effect on show attendance. I have a great time at Pistons & Paint each year so that’s why I keep coming back.
This week’s posts are brought to you by Martins Rods in Lampasas, TX.
Find them on their site here or on Instagram here or on Facebook here.
The first time that I showed up at Pistons & Paint we arrived early so that we could get in without waiting in line too long, this year and last year it seemed like the cars flowed in pretty steadily for the entire morning. Lots of rides from all over the region and from a few various genres of cars/trucks.
More of the story tomorrow.
This week’s posts are brought to you by Martins Rods in Lampasas, TX.
Find them on their site here or on Instagram here or on Facebook here.
On the way down to Texas I stopped in Wichita and picked up my buddy Sprout from the Primarys Car Club, it was good to have a copilot for a trip after so many miles rolling solo on the big trip! We rolled into Denton around 9am on Saturday and immediately saw Ryno’s Caddy, Mike Weaver’s coupe, Brian Bass’ roadster and a ton more familiar rides.
more of the story tomorrow
This week’s posts are brought to you by Martins Rods in Lampasas, TX.
Find them on their site here or on Instagram here or on Facebook here.
I’d been home from my 48Cars48States trip for less than a week when I hopped back in the Galaxie to take off for Denton, TX for Pistons & Paint. I made it about 20 miles before I lost a wheel bearing & somehow lost front brakes at the same time. A call later lined up a ride home on the trailer and I hopped in my daily drive so I could continue my trip down to Texas!
More of the story tomorrow
This week’s posts are brought to you by Martins Rods in Lampasas, TX.
Find them on their site here or on Instagram here or on Facebook here.
My trip up to the Nashville area was a bit longer one time wise, so I had time for a couple of tours! First I made my way up to Chattanooga, TN for a tour at Coker Tires, then I headed to Manchester, TN to hang out for a bit with Ricky Bobby of Ricky Bobby Rod Shop (he was a guest on my podcast here). I crashed there for the night and the next morning went to Lynchburg, TN for a tour at the Jack Daniels Distillery before heading up to the Nashville area to meet up with Todd Lancaster and shoot photos of his roadster.
Todd started this project when he lived in CA and where he was one of the reasons that the Long Beach Cavaliers club was brought back to life. If you haven’t seen “This Is Long Beach” by Brian Darwas (guest on the podcast here) you should check it out! Since relocating to the Nashville area a couple of years ago the car has made it to this stage and it’s been taken to a few shows this year.
A few years ago my buddy’s band had to cancel on us for playing a gig at my favorite bar. He contacted this band out of Georgia to have them fill in for his band and that’s how I met Hot Rod Walt! Hot Rod Walt & The Psycho Devilles came to Salina, KS for the KKOA that year and blew every one away at the show and at the Paramount Bar.
Since then Walt came back a couple of years later and brought this Mercury. He performed solo for us that year and again blew the crowd away. So when I decided to do this trip, I knew I wanted to go to Walt’s and shoot photos of one of his cars.
From NC, I headed to see some friends in Ninety Six, SC! Chris and Lori Ryan of Ryan’s Rod & Kustom have been coming to the KKOA Leadsled Spectacular in Salina, KS for years and they always bring a beautiful car with them. The 1949 Cadillac that you see here is Lori’s “Golden Empress” that was first seen at the Detroit Autorama a couple of years back. The car is of course, stunning and the location was right in front of the shop so it worked out to be a great afternoon. With rain in the forecast we had to work fast to get done mere minutes before some mist started falling from the sky.
Continue reading “48 Cars in 48 States #43 : South Carolina”
From Richmond, VA I hauled butt down to NC, getting to the Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday morning for the Goodguys Southeastern Nationals, you can see that coverage here. Then later in the day I took the short drive up to Concord, NC and shot photos of Jeremy Minamyer’s Mercury.
Continue reading “48 Cars in 48 States #42 : North Carolina”
From Martinsburg, WV I moved on down into VA. I stopped mid way to shoot photos of a 1935 Ford for a Hop Up Magazine feature. Later that day I got down to the Richmond, VA area to see Dave Russell and his 1931 Model A Victoria named Miss Vicky. There’s a great thread on the HAMB here if you want to see the build of the car, done in his garage. The car turned out amazing and we found a great spot to shoot some photos just as the sun was sitting.
From the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay near the Bay Bridge it was a couple hour drive up to my stop in West Virginia to visit Travis Hess (tukipaintsit on instagram) in Martinsburg, WV. I arrived just in time for him to finish up work at the family body shop and then we got the roadster out.
Hess is a member of the Oilers club that puts on The Race Of Gentlemen in Wildwood, NJ and the car is perfect for the event. The kind of hot rod assembled to look like a 50’s era rod that I really dig.
After leaving Traditional Metal Craft in Milton, DE my Maryland host Bob McCreary and I headed west towards eastern Maryland. We stopped in at the East Coast Hot Rod Garage for a visit. Some amazing projects under construction there, plus a ton of plaques on the wall with former features in such publications as The Rodder’s Journal.
Thanks to my Maryland car owner Bob McCreary, I was able to see and photograph this great car! Thanks Bob! This car is owned and was restored by Bill Yeager. He’s owned it for a few decades now and restored it with some guidance by phone from the Cederquist Brothers who originally built it and campaigned it in California.
When Yeager found the car it was almost all complete, but disassembled. He was able to buy the car and get some of the additional parts back from someone who had purchased them. More on the story in the book!
Next up on my trip was New Jersey! Here’s where I screwed up a bit, I put the wrong town into my hotel app, so I ended up about 45 minutes from my next stop. It worked out, I was able to drive some super cool roads before showing up at Old Stillwater Garage in Stillwater, NJ to see Lou Calasibetta and crew.
Originally we were going to shoot photos of his restoration of the Alexander Brothers built Golden Indian 1960 Pontiac, but he had a great GMC Cameo pickup, and since my dad is a Cameo owner I changed my mind to shoot the truck. Okay so I shot both, but the truck is the feature!
From MA it was a short drive down to CT for my next shoot. Edward Beauchaine was my car owner for CT, I showed up there around noon and we got right to work shooting photos of his kool hot rod. We spent some time checking out these rad dioramas that he has built, plus a couple of other cars in the garage before going to grab some lunch at a local joint.
Thanks Ed for the hospitality, I wish I could have stayed longer!
From rainy Rhode Island I headed north and west to West Springfield, MA. After starting in Chester, NH, driving through Boston to attend the Gathering Of The Faithful (see coverage here), then shooting photos of Larry Hook’s roadster in Rhode Island and then driving over to western MA, the day was not finished yet!
I was lucky enough to have another great vehicle for my trip for MA! Jon Centracchio’s pickup is just stunning and he found this great location for the photos. After a little bit of driving around shooting photos we stopped by to see his new project which should be featured in an upcoming Rodder’s Journal, too cool!
Great guy, great rides and it was the perfect way to end a long day! More about the truck in the book!
After the shoot in Maine, Jay and I headed back to Chester, NH for the night. The Sweets were kind enough to let me crash on the couch while I was there. Early Saturday morning I headed for Middleborough, MA for the Gathering Of The Faithful, which you can see here.
Yes, I was in MA, but my RI stop was on the way to the MA shoot so I headed there next! Larry Hook has this amazing time machine known as the Norm Wallace roadster. It’s one of two historic hot rods in Larry’s care and both are stunning examples of hot rodding once was.
It rained on me all the way to Larry’s place, and just let up barely enough for us to get the car out and take some photos. Thank you Larry for letting me shoot some photos of your amazing car.
After traveling most of the country I was happy to be in New England for the first time. The states are smaller and the projected drives are much shorter each day. My New Hampshire car owner Jay had the day off of work so he hopped in the passenger seat and we directed the car down to the NH coast. Hopping on Highway 1 we took the coastal road north, stopping at a few scenic spots, and a great seafood spot for some clam chowder & clam strips. Pretty great food and a very relaxed day.
As we went up the coast we checked out some Revolutionary War era forts, saw some great views and worked our way up in to Maine. We met up with the Maine car owner Terry Czsonek and his flamed Chevy. Terry lead us back down to a cool spot on the coast, then another. A couple of great spots for shooting photos and we even saw a couple of seals chasing fish up into a small bay, unfortunately none of us had our phones or cameras ready for that moment.
The trip over to Chester, NH to see my buddy Jay Sweet was a pretty one, and pretty short mileage wise. Where I drover 500-600 miles at a time out west, I was only doing about 120 miles in this stint. The fall in New England is a beautiful thing, and I got to see some of the color that’s been so widely talked about.
Jay Sweet moved back to New England a few years ago, but before that he was in KS and actually only about 25 miles from my place. I first met him at one of his HAMBBQ runs that he held at his Abilene, KS farm. They were a fun run & then a hang out/bbq that usually went into the wee hours of the next morning. I have great memories of watching movies on the side of the barn, laughing and just having the best all around time imaginable.
Before his time in KS, Sweet grew up on the east coast so he’s back home now. Thank you to the Sweet family for letting me crash on the couch for a couple of nights and for the tour of some parts of New England! We shot photos on a Friday morning then headed to the coast and then up into Maine for the the shoot there. It was great to have a copilot for a day.
The car is one that Jay’s dad had back in the old days when he was a young hot rodder, it’s been on the road for a long time and my earliest memories of Jay all include him driving this car. It’s a great example of a 50’s kid’s hot rod and I wouldn’t change a thing.