For a decade, a leading figure and frontwoman of post-punk staple band Against Me!, Laura Jane Grace, had been slowly accruing black-laden bodywork by master Japanese tattoo artists Gakkin and Kenji Alucky. Beginning at her feet, Gakkin's freehanded, organic figures and Alucky's high-contrast geometric works had taken the three all over the world together just as it had taken inches all over Laura Jane's figure. Finally, though this artistic exercise in time and tattoo ink came to a head. Literally. The last place Laura Jane Grace needed tattooed, was her head.
Whilst on tour in Europe that Summer, Laura Jane Grace, reached out to Gakkin. His shop had been relocated to Amsterdam and the two agreed to meet while they were both there. Pain of course was a consideration, but the most decisive action was that Laura Jane Grace needed to shave her head. As a prominent figure in the trans community, Grace’s hair is tied to their physical identity, and she understood that shaving it would come with questions. That didn’t stop her though, and soon enough her scalp was bare, and she was under the deft hand of her trusted tattoo artist. Two days later, Laura Jane Grace’s head was adorned with bold stroked roses crying around and the wings of a bird of prey, the story was at its close. Or so she thought.
Just before her departure, Gakkin presented with a token of their work together over the years; a black hollow-body Gretsch guitar, adorned with swirling white and silver cloud-like shapes hand-painted by Gakkin. And it was on this guitar, in the American Hotel in Amsterdam, that Laura Jane Grace commemorated this experience by writing the sixth track “Birds Talk Too” on her newest album Hole In My Head.
