Relix 50 Artist Spotlight: Double Wonderful

Gordon Kenny, the artist behind Double Wonderful, participated in the Relix Artist Spotlight series to discuss his latest work in association with the magazine’s golden anniversary: one-of-a-kind Relix 50 “Still Dead” merchandise. In the video, which can be viewed in full below, the artist also touched on his own path to success, from the Phish lot to the SNL stage and beyond. Check out his designs here. 

“I went to my first Phish concert. It was a super big deal. My friends and I smoked pot at it, and everything changed for me… I had smoked pot before, but the combination of music and these two brownies I ate in the parking lot. My 14-year-old mind was blown. From then on, it was just full-blast Phish nonstop.

“In 9th grade, I went on tour with Phish myself. Particularly hanging out in the parking lot every day was a big influence on me. Buying t-shirts and seeing all the logo flips and everything like that, that’s involved with Phish lot. But then they went on hiatus, so I kinda fell out. It wasn’t till like 2019 when my friend brought me to a Dead & Co. show, that I sort of re-realized how much fun it was going to these shows. I saw the scene was alive and well, yet again, like I had seen it in 2000, and for fun, I was like, ‘Let’s make some goofy, silly shirts.’” 

Sure enough, Kenny went to work, and soon, John Mayer donned one of his creations. This helped establish Double Wonderful’s following on social media and catapulted his status when the design was worn on Saturday Night Live. 

Eventually, Double Wonderful caught the attention of Phish, and Kenny put elbow grease into the band’s Jones Beach 2022 shirt. For Mondegreen, Double Wonderful debuted four goof lyric shirts over four days of the festival, playing off the definition of the festival’s title. 

Kenny says about his creative process, “Using my phone, where it was kind of about grabbing images from the internet and trying to make them workable for one color t-shirts. Now, it’s developed into this whole where I’m pretty quick with it, and I make everything now on my phone using free apps.

“I used to make punk rock fliers when I was younger–Xerox machine-esque looking stuff using basically stupid images from the Internet. Usually, I’ll start with an image. Sometimes, I’ll start with a font that I like, and just put it all on a page and makin’ it insane. That’s what I like to do. The inspiration is trying to make it as crazy and off-putting as possible for any normy out there. Cause the last thing we need are normal people digging this shit.” 

Check out Double Wonderful’s Relix 50 Collection now. Shop this story by clicking here to purchase 50th-anniversary t-shirts and poster series for Relix.