Donkey Punch, 2008
Mixed media on chalkboard
48″ x 72″

Donkey Punch is the album cover for Megafaun’s Bury the Square, released in 2008 on the experimental label Table of the Elements. Brown drew the image in mixed media on a chalkboard and then photographed it for the cover. He was also the art director and graphic designer for the release. Read the album’s review on Pitchfork.

The drawing is an illustrated picture of the music industry and works as a cautionary tale about the life of a touring musician. The donkey stands in for the nomadic life of the road: a tour bus loaded with everything you own. Snakes, bats and con men surround it, figures that show one face but turn out to have two. The traveler keeps moving forward anyway and finds a way through them. The music itself is the real weapon, but sometimes it needs backup: help from those who build the path. That’s the shotgun, marked “This Machine Kills Fascists,” the slogan Woody Guthrie wrote on his guitar.

Donkey Punch was one of several projects Brown made through his design work for the label, where several albums came with their own creative project. See also Impala Eardrums and Side A.