An annual motorcyclists' gathering highlights the power of a lesser-known two-wheeled art form.
Hill City Rumble
Prairie Street Live
Fayetteville
Sept. 16
Thirty miles south of where a museum retrospective of Annie Leibovitz photos was opening in Bentonville, a tintype photographer named Matthew Nixson was shooting portraits of tattooed men and women at a vintage motorcycle show.
Nixson, a traveling photographer from Waco, Texas, came to Northwest Arkansas with a portable studio for shooting the sepia-toned tintype portraits in a vendor tent. Business was brisk; customers eagerly posed under bright lights while he ducked under a black shroud to snap their $65 pictures with an antique accordion camera.
The Hill City Rumble vintage motorcycle show on Sept. 16 filled the outdoor music venue Prairie Street Live, near the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. The event drew about 2,000 people to see 200 bikes and choppers – a good turnout on the same weekend as the FORMAT festival in Bentonville. The Rumble is also an upstart alternative to a much larger rally: Bikes, Blues and BBQ, a five-day corporate-sponsored event starting on Sept. 20 across NWA.
The Hill City Rumble is in its fourth year, organized by Jud Ferguson, a tattoo artist and former pro skateboarder, his teacher wife Jessica, and friend Corey Van Dine. They like to point out that the event has no admission charge and no entrant fee for motorcycles in the unjudged exhibition. A half-dozen vintage clothing and accessory vendors flanked a good taco truck – and a well-stocked outdoor bar with fair prices.
The Hill City Rumble is a fun event. The exhibitors and visitors are welcoming and talkative, not fitting the stereotype of gruff bikers. More than anything, the show is a celebration of an art form -– rat bikes — and its accouterments like tattoos, jewelry and retro clothing (garage coveralls are de rigueur for the women). Most of these people will return to their day jobs like teaching and engineering on Monday, but this show was a time to commune with peers and show off their hand-built bikes and personal styles.
This year, the Rumble featured a sub-genre of custom motorcycles called rat bikes. According to Wikipedia, rat bikes are motorcycles that “have been kept on the road and maintained for little or no cost … with little or no consideration given to appearance.” Rat bikes are rolling wrecks, deliberately dirty and ugly, yet loved for their rebel attitude and retro cred.
Rat bikes trace back to the DIY spirit of homecoming World War II veterans with little money. They sought and rebuilt cheap used bikes. And many a farmer’s daughter has constructed a ride from a junked motorcycle and some tractor parts. Nowadays, rat bikes represent a post-industrial angst, disdain for materialism, and a yearning for authenticity. Some of the world’s wealthiest collectors display decrepit rat bikes alongside million-dollar sports cars.
Tyler Burrell (pictured at the top of the story) rode his 1972 Honda Scrambler 175cc to the Rumble. It’s a tiny Japanese motorcycle, pitifully slow by today’s standards. Burrell, a microbiologist for a biotech firm in Fayetteville, bought the bike for $175 and rebuilt the blown engine. Even now, his backpack is loaded with tools and spray lube for frequent roadside repairs.
The 51-year-old Honda is an exquisitely greasy, dented machine with bare-metal finishes. Burrell slouched astride his parked motorcycle like a 1970s rock demi-god waiting for Annie Leibovitz. An Arkansas native and UA graduate, he spent two years living aboard his 37-foot Irwin sailboat in Ft. Pierce, Florida.
For music, mainstream motorcycle events inevitably feature tributes to classic rock groups like Bob Seger and Allman Brothers with their repertoires of road songs like “Turn the Page” and “Ramblin’ Man.” However, the rat-bike crowd has edgier tastes for thrash and punk. A band called Phlegm headlined the Rumble this year, supported by the athletic shredding of the Motel Preachers (see video).
Co-organizer Jud Ferguson said the Hill City Rumble is “a party where you can ride around and everyone sees the piece of art you created.”
WRITER’S NOTES: The new exhibition Annie Liebovitz at Work at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has been well received by the public and media. Many people in NWA seem to be aware of it, because of the photographer’s half-century career and famous images like the Lennon/Ono series. Recognition in a fine-arts museum is a milestone for this prolific chronicler of music and style. The show runs through Jan. 29, 2024.
On Sept. 15, Taj Farrant, the teen blues-guitar prodigy from Australia, returned to the Meteor Guitar Gallery in Bentonville with his three-piece band. The audience was bigger and louder this time. (See the entire show on YouTube.) There’s little doubt that blues fans worldwide will be hearing more about this emerging artist.
