Key in forging the identity of the Wild Hare Club is the original logo designed by Jess Rotter, an American illustrator/designer. Back in 2005, I reached out to Jess to see if she would be as good as to design a logo having come across the quirky sleeve she’d illustrated for Martha Wainwright’s ‘When the Day is Short’ and very generously she agreed, coming up with the iconic slightly bonkers hare, flower and spiral motifs incorporated in an ornate frame of curlicues as printed on the original Wild Hare Club banner that used to hang behind the stage.

Jess is a deep music lover and has been drawing her music loves for decades. A vinyl nut, Jess has wide-ranging tastes and a reverence for the art of the album sleeve as revealed in this rather wonderful Dust and Grooves interview. Jess is now based in LA, having moved from Brooklyn some years back, and the sunshine beams right there in all her colourful pictures, many of which depict the gloriously flamboyant figures from the late ‘60s and 1970s.

Her work includes lots of striking lp covers and show posters as they still nurture the art of the gig poster on the other side of the pond. Her work includes pieces for the wonderful Light in the Attic label and a recent sleeve for the Everybody’s Gotta Live ep of lost tunes by Love, as well as artwork for performances by such WHC favourites as Waxahatchee and Joanna Newsom. Some of her work makes it onto t-shirts - such as the Abba Zabba Captain Beefheart t-shirt which I only bring out for special occasions – and if you want to bring a bit of California sunshine to your wardrobes these can be purchased from Rotter and Friends.

Every time one of Jess Rotter’s wild hares is incorporated into some piece of WHC artwork I smile and so I just wanted to say THANK YOU JESS.