I’d never heard of a cowboy band before, I presumed that they were basically just a regular band, but back when people were cowboys, so pretty much every band would be a cowboy band. To my surprise, there does seem to be quite a few cowboy bands out there, such as the ‘Working Cowboy Band‘ (who has a fairly full calendar, ruining any opportunities for jokes), the ‘Crazy Cowboy Band‘, and the ‘Leningrad Cowboys‘ who are Finnish, and probably not actually cowboys. Also, note to self: find Deadwood season 3 DVDs and watch them.

I frequently find myself writing in my tee recommendation posts “its great, but what if the print was bigger?” Clearly, that’s not something that I can say of this design, because it covers all of the front, and even part of the inside of the shirt. I really admire The Ryde for having the cajones to put out a shirt like this, to me its almost the tee equivalent of a concept album, putting an idea out there and seeing how it works. And it works pretty well, especially with the way that the brown of the tee creates a kind of sepia effect upon the photographic print.

I’m impressed by the quality, there detail on the print is great, especially since I presume that the subject matter was a vintage photo and wouldn’t have been great quality to start with. When the print is large like this, its important to have quality print, and The Ryde have come through with an extremely soft and not-at-all heavy discharge print which was an initial worry of mine when I pulled the tee out of the envelope. One rather clever thing about this print didn’t become apparent to me until I laid it out on the table for photos; the print actually continues onto the inner back of the tee, completing the ‘Dodge City Cowboy Band’ sign, which is something I’ve never seen before, and a really nice tough. Custom cut tee, for comparisons sake, slightly shorter and wider than a standard American Apparel tee.

Costiness=$28 Link