Jeremy Saffer/ Chris Motionless Calendar 

For even more info, go to Jeremy’s tumblr. tmblr.co/Zx4D7yD27EsO

Let’s take a few steps back, about 6 years ago.  We were just getting going as a band, had a whole different lineup and were playing local shows as often as possible. We were writing our first batch of demo songs and most importantly, were looking for a new name since at that time we were hideously named “When Breathing Stops”. I popped in the Hellfest  2001 DVD that I had just bought and immediately skipped to watch Eighteen Visions’ performance section and as soon as I heard James Hart say “This song is called Motionless and White” I knew that would be the most badass band name for us. I repeated it in my mind 1000 times and started envisioning saying it out loud at shows as our band name and it just felt.. perfect. 

When we first started we were heavily influenced by a lot of different bands but for me personally, I was borderline OBSESSED with bands like Eighteen Visions, Bleeding Through, AFI, It Dies Today and Himsa. I literally wanted to BE Mick Morris from 18V and because they were such a huge influence on our band that’s why we decided to go with MIW as our name. I should be ashamed of myself for admitting some of this stuff but oh well hahaha. I used to sit online for hours and just lurk pictures of Davey Havok, Mickdeth from 18V, Brandon from BT, John Pettibone from Himsa and Nick Brooks from IDT because, like i said, I wanted to BE all of them. I gathered up tons of photos of them that I still have saved on my desktop computer hahaha NO SHAME, you KNOW you’ve done it too hahaha. 

Anyway… to finally get to my point of this whole thing, one day in my endless creeping of the internet I came across a Myspace profile of a guy named Jeremy Saffer, who literally took rad photos of almost every one of those guys/bands I previously listed. I was extremely happy because I was so pumped to find his work, and of course as my never ending-goal stacking-self did, i  aspired to one day hopefully get to work with him. I desperately wanted to be a part of the same things my favorite bands were. I would’ve given anything to be in their shoes and to work with people that they were working with and playing the shows they were playing etc. About a year went by after initially finding Jeremy’s photos and lurking them every week to see anything new was posted and then I saw the MickDeth 2007 calendar that Jeremy was putting out. I flipped and would’ve bought it immediately but because I didn’t have a debit card or anything, I was shit out of luck. 

After several years more of relentlessly keeping a close eye on Jeremy’s photos and hoping one day to cross paths with him as we were growing as a band a touring a lot, we ended up doing a tour with Drop Dead Gorgeous in early 2010 and my time had finally come to take a shot a contacting him. I knew we would be in his home area so even though I was SO FUCKING NERVOUS, I tweeted at him to see if he would write back. I honestly thought he would HATE us, so i was afraid to get something like “fuck your shitty emo band” back or something to that extent. To my surprise, our booking agent at the time saw the tweet and immediately put me in touch with Jeremy. As if my nerves weren’t shot enough, I called him and spoke to him on the phone to work out a time and place where we could meet and take some photos. The next day we got together and he was one of the nicest dudes i’ve ever met. The shoot was completely unplanned but he still knew EXACTLY what to do with us and what we were going for. It was such an extremely surreal experience for me to after all these years be finally standing where some of my biggest influences in music had stood and to meet the man responsible for taking the photo’s that filled my computers hard drive up hahahaha. 

At this point i’d love to say.. the rest is history, but i can’t just leave it at that. It’s been almost 2 years since that first time and in just 2 short years Jeremy has become not only my favorite photographer to work with, but one of my best friends in the world. When I look back from the beginning I often think that my life isn’t real. I’m in a position now that I only could’ve ever dreamed of being when we started. With that being said… you can imagine how huge of a personal accomplishment it is for me to announce that now all these years later, I am the one with my own Jeremy Saffer Calendar. It’s not that I have my own Calendar thats a big deal to me. It’s that if you ever told me that some day this would happen, that I would be doing the same thing that MickDeth had done, I would’ve laughed at how crazy it sounded. I know i’ve said it like 10 times already, but it’s just crazy to know i used to be obsessed with things that i’m now actually living. Calendar and photo’s aside, I just want to say Thank You so much to Jeremy for having me be a part of what he does and for being an amazing friend to me. The world is full of some of the most horrible people and I can vouch that he is one of the best dudes on it. We make an excellent team and I look forward to MANY more years of that continuing. 

Hope you guys enjoy the Calendar if you pick it up. Thank you for helping me accomplish things I never thought possible. 

Buy it here! 

http://jeremysaffer.bigcartel.com/product/chris-motionles-2012-calendar