Gilchrist, Famed Illustrator & Writer of NANCY Comic Strip Honors
GRAMMY, CMA, and ACM Award-Winner Steve Wariner & Grand Ole Opry’s
88th Birthday Celebration
The strip is syndicated internationally in 80 countries (approximately
400 newspapers), and viewed by 57 million readers around the world. Guy Gilchrist,
famed illustrator and writer of NANCY, will sometimes slip his favorite
music icons within the frames of his work (most often with their names
emblazoned on characters’ tee-shirts or in storefront signage). On rare
occasions, Gilchrist will pay tribute to these artists, and make them a
centerpiece of the strip. Such will be the case in the Sunday, August 25 edition of NANCY. Gilchrist will personally present the strip to Steve Wariner and the Grand Ole Opry on Sat., Oct. 6 during a 3:00 p.m. Wariner concert at the Opry House, part of the Opry’s Birthday Bash Weekend.
“Over the years, Steve Wariner and I have become good friends. I’ve
always admired his work and he mine, so when I heard he had a new album
coming out, I wanted to do something for him,” explains Gilchrist.
“That’s when I found out he was the featured act during the Opry’s 88th Birthday Bash
afternoon concert on Oct. 6 and I knew that I just had to do a full
feature strip that focused on him and paid tribute to one of the
cornerstones of Country Music, the Grand Ole Opry.”
“I think being in the ‘Nancy’ comic strip is one of the coolest
things that has happened in my career,” said Wariner. “I was thrilled to
learn that the super talented Guy Gilchrist included me in the strip
that honors the 88th birthday of the Grand Ole Opry, which happens to be
one of my favorite places to perform.”
Gilchrist, who resides in the Nashville area, has embedded his love for music within the strip, honoring artists such as Elvis, The Beatles, Charlie Daniels, Taylor Swift, Patti Page, George Jones, Don McLean, and many more. A collection of these music-related strips were donated to the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum. They are currently on display as part of the larger, ongoing exhibit, “Nancy Loves Nashville,” at the Nashville International Airport which will run through 2015. For more information on NANCY, please visit www.nancyandsluggo.com.
Country music legend Steve Wariner will release It Ain’t All Bad,
his first non-instrumental album in more than eight years, on Sept. 10.
The acclaimed singer/songwriter/guitar virtuoso has received four GRAMMY Awards, four CMA Awards and one ACM Award, among other honors, and has been a member of the Grand OIe Opry since 1996. Wariner has achieved 14 No. 1 hits,
including “Holes in the Floor of Heaven,” “The Weekend,” “I Got
Dreams,” “Lynda,” “Tips of My Fingers,” “Life’s Highway,” “Some Fools
Never Learn,” “The Domino Theory,” and more. He is also well known for
songs such as “I’m Already Taken,” “Two Teardrops,” “Leave Him Out of
This,” “Kansas City Lights,” and more. In addition to writing many of
his own songs, Wariner has written hits for other artists including
“Longneck Bottle” (Garth Brooks), “Where the Blacktop Ends” (Keith
Urban), and “Nothin’ But the Taillights” (Clint Black). For more
information, visit www.SteveWariner.com.
About Guy Gilchrist:
Best known for his work as the writer and illustrator of one of the
longest-running internationally syndicated daily comic strips, NANCY (a character created by Ernie Bushmiller in 1933), Guy Gilchrist took over the strip in 1995. After high school, Guy was already working in NYC for Disney and others, as well as full time for Weekly Reader Books. At the age of 24, he was hand-selected to create Jim Henson’s Muppets Comic Strip
(which was wildly successful and printed worldwide in over 660
newspapers daily from 1981 – 1986). Throughout the years, Guy has set
his hand to such notable cartoons as Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Fraggle Rock and The Pink Panther (to name a few), and was the instrumental in the creation of The Muppet Babies. Guy is the two-time winner of the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Category Award for Best Illustrator and a three-time recipient of the International Reading Committee of United Nations Children’s Choice Awards for Best Book of the Year.
Gilchrist’s work is currently on exhibit at the Nashville International Airport, museums around the world, the Walt Disney Museum in Marceline, Mo., as well as permanently enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution. For more information on NANCY or Guy Gilchrist, please visit www.nancyandsluggo.com.