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Dan Schumacher has been collecting tattoos on his person for over 40 years. In this episode of This Is My Thing, he tells us about his history with the art form, why he gets them, what they mean to him, and why they’re worth the pain.
The full transcript of this episode of KUT News Now is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
This Is My Thing: Tattoos!
Michael Lee [00:00:13] I’m Michael Lee and you’re listening to This Is My Thing. There’s a decent chance that you came across this show as part of the KUT News Now podcast feed, so it might be a little bit of a surprise to know that this is not at all a new show, but I hope it’s one of those good surprises. On This Is My Thing, we talk to people about the things they do just for themselves. It’s not a job and it’s not a responsibility. It’s just a thing that brings them joy or feeds their soul.
This week: tattoos! More specifically, the collecting of tattoos on one’s person.
This piece comes to us from my friend Juan Garcia.
Juan Garcia [00:00:46] So for this piece, I spoke to Dan Schumacher. He was the ‘adult in the room’ for the student-run radio station that actually gave me my start in radio. And the unique thing about him, compared to other university professors, is that he always was covered in tattoos. And as a person who loves tattoos myself, I felt like I had to talk to him about his relationship with his tattoos.
Dan Schumacher [00:01:11] My name is Dan Schumacher. I’m the general manager and faculty advisor for KTSW 89.9, the student-run radio station here at Texas State University. I’m also a senior lecturer in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State as well.
Juan Garcia [00:01:29] What’s the story behind your first tattoo?
Dan Schumacher [00:01:31] I was 19 years old. I graduated from high school. I hung out with a bunch of wild people at the time, and they had a friend who from out of town who was a tattoo artist, and this guy was traveling around doing tattoos to support his Is party. As he said at that point in time, he’s like, I’m just doing tattoos to support my party. And so it was a kitchen tattoo, is what it was. I want to say I got it done on one of the major holidays, like it was either Thanksgiving or Christmas. I think it was Christmas, if I remember. But yeah, it was a design that I had carried around, and it was actually a design that someone had gotten tattooed on their wrist, and it was like a musical staff, like a waving, like musical staff with all these explosions and starbursts around it and like a treble clef and things. And rather than put it on my wrist because I didn’t want something that was that visible in here, I was like, you know, 19 years old. I knew at least I was smart enough to go. Not going to get it, where it’s visible. He adapted it and put it on my shoulder.
Juan Garcia [00:02:39] And you’ve since had it covered up. Why did you decide to do that?
Dan Schumacher [00:02:43] It had not aged well. When I went back to have it do another tattoo, which the shooting stars that are on my left shoulder. He he decided that that needs to be have some color, basically. So he filled in some of the color on this one, and it didn’t age very well. And so it was like, yeah, I’m going to get that cover just like the other one. I’m going to get covered.
Juan Garcia [00:03:03] So what made you want to get your first tattoo?
Dan Schumacher [00:03:06] That’s a good question. I don’t know, maybe I think it was more than anything, just kind of the rebellious spirit that I had, the kind of like, yeah, I’m going to get one of those. I, you know, those are. Not something at least at that point in time that were that common to me. The tattoos that I saw at that point in time were always like, you know, the, the veterans, you know, the people that served in the military that ended up getting tattoos. I had an uncle who had by then probably done at least one tattoo. But I can’t recall really anyone at that point in time in my circle of friends who had any, you know, and now that I say that, I’m probably going to, you know, after we walk away from this, I’m probably going to go, oh, there was that one. But, you know, I you know, I can’t say that I was really at that point in time even into, like rockabilly, that much or anything. Because of course, you see that in that genre of music, a lot of times the rockabilly dudes will and gals will also get a lot of tattoos and stuff. But I was starting to listen to a little bit more rock and roll kind of stuff, so that was probably a little bit of it. You know, you see the artists that you admire with tattoos and stuff. Yeah. But more than anything, I would say just the kind of rebellious spirit that I had at that point in time. It was like, yeah, I want to get a tattoo. Tattoo parlors were not something that you saw in every corner at that point in time. They’re pretty common these days, but yeah. Northeast Nebraska 1980, 81, 82 I don’t remember. I think it was 81. Yeah. Not a common thing at that point in time.
Juan Garcia [00:04:51] You have a lot of tattoos. What are some of the more meaningful pieces you’ve gotten over the years?
Dan Schumacher [00:04:56] Let’s go back to front, I guess. Yeah. One of the my favorite tattoos, one of the most significant one to me is my sons names on my shoulders, across my shoulders, in the back. So, I have three sons, currently, but, 21, 19 and will be 17 in September. They as a parents. Well, I mean, they are my responsibility, you know, shared responsibility with my partner, my wife, to take care of them. And that’s, you know, the tattooed across my shoulders basically is not so much a reminder, but it’s just it’s the significance of that responsibility is what it is. You know, I’ve got I’m bearing them on my shoulders, basically. That is something that, I really feel that’s probably my utmost responsibility is to, you know, to parent them to, to to be the, guiding light. I don’t know, that sounds pretty dramatic and serious, but it is. Yeah. To to help them. To grow and be good people. Good people for themselves. Good people, you know, and for others to treat other people equally, to be kind to other people, and to contribute however they can to this world. So that’s really probably, I would say, one of the, if not the most important and significant tattoo that I have. Starting from the arms and working my way up, I have stars on my wrists. That was kind of a silly thing, but something that my wife and I just decided we. She’d been talking about it for a while. Let’s just. Yeah. How about wrists on our or stars in our wrists? I was like, all right, whatever. You know? And then the, Christmas, I don’t know, eight years ago, going on nine years ago, she’s like, all right, let’s do it. Let’s just go right now. And so. Okay. All right. And so we did it. Yeah. We just went off and got tattoos on our wrist, stars on her wrists and she. Yeah. Her post on social media not long after that was, you know, the most romantic thing that we’ve done since we got married. So I guess I made the right decision there. Work it out. My left arm. I got a way back when I’m originally from Nebraska. I went to, a an estate sale, garage sale, whatever it may be, maybe have been. And I picked up a box of all sorts of stuff. In that box was an old manual that I actually have in a frame. I need to bring it into the office here. That was like, the name of this very short kind of brochure manual was radio. How it works. And it was from the 1940s, and it had a really cool looking radio tower in the front of it. I really like it. Reminded me if, if you’ve ever seen it, the old RKO, logo, which was a radio tower with all these kind of almost looking like lightning bolts coming out of the, the, the circle at the top of the tower. And I always thought that was really, really cool. So, and way back when I had actually told one of my former students, you know, somewhere along the way I’m going to get something that is relates basically to what I do here. Right? I don’t know if I’d ever go so far as to get a tattoo. I think it’s kind of like one of those things, like they say about your significant other or whatever. You should never get their name tattooed on your body because then something bad is going to happen. You know, so it’s like, I don’t want that. I don’t want to risk that. So maybe in retirement I’ll get that. But but having a radio tower, obviously radio is been such a presence in my life. So that really means a lot to me. And I think it’s pretty cool tattoo as well. And actually that tattoo was done, along with a few other on my forearm and on my upper shoulder and my left arm by a key TSW alum. So, yeah. Daryl Hannah is his name, and he’s done a bunch of them for me since then. He did, this 45 rpm adapter, which is somewhat of a tribute to at least part of it to, one of my best buddies and one of my music gurus back in Nebraska who really kind of put me on the right path for my, musical taste. So he’s a guy who’s, he’s probably a good 15 years older than me. He’s in his mid 70s now, but when I met him, I was working in a record store in my hometown, and he, the he was all rock and roll dude, but he, you know, maybe the guy was in his 30s basically at that point in time. And I was in my early 20s and, and I was starting to work. And because I was working in a record store, I was starting to really form a bitter musical taste, if you will, getting away from, you know, the mainstream and all the crud. Most of the crowd that I grew up listening to and, and, kind of discovering all the different types of music that were out there. So this guy had 10,000 45s, and, yeah, 10,000 45 rpm records that he collected over the years. And, and LP wise, I don’t know, we had racks upon racks upon racks of 45s. So I spent, the record store I was working at in the mall at that point in time. I started once I became the music buyer there, I started stocking things that were out of the ordinary. And a lot of the local music fans who had different tastes started nosing there. So, you know, they started coming in and buying the stuff I was stocking, you know, the records they were looking for. And the conversation came around, you know, like, hey, man, what are you doing this weekend? You know, you want to come hang out. So thus began a long running relationship with probably my best friend, definitely one of my best friends in the world, which consisted of basically every weekend going over to his house and drinking. Amounts of beer. You know, rock and roll is rock and roll, baby. So. But, yeah, consisted of us three in a round robin fashioned, basically. Do you dig into his 45s? And it was asides and B-sides and, playing, you know, a stack of 45s. Everybody got a stack of 45s. So it’s your turn now. Go back. You go through the stacks and stacks and like, oh, that sounds interesting. And you create a stack of 45s and you’re the next one. You put them on the spindle on his turntable and, you know, play six singles. So we did that. We would do that for hours and hours and hours on the weekends. So I learned about so many different types of, of music and so many different types of artists that were out there. And so, yeah, the 45 rpm adapter on my, on my arm is a is a tribute to him, because he’s been such a good friend and such an influence on my music taste and really got me pointed in the right direction up until that point in time. Yeah, I could I had okay music taste, but I’m so much of a, you know, better person because and I’ve discovered so many other different things. I’ve met so many other more interesting people because of my music taste in going to shows and hanging out and meeting people. So the other, thing is, on my forearm, on my left forearm is, is part of, I guess this is a KGW thing because, when my, well, early in my time here at Texas State, what was initially Southwest Texas State when I started here, my kids were really, really young. And my oldest son, who’s now 21, like to draw. And he like to draw that one period of time robots. And so I would he would draw robots and stuff. And I slapped his pictures on my refrigerator at work, and, the station manager at that point in time came in one day, and he was like, those are cool. He’s like, do you think your son could, do a robot with a boombox body? That was one of the the, the items that we used in our promotional t shirts around that time. And I said, I don’t know, let me talk to him. And so that was his first commission, basically was to draw a robot with a, with a boombox body. And he did it and it had flames for feet. And it was really cool looking. But yeah, it was kid art, you know, it was like 4 or 5 years old, something like that. And they turned it into a t shirt design that year. So I didn’t want to put the whole thing in my body. It was way too much. It would have been cool. Then the front of my arm, I had my parents names, so Don and Violet, they’ve since passed on and everything. So that’s my tribute, of course, to my parents, putting them on my arm and then kind of moving up. I’ve got a stack of records. Most my most recent tattoos. I put a stack of records with headphones sitting on top of it. I kind of wanted to put, like, spines of records. I even thought of, like, right around my forearm, but it I didn’t think it would translate well. And the tattoo artist didn’t think it would translate well. So. So I was looking around and I saw some pictures with stacks of records with like a pair of headphones sitting on top. And I thought, well, that looks kind of pretty cool. So, yeah, I like that one. That’s fairly new. On the back of my arm, I have a stack of cookies, which is a really kind of strange thing, and relates to one of the other tattoos I got most recently. One of the goofy things that I do, to kind of relieve stress and to make things for other people that they like is, is I bake cookies and it’s fun, you know, and I started doing it actually, because of all of the different offices, here at the university that help me out. And like I said earlier, I do a lot of things here. I do everything. And I really it’s difficult to know everything about everything when it comes to budgeting in HR and in purchasing and all those different things. And and so I lean on different people in different offices, a number of different people in different offices around campus. And so my way of saying thanks was here. Here are a couple dozen cookies. You know, I, I started bringing them around the holidays around, you know, the Christmas holidays. And now I just whenever I feel like making cookies, I just crank out the, you know, 2 or 3 batches, basically, and I drop them off. My kids take them to their teachers at school, so it’s a way to say things to them. And it’s also something that I can share with my students. And of course, I’m a sweets fanatic too, so it’s like I make them and I just mail them down. So my whole family loves them too. I give it to my neighbors around the holidays or whenever. You know, it’s just something that I do. So it’s kind of a silly thing on the back of my arm and on the front of my arm, I have a wooden spoon. My mom used wooden spoons, and I always I would like wooden spoons. When I’m baking, I don’t. I prefer to use them over. You know, like a plastic spoon or, you know, silicone is really big right now. You know, so it’s like, I would rather use a wooden spoon. It just has the feel. And I use bamboo spoons and things like that too. But the wooden spoons, they just have a feel and they get weathered and they have just their they look really interesting to me. And so I put one of those on my forearm. I have one on my chest, which is it was a tattoo, probably the first one I got in Austin, I think, that was the back cover of a record by a band called The Magnetic. It was. They originally called Ravenna and the Magnetics, a rockabilly band on rolling Rock records, which is kind of a sway hipped, kind of Elvis looking character is what it is. And I got that down on my chest. So I think that is all that. Yes, I think that’s it. So yeah. And it’s funny, when I went to Early Things, we had a gathering like a radio station gathering at one point in time and, and we went out to university camp here at Texas State, and went swimming in the river. And that was the first time I’d taken my shirt off in front of my students. Obviously, it’s not something I regularly do. So. Yeah. So and they were they all made fun of my Elvis tattoo right away. And it’s like, well, it’s not Elvis. I’m not a huge Elvis fan anyway, but it’s like a rockabilly dude. Come on. But yeah, they made fun of me for that. So that is the last one. I don’t have any more. I have plans for more. I just don’t know what they’re going to be.
Juan Garcia [00:17:53] I notice you have a lot of black and gray tattoos. Do you have a preference for black and gray over color tattoos?
Dan Schumacher [00:17:59] Not really. This particular on my left arm is is more just black is black ink is what it is. And I wanted to keep it consistent. The only thing I wanted to get color on, I will eventually get it is my mother’s name was Violet. As I mentioned earlier, I want to get a violet flower near her name. That’s the only color I plan on at this point in time putting on that arm. Except for the cover up that will be on the upper part of my arm, which might end up being color as well. I just I wanted the consistency on that arm of all just having black ink, and shading and everything. So, once I finished my right arm, which is where the color is, the big colorful one with the all the, chrome and the guitar and stuff like that. I think I’ll do that in, in more color, with more color. Makes for an interesting contrast. But no, I guess it is part of the design. But, you know, it’s it’s not like I prefer one or the other. I just thought I’d try to try that on the one arm and. Yeah. And we’ll see. Who knows I could change that could change tomorrow, depending on what I decide to do with the filling, the spaces to fill in, but probably not.
Juan Garcia [00:19:08] What does getting a new tattoo do for your heart, for your brain, and for your soul?
Dan Schumacher [00:19:12] Well, for my brain. You know, I use this tattoo. My parents’ names. Okay, it’s really on the back of my arm, so I don’t see it that often. I think of them all the time. So it’s not like every day I, you know, go, oh, I’m thinking of my parents now that I see their name on my arm. To to me it’s it is a remembrance, you know, and and so, yeah, I mean, it it does every once in a while just strike me where I’m just like. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, they were, you know, the the best. They were great parents. They were, you know, flawed like everybody else. Like me. But they have had such an effect on my life, you know? So, yeah, it hits me in the heart, hits me in the head when I think about it every once in a while. Those kinds of things, so many other things are just kind of, you know, are they make me smile when I see them or I think they’re cool. You know, I remember when I got to the radio tower, and I came in and our social media, administrator, we called them at that point in time, and our social media director was like, oh, that’s awesome. I’m going to take a picture of that, and I’m going to put it on social media. So to me, it’s also a way, I have to admit, to connect with other people and actually even just connect, connect with students sometimes where they’re just like, yeah, yeah, he’s a tattooed guy. You know him, you know? Sure.
Michael Lee [00:20:41] Thanks for listening to This Is My Thing. I’m Michael Lee, and this week’s episode of This Is My Thing was produced by Juan Garcia. And I would really like for you to all know that the sound you heard of a tattoo machine in this piece is the actual sound of one getting a tattoo, which is some serious dedication to the job. And if you’re the curious type, the tattoo he got for this recording is a small bat and it’s on his right forearm. He got it at Diablo Rojo, right across the street from the KUT Studios.
Special thanks, of course, to Dan Schumacher for sharing his love of tattoos with us. We have got a lot more This Is My Thing coming soon. We have recently talked to a student train conductor, a guy who plays bike polo and a pretty good LEGO builder. Keep listening to hear these stories and more. If you’d like to tell us about your thing, and maybe be a part of a future episode of the show, that is very easy. Just go to the This Is My Thing show page at KUT.org. You’ll find a form on that page that you can fill out to tell us about your thing, and the people upstairs would like for me to remind you that there are other forms on the KUT website as well, specifically the one that lets you become a member. If that’s something you would like to do, then please also fill that one out. Our members make this and everything we do possible.
Laurie Gallardo [00:22:02] Support for This Is My Thing comes from locally owned Eckert Insurance. Worry less, live more.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
