My Dear Friends of Inked Nailed to the x baby um uh yeah i’m a very dumb guy and very early in my life i was like i should be sober so anything you hear me say that sounds stupid it’s like imagine if i had let myself drink right so bad yeah so i’ve been sober since i was 14 years old i was again to go back to.
How weird my childhood was i got sober at 14. and being sober is great it makes dating in your 30s incredibly difficult but other than that it’s great um i’m shane smith uh i’m a comedian i some people would say um yeah i hang out on the internet a lot i.
Yell uh i talk on stage and i sing in a band and i do other things i’m a i just i do a bunch of stuff on the internet and people seem to like it so here we are i grew up in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere in central utah incredibly small no stoplights one stop sign mostly yield signs you know bring a.
Gun to school for show and tell type stuff so everyone just did everything uh there were no laws one of the last few like wild west places left the united states a lot of people grow up like resentful of their small towns and of course there’s like a ton of stuff to hate about it right of course.
I grew up around like a lot of religious people and and they didn’t like uh you know any alternative lifestyles whatsoever but i also grew up uh you know around a lot of wild people who do a lot of wild things uh you know so i grew up like found dynamite when i was the kid and blew up a car and.
Shot guns at each other to see what it would sound like um you know stuff like that just just being an absolute maniac and then i grew up around like you know motorcycles and and people who ride them uh and then you know also get up to outlaw activity is that what we want to say.
We’ll say that we’ll say that so it was good it was really good i enjoyed it i loved it and i miss it often i don’t remember the first time i ever saw someone with tattoos but i remember my dad uh he has a tattoo on his back like a big tattoo of like this gnarly.
Guy with a sword and as a kid i was just like yo that [__] rules like that’s awesome uh and uh yeah i just remember thinking that was so cool so that’s my first distinct tattoo memory and so when i saw people starting to get heavily tattooed when i saw like mad ball and and and people from this like culture you know.
And uh and i saw like motorcycle club guys getting tattooed and i was like yo that’s me like i want to have that respect they they like walked around and they commanded so much respect and so i was like i’m going to be the only guy in my town that’s or the only kid in my town that’s heavily tattooed and i i did that i was heavily.
Tattooed as like a child it was really dumb it was not good i mean clearly that you you see the proof of like hey maybe you don’t get tattooed when you’re 14 or whatever it wasn’t that i wanted attention i just i wanted people to be like to immediately look at me and be like oh no thank you almost that’s like what i was.
Going for at the time which is so it’s such a very young guy uh mode of thinking i’m nowhere near that anymore but at the time i just wanted people to think i was badass i mean to be honest and then my first tattoo ever was live love burn die from the atreyu song what the [__] was i thinking i it’s.
So dorky that i kept it i was like it’s too funny i can’t not have it and yeah i was just like yeah they’ll respect me by the way i’m going to get a tray you lyrics so so bad it’s so bad how could we actually oh i’ll be honest like zero reaction i.
Mean my parents were pretty much you know i grew up incredibly poor um you know my mom worked constantly and when she wasn’t working she was like uh you know uh medicating with whatever substances she was dealing with.
At the time and she’s much better now but at the time when i was a kid there were i just completely no rules no oversight no anything so i just kind of did whatever i wanted at first it was really about like get me covered oh i’m my friend is gonna do kitchen table tattoos and so i had like i got a full.
Sleeve in like a day i got this little ditty and and like one more and and then uh um i met a guy who was like i can tattoo and i was like can you and he was like check it out and he just had like you know like a basically like a tattoo uh a tattoo machine that looked like it.
Came straight at a mad max like he invented it you know and he was like i’m pretty sure this is gonna work and i was like get in here bud and he just like you know he tattooed me all over i had so many at a young age i tattooed my neck and my whole arm and no plan you know i was involved in this culture where all i wanted was respect and.
People to be like he has tattoos be afraid of him respect him whatever um just dealing with whatever emotional stuff i was going through at the time i got older and then i got that respect for real and then i was like oh now i can shift gears and do what i actually like which turned out to be like darth vader on my hand just like being nerdy.
Which is my true passion what i’m actually interested in as i got older who gave them to me mattered where i got them mattered why i got them mattered and what they were began to matter much less than all of those other things and so um but i i think they’ve kind of gone piece by piece i’ve never been interested in.
Planning something big out i think the blackout on my arm is the only thing i’ve ever been like we gotta sit down and make a plan for this so what was on there yeah yeah so no the blackout actually covers the cover so oh boy am i.
It strap yourselves in for how stupid this is about to get so i got kitchen table tattoos and some of them were gang tattoos so i like full on you know sketchy gang tattoos and i got them on my throat and stuff too that’s this is a cover also so i had a parole officer as one gets and he was like i was covering the gang tattoos and he was.
Like you need to cover these with color and i was like what and he’s like you’re going to put color into your neck and you’re going to put color on your arm because it’s going to help you be hireable because i couldn’t get a job you know clearly no one wanted to hire me and i i like looked i i just much you know i look nice right now i hope.
But back then i was just like shaved head you know full button ups or white t-shirts dickies only and i i looked like a guy who wanted to fist fight you over something i thought i heard you said and so yeah it just was so stupid and so he was like you’ve got to get color and then.
His whole thing was we wanna we’re gonna make you look like travis barker and like i was like what and i had this officer like literally liv i feel like living his tattoo fantasies through me and like making me get tattooed the way he thought i should get tattooed in order to be hirable and palatable to just.
People and so i um i don’t think i was a coward but i was definitely just like i gotta do what this guy says i’m trying to get my life together because i was trying to rehabilitate myself from you know what like 24 years of just violence and and just horrific decisions and so i did it i i got color tattoos to cover all my.
Stuff and i i [__] hated them i hated them so much and they weren’t me and it felt weird and um right up until very recently i didn’t have like the money or the time or or the like energy to cover them and so gang tattoos weird biomechanical color cover-up forced on me by the police and.
Then the police blackout came after so i have had four sleeves in my life that’s that’s two too many so yeah so what happens is you get older and tattoos start to hurt so bad and so bad and i was just like i don’t.
Want to do this anymore and so i was like i’m not going to black out my arm that’s crazy talk you know what are you going to black out your arm at 33 let’s get here not going to do that and so i got i i got some cover and i got these like triangles instead of a full blackout and i was like i love this sort of.
Um you know almost tribal sort of vibe to it it’s geometric and it’s interesting and um it kind of reminded me of from dust hill dawn a little bit you know and so i was like that’s cool you know vampires will think i’m hot or whatever i got this and then um over time i liked.
It so much that i was like i just gotta black it out i just gotta do something so we had planned to black it out but leave the the shapes we had done so that i could see the sleeve underneath still i kind of wanted to leave it as a reminder like be true to yourself don’t forget where you came from don’t forget who you are you know don’t allow.
Yourself to like regress because i wanted to remember you were a bad person and then you tried to become a good person and you lost yourself in being a good person that’s possible and that’s scary too and so i was like so focus up be present always you know and so this sleeve is kind of i look.
Down and i’m really happy with it um i’m always saying like being heavily tattooed is cool because i get to look at myself in the mirror and the image that looks back at me is how i imagine myself which is like the whole goal of like fashion and in everything with self-expression like if you’re living a life where the image.
That looks back at you is how you imagine yourself that’s the best life you can live so i love that i love seeing it but i also wanted that reminder you know you were bad then you were good you can lose yourself in that be very present focus up you know and so that’s what this is i look down and i’m like oh stay focused when you get.
Tattooed now yes how is it different from when you first got there like how do you approach your technology i’m i’m much more involved in the process before it was kind of just like i so much of getting tattooed was oh oh.
Sh like the homies got the tattoo stuff out let’s all get tattooed i have so many matching tattoos with guys you know i mean one of my favorite matching types just like the thumbs you know x’s on my thumbs or or whatever you know um so that it was very just like let’s do it let’s go.
Who cares whatever now it’s a very like you know a lot of my tattoos have like tons of meaning like i recently got a sigil that i had a priest in iceland draw up and then you know other people added to it and and put it on my body and it was like incredibly meaningful and i like i did some woo-woo and timed it up with the.
Moon and like you know real real nerd stuff you know just in case it works i’m not saying magic is real but like what if it is maybe we should try it so you know i did that um and i’m just like much more involved and i’m also less uh almost worried about how people are going to perceive me with them i don’t.
Regret any of my tattoos i i think i’m a guy with i mean i try to be a person with very few regrets um you know and maybe everyone has a few and that’s okay to admit i always hear people be like no regrets and you’re like that’s maybe not healthy maybe you have to have done something that like you have to think about and be like i.
Shouldn’t have done that but um very few regrets especially in terms of like what i’ve done to my physical body right um because it all leads up to now and i’m so happy with myself and and the journey my body has taken me on and like what it’s.
Gone through and what it’s done and like maybe aesthetically i’m not always pleased with everything but i’m absolutely no regrets even the worst tattoos i got that i was like oh man they’re so bad i have so few photos of me from when i was young but when i do see them sometimes i’m like.
What was i doing there um but no no regrets you know uh there is only forward you know no backwards only forwards so uh i would do it all again maybe yeah maybe not the way i did life all again but i would definitely my tattoo.
Journey leading up to now yeah yeah definitely you
Comedian Shayne Smith has had quite the tattoo journey. Like many of us, he made some rash decisions early in his life and needed to cover up some not great tattoos. Unlike anyone else we’ve ever heard of, his parole officer was stoked on the idea and tried to creative direct his sleeve. This is just one of the amazing stories Shayne shared on this episode of Heavily Inked. Enjoy.
Shayne Smith: https://www.instagram.com/shaydozer/
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