Eddie Alexander Meeks, born on sept 11, 1967 (good year for corvette, actually great year for corvette) from 2 talented parents producing an even more "hybrid" multi talented boy. I knew I was far more gifted in the art department when in 3rd grade, in fact knew I had what it would take to be an artist "for a living" in the same grade. I also had been certified by testing that I possessed a 6th grade reading level in the 3rd grade (although that excitment quickly deminished when in the 6th grade still had a 6th grade reading level, ha ha). But, none-the-less didn't really give a hoot about reading at the time, love to read now, I knew my supreme talent was drawing and designing and concentrated on that. I disliked school for having to be "made to do something" that I was not particularly fond of. The day I graduated was the best day of my life, up to that point, and I knew all the other kids, when the moment came to move the tassel from one side to the other indicating the next faze of life were thinking about college or the beach or getting a job etc.....all I thought, and my sole thought was "I will never, and I mean NEVER ever, for the rest of my life EVER get up in the morning before I want to". See I used to hate the early morning and did all my work at night and have never gotten up before noon since the day after graduation (except on occasion) but while in school had to get up at 6:00am everyday. Up until I was 39 (nearing 40) I liked sleeping until noon, now at age 41+ I have started to enjoy getting up early so I have turned a new leaf I guess. In fact the only thing that kept me going during the hell years of school was the thought of all the hot chicks that went to my school and once I got there I could see them. Which played a part in my art career since my only subject in my paintings and sculptures is the beautiful nude womans figure. Before graduating and while in the12th grade I custom painted 2 show cars, one, a '55 chevy that had been chopped 4 inches and set on a pro street chassis and this car, after I finished the paint work was taken all over the country and entered in the custom car show circuit. It won many best paint awards and won the championship in the end and was sold at the last show. This was done when I was 17 years old. After graduating I bought an electric guitar and decided to tear it apart and custom paint it. I did, and after putting it back together I noticed it didn't play as good as it did before I took it apart. I flipped through the phone book to find a guitar shop that could let me know what was going on (at age 18 then and this was my first guitar) so I found "Roscoe" guitars in the yellow pages and called him. He knew exactly what had gone wrong (I knocked it out of intonation) and said I could drop it off and he would fix the problem. I dropped it off and went back the next day to pick it up and the first thing he asked was who painted it? I told him I did and the next thing out of his mouth was do you want a job painting my guitars. I said sure (this was great fortune since I had painted another show car since graduating and decided cars were too big and too time consuming and wanted something small to paint and get into, guitars were perfect). He asked when I could start and I told him "tomorrow". So I showed up with airbrush in hand and we went over employeement issues. I told him I didn't want to "work for him" but would paint on a commission basis. This suited him fine so off I went into the back spray room and painted my first guitar for Roscoe which is this one pictured right here.

My new "job" was totally cool. I'm now 18 years old and have a commission paying gig painting electric guitars for a man that hand builds his own brand. All the guitars were hand made right in this shop which was on Tate St. in Greensboro and right smack dab in the middle of the campus of UNCG college and guess what was roaming around right outside our view from our second floor windows everday? college chicks, and in the heat, bikini clad college chicks, and right across the street was a pizza joint that had "dollar" pitcher beer nights every tuesday night and thursday night. Although I was too young to drink I still loved going over at night to the bar and hanging out with all the hot girls. Keith Roscoe right off the bat set a good feeling in me because he had a sign on his door that stated his hours of operation "11:00 to 7:00pm" and most of the time he didn't open till 12:00 noon...... perfect, my kinda hours. But we usually worked till midnight, building guitars and playing them and entertaining people that would stroll in.... it was great.. Right below us was a chinese resturant called the "Hong Kong House" and we ate right under the guitar shop, or we went across the street and had pizza, the whole layout was great. I'm 18 and painting guitars beside a college campus, doesn't get any better than that. And besides, I loved (and still do to this day) rock and roll and hearing a loud searing distorted electric guitar being played, so my new found way of life was right down my alley. This is a picture of me at age 18 with the second guitar I painted. This picture was taken right across the street beside the pizza joint.

After 5 years of painting guitars I also learned the in's and out's of making them (electric of course) and I used that (15 years later) to make my own acoustic guitars. All I did though (having the natural skills to be able to do anything I want) was go to the public library and check out 5 books of acoustic guitar building (mostly classical guitar making, the library had hardly any books on steel string) but I read them and learned all I needed to start playing around with making acoustic guitars (this and pictures you can see in the "guitars" section). So after 6 or so years of painting guitars I was asked repeatedly from guys that saw my art on guitars if I would paint their Harley's. I refused for a few years because I was always overloaded with guitars to paint and was having fun. Then one day came where I found myself seeing the Harley craze really starting to blossom and decided to get into it (I've always loved motorcycles anyway). One of the first bikes I painted went onto the cover of American Iron magazine. Here is that cover. It is March of 1994.

This got everyone in my area calling me to paint their bikes and I found myself overloaded with Harley's to paint and was charging 4 times as much per hour to do them as guitars, so I quit painting guitars when I was around 24 and went straight into Harley's. This upset all my accounts in the guitar business but this was my life and I made the decision to stop all at once. This was a good decision. I realized then that by doing Harley's I could find a higher wealth of clientel than kids buying rock guitars and this would connect me with people that I could use later in my life (I've had a plan to end my working career with my paintings and sculptures, this would then lead into retirement and probably lemonaid and front porch whittling to consume my day or something?) as possible clients to buy my paintings on canvas which I could not get into at age 23 because I was a nobody in the field of art so by doing Harley's for 10 years or so I could use that to make my move (which I'm doing now but I'll get into that later). So, the Harley paint work is going great for me and I decided to also start building them as well as paint them. In 1994 I found a parter with Simon Solomon and we formed Hardly Civilized Inc. and went to work building a shop to build bikes. Simon is in charge of financing the operation and I am in charge of creating. The very first spec bike I built in the new shop was this one. Which got the cover of Biker magazine.