2019 "ROOFLESS" NEWS COMING SOON!

It's been around two years since we last officially reported on the progress of our award-winning, flagship musical Roofless.

This whole time Tagz, freed from the libretto pages, has been flying around the LoJoLab ("levibreaking" as he likes to call it) inspiring, imbuing and sometimes even irritating our creative process.  Since the 2018 Yuletide first started its slow burn, our mercurial lil homie has been champing at the proverbial bit wanting to unwrap the latest news for all our friends, fam, fans & followers.

Yup!  We've got a little bit of news, folks.

Progress has been silently and tenaciously taking place under the cover of our self-imposed radio silence.  I'm sure it will be an unexpected surprise to most.  We'll do the official unwrap of the news in the first week of January!  Now if we can just keep Tagz under control for a few more days!!!   

Where's that damn Flyness Swatter?

S/O to @the_photographer_j07 and models @stephenchristopher, the brilliant @magor15 and my sorely-missed TuTchTmuse @Harry Uzoka whose work inspired and helped bring this latest Tagz character concept art to life for the holidays.  Roofless concept art, as always, by TuTchT IMAGING (yup, that's us too.)

ROOFLESS ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING

It's no coincidence that ROOFLESS characters Marquee and Lil Man were pulleyed down onto the TuTchT Imaging IG page last week.  They dangled their limbs and their dopetitude over the cryptic hashtags "#steadybuilding and #raisingroofs."  Yup, 'twas indeed a bit of visual foreshadowing.  Nearly 2 years of feverish work has been silently going on down in the depths of the LoJoLab since our last Broadway trip, table reading & strategy session with the esteemed Mr Schwartz of Oz and ahhs. 

We'll have some updates and announcements before year's end. Till then, the h's of our ubiquitous "Shhhhhhhhhh" still encircle and mask our goings-on.

You can keep up with LoJo Announcements when they drop on our

LoJoWERKz INSTAGRAM

You can also catch our LoJo Art Work and many posts about Young Black Males in the Entertainment and Modeling Industries on the

TuTchT IMAGING INSTAGRAM

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T21 WEEKEND WORK FLOW - HOTFOOT Sneak Peeks

Like most of our current work, we’re keeping HOTFOOT production largely under wraps, but we thought sharing some visuals from the work-in-progress on our social media would be a good way to honor the memory of tragic events of May 31st - June 1st, 1921; events that forever shaped our city, our creative LoJoWerkz output, and our souls.  Scroll forth, LoJoFam, to read more about the project.

“HOTFOOT” started as a grand experiment.  The question: could we create a visually compelling short film on a below-micro-micro, shoestring budget, working almost exclusively on green screen, creating a world out of the whole cloth of our imagination, TuTchT graphic work & historic research?

We approached one of the most in-demand dancers on the world stage, Charles "Lil Buck" Riley & to our surprise, he gladly stepped in to collaborate with us. This was the main ingredient we needed to start cooking something unique, full of LoJo flavor.  The experiment was on.   

We set to work crafting a narrative concept that would feature Buck's virtuosic Memphis Jookin’ skills in a way that hadn’t been seen before.  We settled on the idea of merging Jookin with an early Jazz stride piano style, dropping this mix into a Chaplin-esque silent film comedy environment. Our next decision was to set the story in a fictionalized version of Tulsa’s historic Black Wall Street, 1919-1920, just before the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 which burned it all to the ground.

We have researched the events of the Tulsa Race Massacre since our first book musical in 1997 (A Song of Greenwood) and the history has remained central to a great deal of our LoJoWerkz projects. HOTFOOT gave us a chance to focus on the historic, richly textured Black community in a very positive, light-hearted way.  Without an abundance of funds, the project is taking years to complete but the amazing performances of Buck along with some of Tulsa’s top talent make working on the project a true labor of love. (S/O to the capture crew: Mike Williams of Aces High Studio, James Sims of Blue Flame Productions & Nita Smothers.)

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND SPEND SOME TIME TODAY RESEARCHING THE TULSA RACE RIOT OF 1921.  IT IS HAUNTINGLY RELEVANT TO AMERICA’S CURRENT UNDERCURRENTS.

You can start here with this excellent out-of-circulation cinemax documentary: