The Bienville Legacy Motorcycle Commission - Interview

Image courtesy ADMCi

James McBride from Silodrome.com asked me to interview JT Nesbitt about the now nearly completed Bienville Legacy motorcycle. This is the result. 

Read the complete interview on Silodrome.com 

“So tell me what you think, man.”

JT is wearing a shit-eating grin and holding a tallboy of Coors. He’s beaming because today is the first time his incredible creation has been rolled out of his New Orleans workshop into the public eye. I’m standing outside the Motus factory in downtown Birmingham, Alabama on a warm fall evening in October 2013. I'm barely able to process what I'm seeing, let alone formulate any meaningful opinion about it.

I recall my immediate reaction as being “What the fuck does it matter what I think?”

The thought comes in a moment of pure intensity for me. It followed a long, difficult day spent running around in muggy Southern heat while attending the Barber Vintage Festival. I've dragged myself here to meet the man who I've been following and conversing with for several months, an enigmatic and controversial motorcycle designer who has been keen to share his ideas with me. Today is the day his baby gets unveiled to the public. This marks the first time I've met JT Nesbitt in person, and it’s the first time I've seen his handiwork outside of a computer screen. And I'm completely awestruck.

Read the rest on Silodrome.com

Image courtesy ADMCi

Confederate Wraith Part II - American Iconoclast

Part II of the Confederate Wraith story. Click here for Part I.

It is late 2005 and Confederate Motors is in shambles. Fresh from the epic high of securing a high-profile investor in the Middle East, the company’s president Matt Chambers and lead designer JT Nesbitt returned to their New Orleans base of operations to discover that their factory has been destroyed by the winds and flooding brought on by Hurricane Katrina. With their facilities in ruins and their insurance company bankrupted by the claims in the aftermath of the storm, it looks like the infamous purveyor of brutal, radical and rebellious motorcycles is no more. Katrina has seemingly crushed the hopes of bringing Nesbitt’s iconoclastic Wraith design to production.

The situation appeared dire and the circumstances were debilitating, particularly for a tiny boutique manufacturer that had constantly fought with debt, flirted with bankruptcy, and struggled to meet the demand for their two-wheeled anti-establishment icons. A few frames and components were salvaged from the ruined factory, as were most of the computer files and company books, but the operation was a long way away from building bikes - particularly when New Orleans was still wracked with instability, crime and resource shortages in the wake of flooding. In spite of the literal collapse of their New Orleans factory, Confederate’s anonymous investor/saviour had maintained his end of the agreement and would provide the capital needed to renew the company. The question remained: with the factory gone and New Orleans in shambles, where would Confederate build its bikes?

Confederate Wraith Part I - American Iconoclast

Photo Courtesy Brian Case

Part I of the Confederate Wraith story. Click here for Part II

There are rare instances in the realm of motorcycle design when there emerges an icon. These are machines so radical that they serve as a clean break from the standards of the past, thereby setting a new template and pushing the high-water mark up the wall a few extra feet. To truly be an icon, they must influence subsequent processes and inspire a new thread in motorcycle design; one-off machines that immediately fade into obscurity won’t do. They can be new standards of beauty, or of performance, or of chassis design, or templates for hitherto untried categories (or some combination of all four). These motorcycles are often the product of years of research and countless design hours, produced by multi-billion dollar corporations that can afford to take a risk once and a rare while. They are not often produced by a tiny boutique manufacturer that has built less than a thousand machines, conceptualized by men who were not classically trained “designers” with decades of experience under their belts.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The Confederate Wraith was one such icon of that emerged from Southern Louisiana like a thundering slap in the face to all that the motorcycle industry held dear. It was an absolute break with tradition, a bold insult to the long-held standards of a conservative industry, and a new way of conceiving of the motorcycle that was unlike anything that had preceded it. It was a product of looking forward while respecting history, a curious mixture of old and new ideas blended into a stunning machine that was as brutal as it was intelligent.

Bienville Legacy - The American Super Bike

Motorcycle design is a field that has many pretenders but few true practitioners. There are plenty of motorcycle stylists, men and women who draw forms on paper and then outsource the headaches of realization to a team of engineers and technicians. But people who can craft a machine from start to finish, from notepad to road, are virtually nonexistent. These are true designers who can conceive, sketch, fabricate and build a motorcycle from start to finish. J.T. Nesbitt is one of these few true designers. The Bienville Legacy is the much-anticipated follow up to Nesbitt’s seminal Confederate Wraith.

More than a mere motorcycle, the Legacy is the culmination of two distinct philosophies coming together – the uncompromising design ideas of J.T. Nesbitt, and the sustainable social principles put forward by The American Design and Master Craft Initiative (ADMCi). The Legacy has an important role to play in the future of American design that may not be apparent at first glance.