Concert posters are big business for touring bands, and they’re a big deal to fans who line up hours early to snag limited-edition prints. At the center of that merch frenzy you’ll find illustrator and graphic designer Hannah Tatum Norris.
Hannah and her husband, Zach Norris, are the proprietors of The Grass Spot, a music-focused design, print and media company based in Richmond that counts icons of the jam community as clients, from Trey Anastasio and Widespread Panic to Phil Lesh and Dead & Company.
Tatum Norris attended Atlee High School. It was then that she started designing items for a friend’s band — painting pick guards and kick drums, creating posters for shows in lieu of paying for tickets. “It was my way of being part of a community that I love, because I don’t play any instruments,” she says.
She went on to study graphic design and interior design at James Madison University. Her passion for poster art started paying dividends as a result of the bluegrass community, the namesake of The Grass Spot. She gained momentum working with quick-picking outfits like Horseshoes & Hand Grenades and Leftover Salmon, though it was a commission from Billy Strings — facilitated by mutual connections with the local bluegrass group South Hill Banks — that helped her to break through. “That was definitely a door that kicked open a lot of other doors,” she says.
After revealing the poster for Billy Strings’ 2022 show in Moorhead, Minnesota, the illustrator watched in real time as her work took a step forward. “Within the first hour or so we posted on Instagram, there’s like, 4,000 5,000 likes,” she remembers. “It’s just thrilling.” She also created the poster for Strings’ show at Virginia Credit Union Live! that fall. Richmonders likely recognized the river and bridge elements in that design. For Tatum Norris, locally sourced details are essential, as are references to the music. “There has to be some sense of place, some tie to the band,” she says. “We like to put in heady little easter eggs.”
Her poster for Goose’s recent run at Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront featured an iguana, a nod to the group’s “Iguana Song.” Tatum Norris has memorialized multiple events at the new venue, but she’s not just focused on Richmond. The Grass Spot has produced assets for out-of-town festivals like High Sierra, Jam Cruise and DelFest, and Norris won a 2024 Clio award for the poster from a Goose show in Portland, Maine.
The art she created for an April 2025 Dead & Company performance in Las Vegas was rewarding on a whole other level. Her father played in Grateful Dead cover bands in the 1980s and kept sketchbooks with music-related doodles. “My dad’s a big influence on me loving the music scene and tying that in with trippy artwork,” Norris affirms.
When Tatum Norris earned the commission, she called her parents: “They’re in the car, and they’ve got me on speaker phone, and my mom’s like, ‘I hope you know that your dad is crying right now.’”
