Kevin Bronson on March 31st, 2009

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What do you get when you combine rock ‘n’ roll musicians, a love for trompe l’oeil and a fascination with 18th- and 19th-century portraiture?

“Gooseberries,” apparently. Which is not the same as goosebumps, although L.A. photographer Sterling Andrews might have gotten some of those too in creating the images in her “album,” which will be released by Eenie Meenie Records next week. “I wanted to do a project that wasn’t just about rock ‘n’ roll bands,” the veteran rock photographer says. “We learn so much about ourselves while we are trying to create, and I was trying to do something that would pay tribute to the process of creating rather than just observing the final product.”

Andrews’ final product is a lush gatefold LP package containing lithographs of 12 bands she photographed at her home in front of hand-painted backdrops. The striking, often whimsical portraits – of Silversun Pickups, Rogue Wave, Great Northern, Earlimart, the Happy Hollows, Afternoons, Rademacher, the Henry Clay People, the Pity Party, Death to Anders, Le Switch and One Trick Pony – are bundled with a DVD of time-lapse videos documenting the process, interviews and other still images. (Copies of “Gooseberries,” limited to 500 signed and numbered editions, sell for $55; a sampling of the images below.)

The project began with a by-the-bootstraps shoot for L.A. up-and-comers the Happy Hollows. “None of us had the budget for what I saw,” says Andrews, who let her painterly side take over to create the backdrop. “I think I spent $7.50 on that shoot. But I thought, ‘Oh my God, this band is going to come into my studio and think “What the f*ck?”‘ I had no idea it would go over, but Sarah [Negahdari, the trio’s frontwoman] loved it. She said, ‘Are you in my mind?'”

As “Gooseberries” proceeded, Andrews, whose portfolio includes work of bands big and small, connected with her sense of her subjects and their music. She’s been taking photographs since she was a child and was drawn to the music scene when, in her late teens, she dated “a rocker boy who was committed to the local scene,” she says. “I wanted to walk away from the shows with something that was mine, and not just having gone to a show with him.”

She knew her “Gooseberries” subjects well. “For every band I knew that was coming in, I had a color pallette in mind – Great Northern had to be black and white, Earlimart had to be blue, the Pity Party had to be green, One Trick Pony had to be pink and red. If Rogue Wave would have come in and said, ‘Let’s do something in purple,’ I would have drawn a blank.”

The project found an unexpected supporter in Reiko Kondo, owner of 10-year-old L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie. “We met afer South by Southwest last year and she just said, ‘Let’s talk about the book you’re going to do,'” Andrews says. “There are so many coffee table books and so many pictures of dudes with guitars, so we knew right away we were going to make something different.”

||| Live: The “Gooseberries” release party, featuring live sets from Afternoons, Le Switch, Golden Gram (the side project of Rogue Wave’s Gram LeBron) and One Trick Pony, as well as an exhibition of the backdrops used in the project, begins at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts.