Thanks to the birth of his third child, Britton DeWeese gave birth to his first children’s book, The Donut Shop That Never Sleeps.
“Basically, when my wife got put in the hospital when she was pregnant with our third kid who is three now, that’s when it started,” said DeWeese, 42, manager/owner at Gibson’s Donuts.
Britton continued to lose sleep after his son, Liam, came home. “I was up all hours of the night. If the baby woke up at 2, 3 a.m. I’d get him a bottle, go on to work.”
Sometimes if he couldn’t go back to sleep, DeWeese would go on to work. “I’d get there three hours early and sit in my car and make up a rhyme.”
He wrote “little, short 15-second raps” on Instagram. His creative process was about “being delirious and not sleeping. About being stressed out and going to work at 3 in the morning and yadayadayada for a year.
“I like instrumental music. I’d be listening to some kind of instrumental music on the way to work and something would come to me. It was all done kind of spur of the moment. The 15-minute drive from my house to the doughnut shop is when I did it.
“It all has to do with me being delirious. I’ve always rapped in my head, but never out loud or on Instagram.”
DeWeese shared some of his recorded raps at work. People said, “That’s hilarious. You have to do more.”
Joe Webb, who works at Gibson’s, said, “Dude, you should totally turn your raps into a children’s book.”
DeWeese’s response? “Yeah. Whatever.”
“Well, they kept teasing me about turning my raps into a children’s book. On a road trip coming home from Florida I thought, ‘I could turn this into a children’s book and give it to my dad for a Christmas gift.’ It never was supposed to be for sale. I never intended to print them and sell them at the doughnut shop.”
The thought kept nagging at him after he got home. “When my family all fell asleep, I played them through a speaker. I listened to all my raps. I said ‘This could be page one.’ That’s how I figured out I could actually turn it into a book.”
The short raps fit perfectly into a storybook format. “Each 15 second turned into a page or two pages.”
He originally printed the book on Shutterfly.
His dad, Gibson’s owner Don DeWeese, opened his gift on Christmas morning. “When he opened it, he goes, ‘My gosh. We are going to sell so many of these at the doughnut shop.”
Describing the book, Britton says, “It’s just about the doughnut shop. There’s no lesson or moral to the story. It’s basically like a LamaLama kind of book. Quick. Short. Rhyme. If someone asked, I’d say, ‘It’s not like a Berenstein book.’
“I want to say there’s 20-ish pages. Every page is a rap. All kind of about the doughnut shop.”
That Christmas morning, Britton knew he was going to have to make some changes in his book. “I kind of threw it together on Shutterfly.”
When his dad started showing the book around to his customers, wrestler Jerry Lawler said, “I want to be in it,’ Britton says.
So, Britton wrote a rap for Lawler: “They triple rise their glaze to perfect golden rings endorsed by celebrities including the King.”
And one of his raps is for the guy who is writing this story: “If you try one, your mind will blow.”
He told the writer, “Your hair always looks like you stuck a finger in a light socket. I wanted to figure out how to get that ‘mind blow’ picture.’”
Britton also illustrated the book. “Most of the photos in the book are photos I had already taken. When I decided to turn it into a book, I thought, ‘Who’s going to illustrate it?’ Then it started getting stressful. I didn’t want to find an illustrator. It all started getting overwhelming to me.”
His wife, Kate, suggested he use photos he took at Gibson’s. “I have a million shots. I have this app called Art Card. It turns your photos into paintings, sketches. I turned all my photos into oil paintings.”
Getting back to that writer with the hair. Britton basically said “Eureka” when he walked into Gibson’s one night. Britton wanted to portray someone “with their brain exploding” for his rap about someone’s mind blowing after trying a Gibson’s doughnut. “Oh, my gosh, I saw you and said, ‘Michael. Come here and take a picture real quick.”
He thought, “Oh, his hair is all messy and everything. This is perfect.’ You were having a good Michael Donahue hair day. Yes, this is perfect. Like when you bit into the doughnut your hair stood up like a trampoline. I love it.”
As for Lawler’s photo, Britton says, “It’s him out back holding a crown and a doughnut. My dad goes to lunch with him once or twice a week. They’re good buddies.”
Now that the book is done, does Britton plan to make an album featuring his storybook raps? “That never crossed my mind. I thought about doing a rap video for YouTube. Kind of like a Beastie Boys. I’m from the ‘80s. When I rap it’s old school Beastie Boys-type rapping. We have joked — all my employees — about making an old school Beastie Boys video shot with the fish eye lens. If the book blows up enough, I might make a YouTube video with the raps.”
Britton will autograph the books, which are $10. “If someone wants one personalized, I can do one here. I’m here 40 hours a week, five days a week. Basically, I’m here a lot. They would come in the morning while I’m here.”
Gibson’s Donuts is at 760 Mt. Moriah Road; (901) 682-8200