Wes Freed, the Virginia-based visual artist who’s famously associated with the Drive-By Truckers, died on Friday. No cause of death has been reported, though Al.com reports that Freed was undergoing treatment for cancer. Freed was 58.

Wes Freed was based in Richmond, Virginia, and he was a musician himself as well as an artist. Freed painted album covers for a number of musicians, including Cracker and Lauren Hoffman, but he was best-known for his long association with the Drive-By Truckers. Freed created a great many album covers for the Drive-By Truckers, starting with 2001’s Southern Rock Opera and going all the way up to Welcome 2 Club XII, the LP that the band released earlier this year. Freed also published a coffee-table book called The Art Of Wes Freed: Paintings, Posters, Pin-ups And Possums in 2019, and the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood wrote the foreword.

On Instagram, Hood writes:

25 years ago today I met one of my best friends in the whole world. Actually way beyond that. Wes Freed @cecilmccobb and his late wife Jyl invited @drivebytruckers to play their Capital City Barn Dance. We stayed at their haunted house outside of Richmond, and the rest is history. And so much more. Today we’re all grieving. I hope to write more about it when I can breathe again. Wes is flying with the Cooleybirds. We’ll love you forever.

On Friday, former Drive-By Truckers member Jason Isbell played in Charlottesville. As Jambase reports, Isbell dedicated his version of “Decoration Day,” a song that he wrote when he was in the band, to Freed. Here’s a video: