Indelible Links: "Inked" Alum Thomas Pendelton Makes Memorable Friends Along A&E's "Tattoo Highway."

By Lori Acken

If you're a fan of the defunct A&E hit Inked, you remember the last time you saw Hart & Huntington Tattoo Company's former part owner Thomas Pendelton on your TV screen.

Frustrated by the trendy Vegas inkery's increasingly circus-like atmosphere -- overrun with flaky employees, minor celebs and major chaos -- Pendelton stormed out to reclaim his tattooed Cinderella, former shop manager Monica Rizzolo, and he never looked back.

The duo married, had twin daughters (there are since two more children) and launched a successful textile, art and jewelry business they call Ministry of Ink.

Then Juma Entertainment came calling.

Tapping into Thomas' lifelong aversion to putting down roots, the former Inked executive producers convinced the Pendelton family to hit the road in a tricked out -- and troublesome -- vintage tour bus turned state-of-the-art tatt parlor for A&E's new reality series, Tattoo Highway, premiering May 27.

Channel Guide: I was a big fan of Inked, so I've had your show on my radar for quite a while --since it was called The Pendleton project. Has the show been a work in progress to the final format?

Thomas Pendleton: [Laughing] When I did Inked, I became friends with one of the producers. And after the first season of Inked, Monica and I ended up getting back together and I just wanted to get out of Vegas. But I had stayed in touch with one of the producers from Juma. And it was kind of Juma's idea that I should do something else, because I had a pretty good following from Inked.

The concept came from my traveling around a lot as a kid -- I never really planted roots anywhere -- so the idea of opening a tattoo shop and going to it everyday is just not my style. But I had the concept of building a tattoo parlor on a bus...

The first time "traveling tattoo parlor" came up at home -- what was that like?

Monica's down for anything! She was more worried about going back and filming again, rather than tattooing. What bothered her was going back and exposing our lives on camera again. Because it didn't work out for us very well the first time. [laughs]

The producers I'm still with friends with, they left shortly after Inked started, and the other producers I didn't know. So Monica and I would be in a room and they would hide cameras in the room and try and capture stuff they didn't think they would capture otherwise.

It was just weird. It was Vegas. And everything right down to the filming translated to that whole Vegas vibe ... that grimy, kind of desperate feeling.

When we started working with this production company, it was totally different. We had the same vision as the production company.

After you left Hart and Huntington, it did sound for a while like you were seriously considering leaving tattooing altogether. Even though so many people know you as a tattoo artist, do you consider it just part of your artistic expression?

I love tattooing. Every time I tattoo, it blows me away that I can lay a line in somebody's skin and it stays there. When I was a few years into tattooing, a guy came in who had one of my tattoos on his arm and I thought in my head, "Man that guy still has that!"

And then it dawned on me: Well, yeah, he still has that. He's going to have that for the rest of his life! [Laughs]

In a shop, you're banging out as many tattoos as you can, trying to make money and pay the bills ... and for me tattooing isn't about that. I made money doing so many other things. And I kept tattooing pure and kept it about the customer. So being able to travel and go from town to town, it was cool. Because being able to pull into town and it was all about that person we were in town to see.

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