Help fund NZ's "Under the Fig Tree" album

The albums already well underway! Click this to listen while you read :)

After what feels like a lifetime of finicking with the guitar, exploring harmony, and punching my head until better lyrics come out, I'm excited to finally share some music I'm really proud of with you all.

In August of last year I released my first official album and visual album, Eve Machines, (give it a listen on Spotify, visual album on YouTube) which cost me a good hunk of change and about 7 years of intermittent creative rage. I love writing songs but finishing them is another thing... Anyhow, after working solo for 5 years on the music for Eve Machines, I wanted to get some production help for this next record. So I called up Chris DuPont, and it's been super fun collaborating on what initially was supposed to be a super stripped back album with only acoustic guitar and vocals, and has now turned into a full blown production with strings and synths and percussion and layers and layers of harmonies, etc. etc.

So I could use some help paying for all this stuff if I'm going to continue doing music. I don't mind funding my own projects because it's my passion, but looking ahead I realize that I won't be able to sustain a creative lifestyle without the support of others. I've always been creatively obsessed. When I was a kid, my parents said that they would regularly walk into a room to find pieces of paper with drawings on them all over the floor. I loved to play my favorite set of pots with spoons. It's just how I'm programmed, I guess, and I'd really like to keep doing it. That's why I'm also starting a Patreon page (more on that soon) for a more sustainable income alongside my other part-time jobs. (This GoFundMe is specifically for helping cover the costs of this project, Under the Fig Tree, though.) That being said, if I don't get enough support, I'll be okay. I can teach, and will still write songs, I'll just play em for kids or pets or whatever. But producing polished new music would be rare. What I'm saying is that your support will directly impact my life course.

I remember learning in my college music history class about people like Bach who were sponsored and employed by the church, or Yeats who had a wealthy patron supporting his poetry. That's when I realized that it's always taken a community of generous souls to fund art and music. Only recently has music become lucrative, and only to a select few, creating an unreal expectation for the rest of us and for the public. But for people like Bach or Yeats, and I imagine many many others, without those communities or patrons supporting them their life-giving gifts would have died unfulfilled or at least, unknown. Basically, I'm just saying that the arts run on people, so thanks a ton for being one of those generous folks, and I can't wait to share this project with you all this coming Spring/Summer.

UPDATE:

Just as an update, too, I didn't mention exactly what your donations would be going toward. Thought that might be clarifying. So far the costs are $1100 for paid musicians, $320 for the recording engineer, and $710 for production and mixing (so far). Remaining expenses include further production left on the album, mastering, promotion expenses, and paying musicians for the release show (spring/summer?).

Roughly approximating based on the last album I produced and funded, a lot of the expense comes from the mastering and the final push (making content to share and getting it out there). Thanks again