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An Inspiring and Soul-Baring Journey to Release a New Album Kickstarter Campaign: Why You Should Support It

An Important Kickstarter Campaign I Started to Get Support in Helping Me Finish My New Solo Album by Raising $4,200

By October EvansPublished 5 years ago 9 min read
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Hey, October Evans here. I wanted to share some thoughts about why I am writing this and why you should support this Kickstarter campaign... So let's get down right into it, shall we? Cool.

I came together with a crew of studio musicians to work on new demo material for the new solo album at Rocketspace Studios, such as Frank W. (who was featured as the studio drummer in several bands, including recently with1000 Miles of Fire) and Dakoda Tanksley(who did theacoustic lead guitar and acoustic rhythm guitar tracks for a rough instrumental demo mix of one of the new songs on the upcoming new solo album that I've been working on for the last six years) to do something completely original, never-before-attempted, oftentimes considered as genre-bending and truly something honest and real; and it is the type of music the ENTIRE WORLD needs to hear right now.

The songs I've written over the years for this solo album was technically meant to be featured in previous bands and side projects that I used to be in, including a smaller local rap group that I was a part of back home in Texas, but it never really saw the light of day. Not even when my first of seven bands that I used to be in, known as Empty Existence, was I able to even complete the demos that would've been the band's fourth and final album had it not been for a drunk driver who hit my bandmates hard in a fatal car accident in Seattle one night while I was at the studio waiting for them to show up (the police showed up later that night and broke the bad news to me—I was never the same after that). That fourth album was the perfect statement to say what we wanted to say, feel what we wanted to feel, and open up about a lot of things that went down in our lives as a band together and apart before we were planning to break up on good terms after the album cME out. However, not everything in life goes as planned.

Over the years since that fateful, life-altering night, I've gone through some pretty fucked up shit and was severely traumatized by the events of my life along the way from 2009 to 2019. Up until now, I wasn't sure if I was ever going to stay sober, seeing as I've been sober since 2007; and while I came close a few times to relapsing on painkiller meds and alcohol, I resisted the temptations, kept fighting my Post Traumatic Devils through music, art, and activism, and found my way back to Colorado so many years later to finish what I started (which led to the breakup of my most recent band called Wanderlust Grrrl). This led me to work on a brand new self-titled solo project and a debut solo album that would be split up into 4 EPs, 24 songs TOTAL. It was something I never thought would happen, and it was a life-changing/life-saving journey that I embarked on as a genderqueer/trans woman and as a musician/singer-songwriter.

Having made peace with my demons, I sought out to find musicians suitable to what I planned on putting together for this album, and then came Eric Reid of TBM Studios(did you know he worked withTech N9neandother similar artistsworth mentioning in the same breath?) who would lead me on a path to put together some really great songs. Now, it was all coming together. After all the hell I've been through, after all the roads I've taken and roads I could've taken to get to where I am today, and after all the heartbreak, tragedies and struggles I faced in my life, this solo album perfectly sums up the last 20 years of my life, and it is something I really want to finish. But I cannot do so without your support and without your help.

This is where you come in—your support would mean a lot to me, by spreading the word and sharing the love with pledges that will go towards covering all the costs of studio time, paying the aforementioned people listed above (since I hired them as studio musicians), album artwork designs to be done, mixing/mastering/post-production fees, and to send it off for digital/physical album distribution in time for its planned Summer 2019 release. That said, here's why you should support this campaign and why you should spread the word:

  1. This solo album, split into 4 different EPs, each with its own slated release dates, speaks to me and to many fans/music listeners on a personal, political, and social level (far beyond anything you could ever imagine), and it would show you why it is SO IMPORTANT to get this album out. Not only is it autobiographical (then again, almost all songs every musician, rapper, and band has ever written in the history of music has a touch of storytelling in a autobiographical sense anyway), but it is a smidge touch of social issues to raise awareness about, personal issues, and political issues all thrown into one. It is something, as I previously stated, THE ENTIRE WORLD NEEDS TO HEAR RIGHT NOW. We're all going through shit, and this album will help you continue to get through shit and give you a bit of hope that if I can survive all this hell and still be left standing and still alive, then so can you.
  2. The funding for this album is really important to raise to meet its $4,200 goal, but not only that, it will solidify a statement that the music listening community and the fans truly care about this Kickstarter campaign and would do anything to help me and my crew make this album a reality (and I promise—you will not regret sending funds to this Kickstarter campaign). You'll actually enjoy it so much, you'll want a free copy of this album that will go along with your pledges, which I am about to mention in a few moments.
  3. And finally, not only you will have made this album a reality for us, you would be a part of a revolution. A MUSIC REVOLUTION to ENDALL MUSIC REVOLUTIONS. That said, it's time to start thinking about taking this seriously and backing this campaign the ENTIRE WAY, from start to post-production, all the way to our very first concert we'll be performing on a tour that we're putting together this summer.

Your support and donations to this Kickstarter project will make all this a reality, and not only you get to donate to help us make this album complete at last in time for the album release date, but you get all kinds of amazing rewards/incentives included in the amount that you decide to pledge/donate to. Each rewards tier has a different amount you can pledge to from $1 to $50 being the highest, and some of those rewards/items are also set to be limited-edition/one-time-only gifts as my way of thanking you for supporting this album to completion.

I look forward to sharing more details, updates and so forth with you, and I hope that you will consider pledging/backing this project. We can't do this without you, and without your support, this album will be postponed and re-scheduled for a later release date, and maybe not even be able to finish what we started with this album if no continued financial support is provided to make this happen. Please pledge today and help us finish this album on time. Thank you so much! And don't forget to take a look at the videos and examples of my work thus far below.

Examples of My Work

Risks and Challenges of This Kickstarter Campaign

Some of the common risks and challenges, especially when it comes to releasing my first-ever solo album since having left my former band, Wanderlust Grrrl, is the fact it takes a long time to build a brand-new fanbase from scratch. With a limited audience size of only 1,000+ fans scattered all across various social media platforms, its become increasingly difficult for everyone to stay focused on what I've been promoting as of late.

However, even with a small audience like that, according to my local and regional rankings, I am still in the Top 10 Alternative artist charts, which tells you a lot about my potential for this new solo album. There's also the issue of budgeting, and sometimes (just sometimes) we run into a unexpected expense like additional fees that a studio musician charged because he or she may have forgotten to factor in that one missing hour that was not originally in the budget for recording new instrumental tracks. Other times, there'd be budget issues in regards to how many albums we can afford to manufacture and sell with CDBaby/TuneCore, and how many we actually need to start out with.

And let's not forget about the costs of mixing/mastering/post-production. In a crazy, insane world we live in, and the way things are economy-wise, it has effected hard-working and struggling independent musicians/bands/artists such as myself and my fellow "hired guns" in the music industry to be able to afford to pay for such studio/post-production expenses all on our own. Even when they're being hired to do the work they do, you never know what can happen with unexpected emergency expenses.

But fret not—we plan to overcome them, because we have found a way to keep earning extra money, and this fundraising goal that we're all trying to reach together is to ensure that we can get my solo album out on time and across the finish line, pay everyone on time and be able to afford doing what we love doing, which is creating and making/playing original, honest, raw and revolutionary music in the first place.

There's also the possibility that we may not be able to break even, even when we're on tour or promoting our music online or trying to get the word out about the solo album with ads that we have to unfortunately pay for on social media platforms and so forth. We're doing the best we can, and even if we don't break even and earn a lot of money from this particular album, the upcoming tour and so forth, at least we all got to have fun creating this album, and do what we could with the limited resources we have as indie musicians/artists/bands in our local scene.

Rest assured, your pledges/donations will not go to waste, and it will be allocated to all the proper people who's working on this amazing solo album with me and thanks to you, we can get it done. Are you with me? Let's rock.

Click above to be taken to the platform and read more about what this campaign is raising funds for.

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About the Creator

October Evans

Transgender Singer-Songwriter/Musician, multi-industry entrepreneur, artist/writer/poet/blogger/vlogger, activist and Mad Genius revolutionary.

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