James Milne, a.k.a. Lawrence Arabia talks to Kirsten Johnstone about fundraising on Kickstarter for a new project.
Lawrence Arabia - Lawrence Arabia Photo: Supplied
The pitch:
Lawrence Arabia 2018 Singles club, it's basically my new album but it's going to be dribbled out over the year. Through the Kickstarter you get to support me making it, and hopefully the more money I can get the more I can do.
This is a collaborative project right?
Yeah, it was catalyzed by - I approached someone, and I'm keeping it secret, who I wanted to work with, and they quickly said yes, before I was financially ready to do it. So it put the pressure on me to raise the money.
But yeah, I'd like to work with lots of people. Often making records is a solitary experience for me, so having resources to get other musicians involved is a pretty enticing prospect.
I'm just coming to grips with the concept, and I mixed the first song yesterday - it's sounding really good. But it's mainly just me on that song, because the Kickstarter hasn't finished.
Co-writing is a great way to shift your own tropes and habits, will you pick people who put you out of your comfort zone?
Yeah that's my hope. It's very easy to get into a repetitive groove, so I'm hoping I can work with people who will push me into all sorts of strange directions.
The aim of the record isn't expressly about collaboration, it's just about trying to make an interesting record, and hopefully having lots of other people involved in it.
So what do we get out of this?
I'm hoping that people at least will join up to the singles club, which is $20 to get an email once a month with my new song attached and a little write up about the lyrics and what it's all about, how I made it and that kind of thing.
It allows me to do it independently, and gets people involved from the ground up, in my new record rather than getting it at the very end of the process.
I want a tea towel.
You're not far away from your $15,000 target. That's heartening, right?
Oh it's incredible, I mean it's really nerve wracking putting myself on the line for this, and it's kind of a terrifying process and goes against a lot of my best instincts as far as how I feel about that kind of charity, and proposing a grand idea and asking people for something...
It's not charity though, it's patronage, an idea that has hundreds of years of history behind it.
Yeah, it is. But it's still a daunting prospect. And also, just embarking on anything has a certain amount of fear.
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