Kickstarter

hola comrades!

at long last, the tour dates i cancelled are re-scheduled (plus there are some awesome EXTRA appearances all over the place)!!! hopefully everyone will be able to come to the make-up shows but i DEEPLY apologize in advance if anyone can't. if you need to turn your tickets, please go to the original point of purchase and you’ll be fully refunded.

i talk more about it ALL - the nature of the tour, who's coming (we've got a new DRUMMER), who's opening up for us, the re-birth of THE BRIGADE, and more, more, more - in a brand new blog HERE. it's overflowing with the nitty-gritty if you want it. i'm also doing a bunch of festival dates (glastonbury! newport folk! pridefest in milwaukee!), a show in northampton MA later this week (and then at bard with neil the next day), a free show at wesleyan university on april 13th, and many other one-offs. all of 'em are below, but read the blog if you want to get the WAY-low-down on the details. i didn't want to just cut and paste all that into this backer update.

IN KICKSTARTER-RELATED LAND…
we're working slowly but surely on putting all of the kickstarter house parties together, but all you house-party people: i have a question for you.
i'd love for you to hit me in the backer comments so that i can keep this specific to kickstarter.
cool? cool.

ondi timoner is a filmmaker i met at SXSW...and while you might not know her name, you might know her as the chick who made "dig", the 2004 documentary film about the dandy warhols and the brian jonestown massacre. i saw it back in the day and was deeply impressed - i recognized a lot of myself and my band in that film.
she also made an amazing documentary i'm watching right now called "we live in public", about the "darker effects" of social media.
(it's incredible....and disturbing as fuck.)
both of her films won the grand jury prize at the sundance film festival. she is a TOTAL bad-ass with a profound heart and she's smart, smart, smart.
she and i hit it off like houses on fire in the australian outback…

i was talking to her about how i felt one of the TRUE revolutions this kickstarter campaign - an element which was pretty overlooked - was the house-party aspect: the fact that SO many people made facebook pages, bonded and banded together, and trusted each other with huge sums of money to make these parties go. and it's working. it's incredible when you think about it. and now i get to fly around the world and meet all of these people in south africa, israel, norway, and australia...all these people who trusted each other.

…and then, something wonderful and obvious (?) happened: she approached me about documenting as many of our house parties as possible, for a new series on atotaldisruption.com. if she can find the funding, of course (she'll probably try via kickstarter…poetic).

to her, the primary reason for doing this is in hopes that she can capture how i'm trying to leverage technology to connect directly with people - in this case, all of YOU. i do it for a lot of reasons, but the big'un's because i want to bring people together in places where we can feel safe to exchange ideas and emotion…and ondi wants to show how we built up from a mailing list to a message board to social networks and now to a goddamned GLOBAL community. a community where we've learned so much; mostly, how to trust and work together. it makes the world so much better as we're able to not only make it a little bit smaller, but also the way we hope and will it to be.

in short…
she got it.
and i trust her. nobody has ever been so close to me & a piano with a camera (the video is HERE if you're curious):

so....while filming this shit seems, on the one hand, like a fabulously fabulous idea...i also see the downside. the house parties that are huge and drunk and ruckus-y probably wouldn't suffer at all (in fact ondi's energy might even make them more fun) but for the parties that are planned to be teeny-weeny and intimate, i can see the idea of a camera changing the vibe. i know at the VERY least, *i* am different when a camera is anywhere near me, and i'm honest about that...i go into a slightly different mode. so while i'd never let ondi bust in on any of the parties without getting express permission from the host: i just kind of wanted to throw the idea out there and get a sense of how you guys feel about it in general.
ondi - and of course me - want you to feel comfortable and have fun…the documentation would be done in hopes to shine a light on this fucking revolution we are in together, but a part of that is and always has been about feeling good. and safe.

i was chatting to one of the seattle house party host-folks over the phone right after ondi fell into my life with these ideas....and i asked her how she felt - she had a "the more-the-merrier" attitude about it.
so…all y'all…please give me input. agreed? exciting? invasive? good? bad? indifferent? hit me. maybe it's history. maybe it's annoying. it's hard for me to say.

ANYWAY…
back to your regularly scheduled backer update. here are ALLLLL the upcoming dates.
additional info, openers, ticketing info, and all that fun stuff can be found on my SHOWS page and in the BLOG. sorry that we do not have direct links for all of the shows, yet. we will update my tour page as soon as we do. whee!

US FESTIVALS & SOLO ONE-OFF SHOWS
• Fri 5 Apr | Calvin Theater | Northampton, MA - ON SALE NOW

• Sat 6 Apr | Bard College | Hudson, NY - Sosnoff Theater w/ Neil Gaiman - SOLD OUT

• Sat 13 Apr | Wesleyan Humanity Festival - DETAILS HERE

• Thu 2 May | The Fillmore | San Francisco, CA - ON SALE NOW
- VIVA HITCHCOCK! A Tribute to Robyn Hitchcock

• Sun 9 Jun | Pridefest | Milwaukee, WI – ON SALE 4/15

• Mon 10 Jun | PS 122 Event - DETAILS HERE

• Fri 14 Jun | Red Rocks | Morrison, CO – ON SALE NOW
- Opening for Devotchka

• Sun 23 Jun | Firefly Festival | Dover, DE – ON SALE NOW

• Fri 26 Jul | Newport Folk Festival | Newport, RI – ON SALE NOW

EUROPEAN SUMMER SHOWS
• Fri 28 Jun | Glastonbury Festival | Glastonbury, UK – ON SALE NOW

• Tue 2 Jul | Rock For People Festival | Český Brod, Czech Republic – ON SALE NOW

• Thu 4 Jul | PPC | Graz, Austria – ON SALE 4/5

• Fri 5 Jul | Arena Open Air Harvest of Art | Weisen, Austria – ON SALE NOW

• Sun 7 Jul | Tivoli | Utrecht, Holland – ON SALE NOW

• Mon 8 Jul | Rockhal | Luxembourg, Luxembourg – ON SALE NOW

• Tue 9 Jul | La Cigale | Paris, France – ON SALE NOW

• Thu 11 Jul | The Ritz | Manchester, UK – ON SALE 4/5

• Fri 12 Jul | The Roundhouse | London, UK – ON SALE 4/5

• Sat 13 Jul | The Concorde 2 | Brighton, UK – ON SALE 4/5

• Mon 15 Jul | O2 Academy | Bristol, UK – ON SALE 4/5

• Tue 16 Jul | The Institute | Birmingham, UK – ON SALE 4/5

• Wed 17 Jul | The Picture House | Edinburgh, UK – ON SALE 4/5

• Thu 18 Jul | The Academy | Dublin, Ireland – ON SALE 4/5

NEW ZEALAND & AUSTRALIA SHOWS
• Wed 4 Sep | San Fran Bath House | Wellington, NZ – ON SALE NOW

• Fri 6 Sep | Kings Arms | Auckland, NZ – ON SALE NOW

• Sun 8 Sep | Astor Theatre | Perth, AU – ON SALE NOW

• Thu 12 Sep | The Tivoli | Brisbane, AU – ON SALE NOW

• Sat 14 Sep | Enmore Theatre | Sydney, AU – ON SALE NOW

• Fri 20 Sep | Forum Theatre | Melbourne, AU – ON SALE NOW

• Sun 22 Sep | Thebarton Theatre | Adelaide, AU – ON SALE NOW

EUROPEAN FALL SHOWS
• Tue 29 Oct | Gruenspan | Hamburg, Germany – ON SALE TBA

• Thu 31 Oct | Pumpehuset | Copenhagen, Denmark – ON SALE NOW

• Fri 1 Nov | Gloria | Cologne, Germany – ON SALE TBA

• Sat 2 Nov | Botanique/Orangerie | Brussels, Belgium – ON SALE NOW

• Mon 4 Nov | Kesselhaus | Berlin, Germany – ON SALE TBA

• Tue 5 Nov | Proxima | Warsaw, Poland – ON SALE TBA

• Wed 6 Nov | Klub Studio | Krakow, Poland – ON SALE NOW

• Sat 9 Nov | Factory | Milan, Italy – ON SALE TBA

• Sun 10 Nov | A38 Ship | Budapest, Hungary – ON SALE NOW

• Tue 12 Nov | Ampere | Munich, Germany – ON SALE TBA

hope to see you all out there, somewhere,
LOVE,
afp

p.s. those local to my area of new england: enjoy the warming. this is the first day i have switched to an iced drink.

hola kickstarter comrades -

dear lord, okay....if you missed it, i did a TED talk called "the art of asking":

....it's been up on the TED website and youtube for about 5 days and between them it's had over a million views. (and if you don't know what TED is...it's awesome, browse around the site....i especially recommend this talk by jill bolte taylor about the experience of having a stroke and WHY WE ARE ALL ONE. it's HERE).

i threw my name in the TED hat a few years ago but it's no secret: the TED folks probably invited me because of the success of the kickstarter (and maybe even because of the controversy surrounding it, i.e. the musician kerfuffle). i was up there because of you.

i wrote a long, long, thank you blog about it today, and posted it HERE, please read it - a LOT of people helped in creative ways.

but you guys deserve a message of your own:
you did this. we did this.

the response i'm getting from people about this talk is just...incredible. i made the talk thinking it would resonate with artists and musicians who are having a hard time using crowdfunding and kickstarter (it IS hard to ask, and a lot of artists are really embarrassed to do it...i know, because i talk to them).
but i didn't know that the theme would hit so hard and deep with other people on all sort of levels....fundraisers, businesspeople, moms, dads, people in tech, people...everywhere. people everywhere are looking over here at what about 25,000 people did and saying "wow...i never thought about the world like that and now i'm going to change how i do things."

artists have been tweeting me that they've finally plucked up the courage to ask for help making their new record, or that that they've decided to make their content free but ask their fans to kick back.

a woman after the TED talk, who works for TED, came up to me, crying, because she said she's finally changed her mind about asking for help from her friends, who have been offering but she's always refused out of guilt. she said she's finally going to take them up on their offers to help her with her new theater production and just needed to feel like it was ok.

by having backed this kickstarter, whether for a dollar or a hundred (or two of you who i haven't met yet, $10,000)...you are actually changing the world.
the way people see things. the way they WANT and ALLOW themselves to help each other, and to ask for help.

you did this. you you you you.

so....congratfuckinglations, friends. all 24,833 of you were up on that stage with me.

it's a beautiful, beautiful thing and we're all part of it and i'm so happy:
this one isn't about me, and about my record, or about you, and the nice fact that you wanted to help me make it.

this is about people not being so afraid of each other...and, if i may say so, this is a really good time for that to happen.

and if i may ask a favor, and i'll ask it again on my blog as i continue chronicling the story of the TED talk, how i made it, and what is happening....
don't forget to help spread the music. the songs. the videos. the art. the POINT. it's awesome to have a gazillion people watch your TED talk, but it doesn't hold a candle to people loving the art itself.

i don't think i was put on the planet to give speeches, i was put here to make music, to make art. don't let people forget that....remind them with your own megaphones. this is a REALLY good time to tell people that the project was funded for a reason. not just because i'm a good, convincing marketer. i may be, but i'd like to believe it was because the art brings us together.

and it does, more than i ever thought it would when i first started making music.

thank you for being here with me.

thank you for backing me.

thank you for.....everything.

love

afp

HOLA COMRADES...

how the hell are you beautiful 24,883 people?
first of all, hi, i love you. i've missed you.

in this update, i have Many Things to Share!!!:

1 -the new "bed song" video and track.
2 -what the hell i've been up to for five months.
3 -WHAT TO DO if you still haven't gotten your stuff (we think we've sorted ALMOST everybody).
4 -SOME OF THE THINGS that WENT WRONG and WHY.
and...
5 -one fun game.

so....it's been almost exactly 5 months since i sent out the last update.

i've been in touch with a lot of you on twitter, my blog, the mailing list, and in other parts of the real and internet, but not all of you.
and even though i know i begged and pleaded for all of y'all to sign up for the mailing list, i'm sure this is the only way to reach some of you.

in the exciting news department: "THE BED SONG" video, which, if i may be so bold, is the best fucking video we've yet made, is coming out in about a week.
(the videos for "want it back", "the killing type" and "do it with a rockstar" have all been released, and look AMAZING. go look if you haven't, they're all on my youtube).

we'll email all you backers another update in about a week, and it'll be accompanied by a free download of the new, re-recorded version of the song.
i wasn't happy enough with the recording on the album.

what? that's right. i wasn't happy with the way "the bed song" sounded once the record was out....
especially once i toured and was playing night after night, the original recording fell flat.

so i did what i'm allowed to do now that i own my own record label (YAY) and can do whatever the hell i want (YAY) even though people might think i'm on crack (YA- wait...forget crack):
while on tour, i went into a studio in minneapolis with the album's bad-ass producer/engineer, john congleton, and re-recorded it.
it took one afternoon, simple since it was just a solo piano/vocal song. and it's....way better, i have to say.

you'll see.

i'll post a longer blog about how i felt and why i did it, but YOU guys, as the backers of the album will be mailed the track (free obviously) and you can now live smugly in the knowledge that your album just became EVEN MORE LIMITED EDITION....because no more printings of the record/CD will be made with the original version. everywhere the album exists: on my site, bandcamp, iTunes, amazon, etc, i'm going to swap out the old version for the new one. i don't HATE the old version, so don't go deleting it from your life, but the new one is just so much goddamned better. short story, i rushed it. here is the art for the single, it's a kyle cassidy photo based on the beautiful script that neil gaiman wrote for the big bed song book.

keep your eyes on your inbox, it'll probably land with you around the 13th or 14th.

............................................................

now...if you want it, a summary of my life in the last five months....?

damn, ok. i went on TOUR with the band for september, october, and november; we sleighed our way across america and europe.
i got a nasty flu for the last leg of the europe tour, totally lost my voice, and if you want to see something funny, watch my solution to being voiceless at the paris show: http://youtu.be/_ih583uM2jk (warning, contains helpful french people).

i cannot put into words how overwhelmingly beautiful & electric the tour was and how totally together we felt with everyone who came & cried and danced with us.
chad, jherek, and michael as a band were simply off the hook - we really bonded, played our hearts out every night, and left them on the stage in a pile of blood and glitter, only to get up the next morning and do it all over again. that's tour.

here we were…

taken in Austin, TX (photo by @bvaustin for Brooklyn Vegan Austin):

me & chad raines, my beloved guitarist/synthist/trumpeter/programmer extraordinaire (photo by Adam Solomon):

magic drummer michael mcquilken directing the crowd in during the LA encore (photo by Jessy Lou Photography):

jherek bischoff and his awesome glitter quiff (from when we went to shoot "do it with a rockstar" with wayne freakin' coyne):

surfing the seas of love (photo by Daniel Gray):

tour-kick-off in philly at the TLA on september 10th, 2012 (photo by Hi, Krut! Photography):

and

all of us, in detroit (photo by marc nader):

....then i came home for thanksgiving and faced the reality of my best friend, anthony, starting cancer treatment. (i blogged about it HERE if you missed it).

i made one of the hardest decisions of my life: i canceled my upcoming australian, new zealand, and european tours so that i could stay with him.
i didn't know what was going to happen. everyone was so supportive...i had no words. so fucking grateful to all of you.
my blog has turned into a really wonderful community lately, lots of people doing some amazing writing and sharing wonderful insights.

i JUST sent out a special email to all the house party people, and i'm about to post it as a blog as well for those who may be interested (or attending as third parties)....
i'm gearing up again. i cannot wait to be with everybody. it's all happening, man....i'll be hitting the road in a few months to start doing the parties. GANGNAM STYLE.

(also, i've re-scheduled the australian/new zealand dates for SEPTEMBER. dates are ON MY SITE: http://bit.ly/AFPtour)
and i'll let you know about the re-scheduling europe and any other upcoming dates. please DO sign the mailing list, i don't want to barrage the kickstarter or trust it eternally to find you: http://bit.ly/AFPemail)

and as for the house parties...i've already done 4 or 5 of them & they've been fantastic love-fests.
here's a great picture of the whole posse from a house party in brooklyn:

here's me playing someone's living room in philly:

and here's me with weston, who was throwing a house party in california.....he not only had a POOL but an UNDERWATER CAMERA:

and this is even cooler....weston submitted this photo to the "#7ImageUpload"
(we had people submit photos for us to project during our stage show this fall) and
then HE took a PICTURE OF HIS PICTURE. POST-MODERN!!!!!

meta!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.................................................................

there are EIGHT people out there who ordered the "i SHARPIE you" packages. i'm still waiting for photos from a few of you guys (check your email!!!!), but i'm about to dig in and draw draw draw for you.
i'll post the results of my handiwork on a back blog sometime in the future so you can all oooh and ahhhh, or run in terror.

.................................................................

in bad-ass businesswoman news:

i've been invited to speak at TED (if you don't know it, look it up: ted.org) and i'm going to talk about life, trust, risk, and this kickstarter.

it's brought up a lot of feelings, and i have to say, i've learned more than i ever could have dreamed taking this wild ride with you guys.
you are the fundamental thing that drives me, and i forget that until i sit down and stare at the hard facts.
i don't know if i need to remind you but what we did here was truly...historic.
every single one of you, i ride on your trust, and i don't take it for granted.
the more time passes, the luckier i feel.
i hope you think it was worth it, i hope you got what you wanted, and i hope you've considered what it means to be a part of this:
supporting art directly is something we're all going to have to get used to as the music business continues to collapse, and the middlemen vanish.

and, more to the art, i really hope you loved the record as much as we loved making it.
it was, and is, one of my proudest artistic moments.

..........................

the drama?

the week the record came out, the controversy now known around here as the "musician kerfuffle" hit me in the face like a bag of wet gym socks.

if you didn't follow it, i got heavily criticized by some people because i'd put out a blog asking for volunteer musicians in the fanbase to join us for a few songs on stage, unpaid.
i blogged about it a LOT. i never thought that i'd spend my first week of tour losing sleep over something like this, staying up until 4am every night on the tour bus trying to explain the way i do things....but it was what it was. it wore me down, kicked my ass, and i got back up again. so many of you (especially the musicians out there) were so wonderfully supportive during that time, writing your own blogs and explaining your stances how we exchange help and art. so....i thank all of you, everyone who weighed in with whatever thoughts and feelings. i felt proud to be surrounded by so many smart, compassionate people. in the end, i feel like it made the community a little bit tighter and smarter, and that's always welcome.

.............................

NOW - the PHYSICAL SHIPPING nitty gritty:

24,883 of you backed....some were just digital downloads, but 13,958 physical packages had to be mailed out.
that is, excuse my french, a....fuckton of packages.

as you may have seen on twitter as we dealt & fixed, a good handful people did not receive their packages on time, or experienced mis-shipped or lost goods.
that didn't surprise us....merchandise shipping is ALWAYS DICEY. BUT...we estimate the amount of late/damaged orders to be around 550-600....or about 4% of the total physical orders.
NOT BAD! and for those of you who DID have super-late packages for whatever reason, you were all SUPER understanding...and we thank you.

eric (aka @southships) has been slaving behind a hot desk for the last few months as a wonder one-man-customer-service machine (amidst all of his OTHER duties). he deserves a medal.
we don't have the budget for a medal. so he made himself a hat out of one of many amanda palmer posters that were printed for some purpose and never got used:

one of the things that slowed us down was that, due to the sheer volume, we had no means of knowing if somebody did not receive an order unless they contacted us directly.
likewise - if the survey was not returned by a customer before we pulled the data for shipping, we didn't have their address to ship to during the initial round of shipments.
once the backer gets the survey, the FORMAT for the survey is too open-ended to prevent typos and other errors. for example: we received some addresses without postal codes, or with postal codes that had too many digits. that made this hard.

TO THEIR AMAZING CREDIT, Kickstarter, whose system for helping us obtain shipping addresses clearly wasn't designed to enable project fulfillment at this HUGE level, helped us the best they could, by devoting a days' worth of programming hours having their team "scrub" our address data. this helped us clean up and remove some of the typos and other bad address data, but it was not able to catch all of the problems, nor was it able to provide missing info (if someone forgot to provide their country, for example. then that person was just fucked).

SO: we think we've caught everybody who had problems, but there may be some stragglers out there, and i can see from the comments on the kickstarter page there's still a few people wondering what to do:

if you STILL have an issue/concern/problem with your order...CONTACT eric. you can reach him at eric@amandapalmer.net
please keep any emails to him short, concise, and NECESSARY, with as much info as you can provide him about your order. as much as he appreciates thank-you/high-five emails, it bogs down his work inbox to have to deal with anything that isn't a direct problem. but he IS there and ready to help you if your oder STILL HASN'T COME or ARRIVED DAMAGED.

to show you how complicated some of the packaging-EXPLAINING was, here's some of the diagrams we MADE for the shipping company to let them know EXACTLY how to put some of the packages together!!!!

neat, right? but sooooo many Things.

if you want to know EVEN MORE about the inner workings of a giant kickstarter…

some stuff that went wrong:
• due to misprinted artwork in the first round of vinyl, the kickstarter-edition vinyl was delivered three weeks late, and thus all orders containing the LP went out late.
• due to a glitch in the shipping file, many people who ordered just the book were sent shipping confirmation emails for the wrong orders. in many cases, the book made it to them anyway. but a portion of people did not get their book until contacting us for the fix.
• software glitches inside the shipping software (the shipping company) also automatically deleted some orders, or placed orders on "backorder" even though the item was obviously in stock. this meant nothing was dispatched...and we had no way of knowing until we were contacted directly. from our side, we were under the impression all orders had shipped (we do not see the shipping company's back-end).
• on occasion, software glitches and human error at the shipping company prevented the appropriate items from going in the appropriate boxes. that's just the "shit happens" rule.
• the SUPER-FANCY bed song book is still in production because it is such a special item made of special materials...it took a long time to find a printer even willing to make it due to the physical size of it.... and the limited print run. we think you guys who ordered it are going to FREAK OUT, so...worth it.
• despite posting a "customer service helpline email address", the shipping company neglected to answer any emails they received for three months. that sucked because they thought we were handling everything...they forgot that we had no way of knowing who had contacted them. we've been cleaning up that mess for a while.
• a lot of the packages that were sent out incorrectly were REPEATEDLY sent incorrectly when our shipper, tried to fix things - something that absolutely BAFFLED a lot of you AND us. all we can hope is that we caught every last mistake and got it fixed.

and from the engine room, we all thank you for your patience.

for those who want to SHARE THE LOVE: the album is available on my site, bandcamp, amazon, iTunes, and in lots of stores around the states (big and small), europe, and australia/new zealand.
spread the fires. as usual, i just want people to have it. so burn, burn, burn, copy, copy, copy....and get me back however you feel necessary. more on that later.

.............................

one fun game:

when did our celebration kickstarter PARTY in brooklyn, we wrote EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR NAMES - on a piece of paper torn from the new york area yellow pages.
here's me and the band, drowning:

we then stuffed many of the pages RANDOMLY into kickstarter packages when we mailed them out....
someone helpful started a thread on the forum, and people have been posting the yellow page they got. if you wanna go look, or post: http://bit.ly/YellowPagesGame

................................

thank you all, again, and again.

i'll send another (way shorter) update in a week or so when "the bed song" track and video are ready for you.

love.

onwards.

xxx
AFP